Samsung Shuts Down Its Custom CPU Design Group

[AleksandarK]

According to the information obtained by Statesman, Samsung Electronics is shutting down its custom CPU design group within the company. Known for the designs of mobile SoCs like Exynos 9110, 9810 and 9820 just to name a few, it seems that there will be no more future developments of custom Exynos SoC for Samsung's mobile devices. Instead of designing its own cores, Samsung is now going to use ARM's reference A7x series of CPUs based on ARM v8 instruction set, with A76 or A77 being chosen as likely candidates for the high-performance workloads.

So far it is still unknown what will be inside new processors like the upcoming Exynos 9830 SoC, meant to power the next generation of mobile devices. But if things are like Samsung states, there should be reference ARM cores like A77 inside the new chip. Already announced chips like Exynos 990 are supposed to use a custom CPU core, while all future revisions of any new Exynos SoC will license a design IP from ARM. This decision is supposedly a by-product of being unable to compete with offers from Qualcomm, which offers faster "Snapdragon" SoCs. Samsung already uses the Snapdragon SoCs in its phones for the US and Chinese markets, while the rest of the world is getting an Exynos equivalent with the purchase of the same mobile device.


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[GeorgeMan]

Yay! No more slower Samsung mobiles in Europe!

 

[dj-electric]

People might read this and become confused. Exynos CPUs are not seizing existence. Its just that internally, they will look like Snapdragon CPUs with how the cores are built and used, instead of custom cores like the m4 for example

 

[GeorgeMan]

People might read this and become confused. Exynos CPUs are not seizing existence. Its just that internally, they will look like Snapdragon CPUs with how the cores are built and used, instead of custom cores like the m4 for example

Which is really good. We don't care if it's called "banana", the performance is what matters.

 

[john_]

I wonder if this affects Samsung's deal with AMD.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Excellent news, one reason I won't buy the S10, we get the Exynos version. Maybe the S11 will be worthwhile now.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I wonder if this affects Samsung's deal with AMD.

AMD Sells ARM-based chips too.

 

[bug]

I always wondered about the viability of this business.
It would have been great if Samsung use these to provide stellar support (read: updates), but since they weren't taking advantage of it, custom chipsets that weren't significantly faster than something that could be bought elsewhere, made little sense to me.

 

[BorgOvermind]

Samsung is staring to fail on multiple areas and retreats. The story is long, I won't get into it.

They should keep their focus on what they're really good at: LCDs and SSDs.

 

[HwGeek]

Maybe they will be satisfied with ARM design + very powerful RDNA GPU?

 

[Totally]

Samsung is staring to fail on multiple areas and retreats. The story is long, I won't get into it.

They should keep their focus on what they're really good at: LCDs and SSDs.

It's no secret, this is how they operate. They enter the market, muscle out established players gaining dominance. If they aren't the dominant entity after a certain period they get out and move on.

 

[Chrispy_]

Exynos always lagged on performance and battery life, but the real reason it sucked is because it made creating ROMs for it practically impossible. xda-developers.org has (quite literally) thousands of pages with tens of thousands of sad Exynos owners desperately trying to escape TouchWiz but bumping up against the sad reality of Exynos' closed-source drivers and code in an open-source environment.

Good riddance, I say. Exynos could have been great but Samsung applied their usual magic touch (excessive greed) and now it's a has-been that many people will be pleased to forget about.

 

[bug]

It's no secret, this is how they operate. They enter the market, muscle out established players gaining dominance. If they aren't the dominant entity after a certain period they get out and move on.

Isn't this how any sane player will go about things: pick a lucrative market, take a crack at it and back-out if they can't make a dent.

Exynos always lagged on performance and battery life, but the real reason it sucked is because it made creating ROMs for it practically impossible. xda-developers.org has (quite literally) thousands of pages with tens of thousands of sad Exynos owners desperately trying to escape TouchWiz but bumping up against the sad reality of Exynos' closed-source drivers and code in an open-source environment.

Good riddance, I say. Exynos could have been great but Samsung applied their usual magic touch (excessive greed) and now it's a has-been that many people will be pleased to forget about.

Escaping TouchWiz doesn't require a custom ROM, it requires Android One My Nokia 8.1 is already on Android 10 while the mighty S10/S10+ isn't

 

[iO]

Good riddance, I say. Exynos could have been great but Samsung applied their usual magic touch (excessive greed) and now it's a has-been that many people will be pleased to forget about.

Exynos chips aren't going nowhere. They'll just go back to using stock cores instead their subpar custom cores.

But rumour is they might get some semi-custom solution directly from Arm.

 

[bug]

Exynos chips aren't going nowhere. They'll just go back to using stock cores instead their subpar custom cores.

But rumour is they might get some semi-custom solution directly from Arm.

Plus, if they still pack that Mali crap, custom ROMs will still be a no-go.

 

[Totally]

Isn't this how any sane player will go about things: pick a lucrative market, take a crack at it and back-out if they can't make a dent.

Escaping TouchWiz doesn't require a custom ROM, it requires Android One My Nokia 8.1 is already on Android 10 while the mighty S10/S10+ isn't

Samsung isn't content with just a dent, they want enough to have significant leverage to control pricing. Similar to Microsoft of the 80s difference being that Samsung doesn't buyout the competition when growth starts slowing down and just backs out.

 

[bug]

Samsung isn't content with just a dent, they want enough to have significant leverage to control pricing. Similar to Microsoft of the 80s difference being that Samsung doesn't buyout the competition when growth starts slowing down and just backs out.

They're free to define "dent" as they please, but you get the gist

 

[R-T-B]

Yay! No more slower Samsung mobiles in Europe!

Haha, you wish.

Using reference arm cores does not mean they are going qualcomm. They loathe qualcomm.

People might read this and become confused. Exynos CPUs are not seizing existence. Its just that internally, they will look like Snapdragon CPUs with how the cores are built and used, instead of custom cores like the m4 for example

Snapdragons are usually customized designs, meaning Samsung going reference != a Snapdragon.

Instead of designing its own cores, Samsung is now going to use ARM's reference A7x series of CPUs based on ARM v8 instruction set, with A76 or A77 being chosen as likely candidates for the high-performance workloads.

Plus, if they still pack that Mali crap, custom ROMs will still be a no-go.

I can think of several custom roms that support Mail GPUs, what do you mean?

 

[illli]

Exynos always lagged on performance and battery life, but the real reason it sucked is because it made creating ROMs for it practically impossible. xda-developers.org has (quite literally) thousands of pages with tens of thousands of sad Exynos owners desperately trying to escape TouchWiz but bumping up against the sad reality of Exynos' closed-source drivers and code in an open-source environment.

Good riddance, I say. Exynos could have been great but Samsung applied their usual magic touch (excessive greed) and now it's a has-been that many people will be pleased to forget about.

This is the exact reason I will never buy a phone that uses mediatek

 

[R-T-B]

Exynos always lagged on performance and battery life, but the real reason it sucked is because it made creating ROMs for it practically impossible. xda-developers.org has (quite literally) thousands of pages with tens of thousands of sad Exynos owners desperately trying to escape TouchWiz but bumping up against the sad reality of Exynos' closed-source drivers and code in an open-source environment.

Good riddance, I say. Exynos could have been great but Samsung applied their usual magic touch (excessive greed) and now it's a has-been that many people will be pleased to forget about.

Interesting perspective since qualcomm drivers are closed source too.