The first Samsung Exynos processor with AMD graphics may arrive much sooner than expected. According to noted tipster Ice Universe, the Korean company is planning to launch its next-generation Exynos chipsets with AMD GPUs in the second or third quarter of 2021. Both Exynos 2xxx and Exynos 1xxx series chipsets will pack AMD GPUs in the future.
The launch time frame suggests we may see a successor to the recently launched Exynos 2100 arrive in time for the Galaxy Note series (if it still exists in 2021), or at least the Galaxy Z Fold 3. However, the report claims that Samsung may still change the plans in the coming months. So nothing is set in stone yet.
Exynos chipsets with AMD GPUs are coming this year
Samsung announced a strategic partnership with AMD back in June 2019. The two companies inked a deal in ultra low power, high-performance graphics technologies. In simpler words, Samsung would integrate custom AMD Radeon graphics in its future Exynos chipsets.
Nothing has come of the partnership for nearly two years now. But during the Exynos 2100 launch earlier this month, Dr. Inyup Kang, president of Samsung’s System LSI Business, confirmed that the company is working with AMD for a new mobile GPU that will arrive in its next flagship processor.
Dr. Kang was seemingly referring to the successor to Exynos 2100. And while everyone was expecting Samsung to launch the new flagship chipset in early 2022 with the Galaxy S22 series, it appears we may see it arrive much sooner than that.
Of course, it’s still too early to say for sure just yet. However, with Samsung seemingly planning to pitch its foldable smartphones as mainstream offerings going forward, it completely makes sense for the company to launch the Galaxy Z Fold 3 with a new flagship processor.
Moreover, Samsung has had to face a lot of criticism over the past couple of years because of the evidently underwhelming performance of its flagship Exynos chipsets when compared to alternatives from Qualcomm. The company eventually stopped using custom Mongoose CPU cores this year in favor of stock ARM cores.
This move is seemingly paying off already. The newly launched Exynos 2100 appears to be on par with Qualcomm’s latest – the Snapdragon 888 – in CPU performance. However, the new Exynos chipset is still behind the Snapdragon 888 in terms of GPU performance.
This has once again drawn some flak from the critics. Samsung would be itching to get over this saga as soon as possible now. The company is hoping that using AMD GPUs will improve the graphics performance of its Exynos chipsets. We’ll now have to wait and see how things pan out.