Samsung announced today that it is entering into a multi-year strategic partnership with one of the world's computing titans, AMD. The strategic partnership aims to create, develop, and produce mobile graphics chipsets for the smartphone devices of the South Korean tech and electronics giant. The announcement came in the middle of the WWDC keynote event of its competitor, Apple.
All through 2018, there were countless speculations about Samsung developing a gaming smartphone that will utilize the South Korean tech titan's very own GPU for the smartphone. The rumors keep on spreading despite the lack of official confirmation from Samsung. But, the recent announcement made by Samsung is very surprising considering that it is not what most tech analysts and experts are expecting.
According to the announcement, Samsung will utilize the Radeon graphics architecture of AMD, which are at present used in gaming consoles and PCs. The AMD Radeon GPUs will be licensed to the South Korean tech company to be used in mobile devices which includes smartphones and other products that match the offering of AMD.
While the AMD Radeon boasts of ultra-low power and excellent performance and will most likely be in the SoC or Exynos System-on-Chip processors of Samsung in the near future, there is no specific product was disclosed yet. The description only suggests that the successful inclusion of AMD Radeon into the Samsung smartphone, in theory, should enable the company to produce more powerful GPU with lesser power consumption.
The partnership could benefit consumers since this could mean more affordable smartphones with good graphics capabilities. This could also mean flagship devices that could run demanding and more extensive simulations and games without the fear of overheating or maiming the battery life of the device. Also, it would be very interesting since Samsung's Exynos SoC has always tailed behind Qualcomm in terms of GPU.
But, what happened to the GPU architecture developed by Samsung? It could only mean that the new partnership will not likely to result in AMD releasing new architectural IP to be utilized by Exynos chipsets. Because if this is the case, the South Korean tech and electronics giant would be throwing seven years' worth of research and development away.
So far, no timeframe has been disclosed. It is possible that Samsung will use Radeon powered GPUs in the distant but maybe not in the immediate future. The smartphone maker will need a good measure of customization to be able to use the AMD Radeon GPUs on its smartphone and other mobile devices.
