Samsung Exynos 2200 will feature raytracing support

Real-time raytracing was pushed by NVIDIA as the next frontier of graphics in PC gaming back in 2018, and it is now coming to mobile as well. Samsung’s upcoming Exynos 2200 will apparently feature raytracing support, as confirmed by the official Samsung Exynos Weibo account. This will quite possibly make the Samsung Galaxy S22 one of the first smartphones to support raytracing.

Samsung worked with AMD to harness the RDNA 2 graphics architecture, which was a pretty momentous leap for AMD. RDNA 2 marked the debut of several key technologies in AMD’s lineup, with hardware-accelerated raytracing being the main one, as it allowed AMD to finally offer the technology that NVIDIA debuted in the gaming space with the Turing architecture.

I am quite surprised will be making its way to smartphones as well though, given how difficult it is to deliver playable frame rates with raytracing enabled, even with current desktop hardware. While smartphones have significantly smaller screens, their display resolution are on par with many desktop PCs, some even pushing 1440p or higher. That will definitely pose a significant challenge for smartphones and their tiny GPUs.

Considering the limited die space on a mobile chipset, it would probably have been better to use the die space needed for the Ray Accelerators in the RDNA 2 architecture for more stream processors to push higher raster performance, but then again that might mean that it will no longer be RDNA 2, but a different architecture that will cost unnecessary time and money to develop.

But then again, supporting it is one thing, and actually being capable of delivering a playable experience is another. Regardless, it is still a pretty huge step forward. With the arrival of the Exynos 2200, AMD’s RDNA 2’s architecture will be featured in pretty much every major gaming platform, with the latest Xbox and Playstation consoles, Steam Decks, even the entertainment systems in the latest Teslas, and of course, PCs.

Pokdepinion: Considering that games are usually developed with the mainstream demographic in mind, we will most probably not see raytracing in mobile games any time soon…