Samsung has renewed its licensing agreement with AMD to use AmD-based mobile Gpus in smartphones in the future. According to the source, Samsung is secretly developing a new generation of mobile chips called Exynos 2500, which will run on its own Gpus but also use AMD technology. This is another collaboration between Samsung and AMD following the Exynos 2200, which was the first chip to use AMD’s RDNA2 architecture Xclipse 920 GPU, but the performance was not satisfactory.
According to Revegnus, Samsung is working with AMD on a GPU for the Exynos 2500 chip, which is based on AMD technology and has a special focus on optimization.
The new SoC is said to be designed for the Galaxy line of smartphones, suggesting that Samsung will eventually no longer rely on Qualcomm. To do that, though, chips must be developed that can compete with other competitors. Moreover, Samsung currently lags behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in wafer manufacturing. However, rumors are circulating that a second-generation 3nm GAA process will be available for mass production in the second half of 2024. Samsung could leverage its advanced chipmaking skills to build the Exynos 2500 chip, though it’s unclear exactly which nodes will be used.
As for the optimization mentioned in the tweet, it may have something to do with improving power efficiency, where the Exynos 2200 chip falls short, and while its ray-tracking performance is better than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, battery life is sometimes more important than powerful GPU performance. But the new Samsung GPU will take a few years to take shape, and before it does, there’s the Exynos 2400 chip to look forward to.