Samsung / AMD / Ron Amadeo
Samsung Electronics and AMD are extending their smartphone chip settlement. In a press launch at present, the 2 firms mentioned they “signed a multi-year settlement extension to convey a number of generations of high-performance, ultra-low-power AMD Radeon graphics options to an expanded portfolio of Samsung Exynos SoCs.” Even Samsung is reluctant to make use of Samsung chips as of late, so it isn’t clear what units these AMD GPUs will land in.
Samsung’s chip division and AMD have already performed a technology of an Exynos SoC with an AMD GPU. That chip was the Exynos 2200, with its “Samsung Xclipse 920 GPU” that was co-developed by AMD. Samsung’s cellphone division—which does not essentially have a bias towards the chip division’s merchandise—shipped that chip within the S22 in some areas like Europe, whereas delivery the S22 with Qualcomm chips in different areas, just like the US and China. Exynos chips have a foul popularity for always having decrease efficiency in comparison with Qualcomm chips, and the Exynos 2200 was no exception. The chip did not do properly towards the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in benchmarks and energy utilization, and Samsung followers as soon as once more needed to take care of getting “inferior telephones” relying on what nation they lived in.
The one win the Xclipse GPU had over Qualcomm was in ray tracing. In at present’s four-paragraph press launch, Samsung and AMD level out twice that “Xclipse was the business’s first cellular GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing.” Samsung’s 2022 chip is higher at ray tracing than Qualcomm’s 2023 chip! The drawback is, being an early adopter of ray tracing is not actually related for cellular gaming. Mobile video games are constructed for a causal viewers and goal mass-market {hardware}. With the necessity to additionally steadiness battery life, that market would not worth excessive graphics constancy. As you may see with Lenovo killing off its gaming smartphone line, the makes an attempt to convey hardcore gaming values to smartphones haven’t discovered an enormous viewers.
Samsung’s chip division manufacturers these Exynos chips in keeping with the telephones from Samsung’s cellphone division, however the two teams do not see eye to eye on the chip’s market viability. While solely a portion of the Galaxy S22s shipped with Exynos 2200 chips, the Galaxy S23 skipped the Exynos 2300 completely and went all Qualcomm, in each area. The Exynos 2300 is rumored to nonetheless exist and would possibly debut in some particular “Fan editions” of Samsung’s merchandise, which at all times really feel like they’re constructed out of spare elements. Exynos and AMD are each clinging to smartphone relevance, and it isn’t clear if this partnership can have any prospects.
The line about bringing Radeon graphics to “an expanded portfolio of Samsung Exynos SoCs” would possibly get the 2 firms some design wins. Samsung’s cellphone division nonetheless ships Exynos chips on mid- and low-end units, so possibly that is the place we’ll begin to see Radeon tech hit the market. It would not make a ton of sense to convey high-end desktop options to mid-range mobiles, however the two firms are most likely determined for any sort of market share.