Samsung And AMD Renew Contract For Exynos With AMD’s RDNA GPUs

Samsung has announced an extension of its cooperation with the graphics specialist AMD. This clears the way to continue using AMD’s RNDA graphics units in the Samsung Exynos chips for smartphones in the future. What exactly Samsung intends to do with the AMD GPUs, however, is open.

As Samsung’s semiconductor division announced today, it has extended its contracts with AMD for licensing graphics solutions for integration into its smartphones and other mobile devices for several years. The two companies had agreed on a corresponding agreement in 2019, which involved the use of RDNA-based graphics architectures in the devices.

AMD graphics used only in the Galaxy S22

Few AMD GPUs have been used in Samsung SoCs since then, but there has been one extremely prominent case with the Galaxy S22 series. The Samsung Exynos 2200 high-end SoC is equipped with the RNDA2-based AMD graphics unit. For the first time, however, Samsung is currently only using Snapdragon SoCs from Qualcomm, which come with an Adreno GPU – so they have nothing to do with AMD.

Samsung plans to integrate “several generations” of AMD Radeon graphics units in other Exynos SoCs in the future. In doing so, the company wants to offer “graphics performance on the level of game consoles and optimized energy efficiency” in more mobile devices in the future. Apparently, Samsung hasn’t given up the in-house Exynos SoCs, contrary to all rumors, even if starting with the Galaxy S23 it relies even more heavily on Qualcomm platforms.

After various full-bodied announcements, Samsung introduced the first chip with AMD graphics with the Exynos 2200, but its graphics solution called “Xclipse” did not deliver outstanding results. The last known top SoC from the Exynos series was also often criticized for its heat problems and comparatively disappointing energy efficiency.

Recently there were rumors that Samsung would again introduce a new high-end SoC of the Exynos series with the Galaxy S24. It was also heard that the Exynos 2200 should be used in the Samsung Galaxy S23 Fan Edition (FE).