Samsung is working on hardware to rival Apple Silicon by producing its own custom processors for future smartphones & personal computers to develop more advanced chips.
Samsung is collaborating with AMD to create the Exynos 2200, which includes the Xclipse 920 GPU. This system-on-a-chip (SoC) was a vital base for Samsung to advance toward the next phase; developing a custom GPU. The company has usually relied on British chip company Arm for its Exynos advanced processors, but manufacturing the chips in-house would allow it to control the optimization process more.
It is common for companies to create custom GPUs specializing in smartphone chipsets, including Apple and Qualcomm. However, the first (AP) is said to be dubbed Galaxy chip and may be launched in 2025. This chip may probably have a CPU based on Arm technology since Samsung has just started developing its own CPU core.
The Xclipse 920 GPU was developed based on AMD’s RDNA2 architecture and combined into the Exynos 2200. As per Revengnus’ Twitter post, the same architecture is foreseen to be used in producing a custom GPU. However, Samsung will not generate a standalone GPU and will need assistance from AMD in creating an IP.
Samsung had relied on Arm’s Mali GPU designs for years until the Exynos 2100. Although ARM’s GPU designs are impressive, Qualcomm and Apple have shown that the only way to close the performance gap on Samsung’s side is to create a custom GPU specifically tailored for smartphones.
Further, in ray tracing performance, it has been said that the Xcilpse 920 of the Exynos 2200 performed admirably against Qualcomm’s most recent Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and, in reality, outperformed it. This shows that Samsung has the capability to compete in this arena.
