Job postings on LinkedIn reveal that Samsung is looking to hire a ton of graphics chip engineers to bring forward their own GPU design. In the past the company has licensed GPU IP from companies like ARM and Imagination Technologies, but these designs come with cost, low performance and low flexibility. With Samsung needing graphics IP for a large range of products like phones, tablets and exploring options in markets like automotive, machine learning and AI, it's not surprising that the company is now looking into rolling their own GPU - from scratch as indicated by a recruiter's posting:

"This is Samsung's proprietary IP. We will define the ISA, the architecture, the SW, the entire solution."

Apple has been designing their own GPUs for several years, which gave them full control and independence from 3rd party suppliers. It's questionable how quickly Samsung can pull this off, as a lot of resources are required, and you can't just magically build a GPU, completely ignoring existing patents. ATI/AMD, NVIDIA and Intel hold a significant number of patents that are crucial to the implementation of any graphics processor, which means Samsung will have to deal with those companies and license the relevant things, which might complicate the development process.

The job posting is very clear that Samsung is hiring a full stack of developers, as the following keywords are mentioned: "User Mode Driver, OpenGl, Vulkan, LLVM compiler, Architecture, Low Power System Design, RTL, Validation & Verification, Deep Learning". It is also mentioned that these new "flagship GPUs" (note: not just one GPU) will power "lower tier mobile phones" at first, and the next-gen GPUs will be used in markets like autonomous driving and deep learning.