Samsung and AMD have decided to renew the patent license agreement that allows the former to use the graphics architecture of the latter, something that, as many of our readers will remember, resulted in the Xclipse 920, a graphics core based on the RDNA2 architecture which was used in the Exynos 2200 SoC.
Said SoC did not have the expected success, and the GPU wasn’t up to the task either, but this has not prevented Samsung from renewing that agreement with AMD, which, obviously, is a statement of intent. If you are wondering what Samsung intends with this I think the answer is quite simple, it will continue to use AMD graphics architectures to create its own custom SoCs.
This means that Samsung has not thrown in the towel with its Exynos chips in the high range, and that its goal is to re-release a top-of-the-line chip when the time is right. That new SoC will likely come equipped with a GPU based on the RDNA3 architecturealthough in the end everything will depend on the date it is released and what AMD has on the market at that time.
The South Korean company has confirmed in an official statement that this agreement is intended to bring “console-level graphics to the mobile sector”. He also wants to optimize the user experience and make it more immersive and durable. Samsung has spoken again about ray tracing on mobile devices, a very demanding technology that, to be honest, I don’t think it will be easily usable on a mobile device.
AMD, for its part, has said it is excited that Samsung has chosen its Radeon graphics solutions for “the next generation of Exynos solutions”. This is important, because it directly confirms what we have been telling you over the past few months, that Samsung has not given up and will continue to launch high-performance Exynos SoCs.
The question we are now asking ourselves is whether Samsung’s next chip, equipped with a RDNA3 GPUs, it will arrive in 2024 or if it will leave in 2025. We do not have anything officially confirmed, so right now the only thing we can do is wait. However, if the company decides to wait until 2025, it is likely that AMD will already have its architecture ready by then. RDNA4, so it would no longer make sense for Samsung to release a SoC with a previous generation GPU.
