Samsung Aims to Become Number One Android AP Vendor by Joining Forces with AMD and Arm

[AleksandarK]

Samsung Electronics has reportedly laid out a plan to become the number one Android application processor (AP) vendor in the industry with its plan to join forces with AMD and Arm. The report of Business Korea indicates that Samsung wants to use both company's knowledge and IP to produce the best possible silicon. In early November of last year, Samsung has decided to shut down its division responsible for making custom CPU designs, and to start licensing IP from Arm. Also last year, Samsung has announced a strategic partnership with AMD to use its RDNA graphics processors in smartphones.

So Samsung plans to license IPs from both companies and just put them in SoC that will be up to the task to deliver the best performance, as the company predicts. The CPU is reportedly going to be based on Arm's Cortex-X custom design that should deliver high-performance Samsung wants. In the past, the company had some problems with the heat-management of its CPUs as they were designed a bit inefficiently. To cover everything, Samsung also plans to increase the number of employees working on a neural processing unit (NPU) and make a good performing NPUs as well, to combine with the rest of IPs.


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[Vya Domus]

Samsung's SoCs have been behind for years so I'm doubtful. The graphics chips are going to be lit though.

 

[bug]

Samsung's SoCs have been behind for years so I'm doubtful. The graphics chips are going to be lit though.

My thoughts exactly: shutting down your own division does not go hand in had with wanting to become #1 in the same field.
Then again, we all learn from our mistakes, it's how we evolve.

 

[theGryphon]

Samsung's SoCs have been behind for years so I'm doubtful. The graphics chips are going to be lit though.

Sounds like you didn't read the news article. They stopped working on their own SOC. They're going to build their new SOCs on ARM and RDNA. Totally different approach to before...

 

[bug]

Sounds like you didn't read the news article. They stopped working on their own SOC. They're going to build their new SOCs on ARM and RDNA. Totally different approach to before...

Their SoCs were already ARM based
They just stopped doing custom designs. Which begs the question: how do you become #1 using off-the shelf parts? What sets you apart?

 

[Vya Domus]

They stopped working on their own SOC.

Huh ? What ? They're still making their own SoCs, what are you talking about ? The only difference is that as far as I know they'll stop using their own designed CPU cores and just use vanilla ARM cores + AMD graphics. That doesn't mean they wont suck or that they'll be amazing, Samsung is still very much responsible for these new SoCs.

 

[mtcn77]

Samsung has this video overlay which you can scale to fullscreen and rotate what not which I like a lot. Beforehands, I assumed Samsung built these with useless namesake extensions, but they are actually useful.

 

[renz496]

part of the issue is qualcomm. even for samsung they cannot use their own exynos for all of their phones. some of it still need to use qualcomm soc.

 

[lightofhonor]

Kinda funny since Qualcomm's offering, Adreno, was originally based on ATI/AMD GPU's too (and their name is just a anagram of Radeon).

So Samsung is just going back to the original source.

 

[zlobby]

Their SoCs were already ARM based
They just stopped doing custom designs. Which begs the question: how do you become #1 using off-the shelf parts? What sets you apart?

For as long as you are ahead or on par with the competition in one major category, i.e. SoC, you can use your strenght in other categories to set you apart (e.g. displays).

part of the issue is qualcomm. even for samsung they cannot use their own exynos for all of their phones. some of it still need to use qualcomm soc.

Or a separate modem for CDMA?

 

[watzupken]

I think it is good for the company to have a target here. But in my opinion, it is not some thing that they can realize in the near term. Qualcomm is a tough nut at this point in time.