Future Samsung Exynos Socs will again have AMD GPUs

Samsung and AMD continue their collaboration in graphics processors for mobile devices. Samsung continues to use AMD’s chips in its Exynos Socs, as it already did with the Galaxy S22, S22+ and S22 Ultra in Europe.

The extended agreement will again apply for several years, just like the first one from 2019. AMD and Samsung want to bring ‘multiple generations’ of Radeon products to an ‘more extensive portfolio’ of Samsung Exynos Socs. It is not yet clear whether AMD graphics will be limited to Samsung’s flagships, as has been the case so far, or whether cheaper devices will also be equipped with them.

The GPU that has so far been the only fruit that this collaboration has borne on the market is the Xclipse 920 GPU of the Exynos 2200. This GPU was based on the RDNA 2 architecture known from the Radeon RX6000 series, Xbox Series, PlayStation 5 and Steam Deck. The graphics performance of the chip was disappointing, although it did enable advanced techniques such as ray tracing and variable rate shading.

After integrating an AMD GPU into the S22, S22+ and S22 Ultra Socs, Samsung released the S23 series this year, which again did not use an AMD GPU, but only appeared in a Snapdragon variant. So that was not a final farewell to AMD GPUs in its smartphones.

Finally, AnandTech notes that it strongly appears that the conditions under which the initial agreement from 2019 was signed continue to apply. It states that Samsung may not compete with AMD with these GPUs. This means that no AMD graphics for laptops, for example, may be produced by Samsung.