Samsung and AMD Extend Licensing Agreement for New Generation Exynos Mobile Chip with AMD Technology

Samsung and AMD have recently signed a renewed licensing agreement, according to reports on April 10th. This agreement will allow Samsung to use AMD's mobile GPU technology on their future smartphones. It has been reported that Samsung is secretly developing a new mobile chip called the Exynos 2500, which will feature a Samsung-developed GPU as well as AMD's technology. This marks the second collaboration between Samsung and AMD following the Exynos 2200, which was the first chip to use AMD's RDNA2 architecture but did not perform as well as expected.

According to sources, Samsung is working with AMD to develop the GPU for the Exynos 2500 chip. The GPU will be based on AMD's technology and will be optimized for performance. The new SoC is said to be designed for Samsung's Galaxy series of smartphones, suggesting that Samsung is looking to move away from its reliance on Qualcomm. However, in order to compete with other chipmakers, Samsung will need to develop a chip that can rival their offerings. Additionally, Samsung currently lags behind TSMC in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.

Rumors suggest that Samsung may use its advanced chip manufacturing technology to create the Exynos 2500 chip using second-generation 3nm GAA technology, which is expected to be mass-produced in the latter half of 2024. However, it is unclear which specific node will be used.

As for the optimization mentioned in the report, it may be related to improving power efficiency. The Exynos 2200 chip did not perform well in this regard, and while its ray-tracing performance was better than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, battery life is often more important than GPU performance. However, it will still take a few years for this new Samsung GPU to come to fruition, and before that, we can expect the Exynos 2400 chip.

It highlights the potential for increased demand for AMD's mobile GPU technology. Distributors can anticipate a surge in orders for these components as Samsung gears up for the release of its new Exynos chips. Additionally, Samsung's plans to move away from Qualcomm suggests that distributors may also see a shift in demand away from Qualcomm components in the future.