Samsung confirms it will continue developing mobile GPUs with AMD

Samsung has, on more than one occasion, said it would continue working with AMD to develop mobile GPUs, despite the Exynos 2200 not living up to expectations. Despite being hamstrung by Samsung Foundries' sub-par 4 nm node, the Xclipse 920 managed to outperform the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1's Adreno 730. Now, Samsung has put out yet another press release stating its collaboration with AMD is here to stay.

Seogjun Lee, executive vice president of Application Processor (AP) Development at Samsung, says both companies will work together to develop cutting-edge graphics solutions for mobile devices. It sits in line with an earlier rumour, which stated Samsung would begin developing GPUs in-house. The aforesaid agreement will help Samsung license components of AMD's vast IP library.

Furthermore, murmurs about the Exynos 2400 and its Xclipse X940 GPU have begun picking up steam on South Korean tech forums. The agreement further bolsters the argument that Samsung has something that requires AMD IP on the back burner. The flagship GPU packs 6 WGPs (12 CUs), is capable of hardware-level raytracing and is based on the Radeon 680M GPU found on some Ryzen 6000 SKUs. If these specs are accurate, the Xclipse X940 can easily demonish Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs, which, ironically, are also Radeon-based.

Samsung's extended cooperation with AMD could also trickle down to mid-range products like the Exynos 1380. For now, Samsung has been sticking with off-the-shelf Arm Mali GPUs, but given enough time and resources, Samsung could have one mid-range Radeon-powered mobile GPU for all segments. It could, however, find an unlikely competitor on MediaTek, which has teamed up with Nvidia to bring AI chops into its GPUs.

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