Last year it was rumored that Samsung’s Mobile division was not only cooking up a new Exynos processor for the Galaxy S5 but it was also working on a graphics processor for those chips in-house. The company’s new Exynos SoC was launched but it didn’t come with Samsung’s own GPU. Today the rumor about in-house GPU development has resurfaced. Apparently the company has continued working on those graphics processors and has even been able to bring over engineers from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and other companies to aid development.
For mobile graphics Samsung has to rely upon ARM’s Mali series of graphics processors which are coupled with its own Exynos series processors. Finally being able to make its own graphics processors would free Samsung from the burden of having to license mobile GPUs from other companies, also eliminating the need to pay a licensing fee.
With onboard LTE now a feature on Exynos chips the next logical step does seem to be Samsung’s own GPU. When that happens the company’s power package will be fully homemade. However before Samsung switches to its own GPUs it will ensure that the chip is able to match, if not better, GPUs from other chip makers.
So it would be unfair to assume right now that Samsung will soon be shifting to in-house designed GPUs in the very near future. The company would likely ensure first that the GPU can hold its own against the competition before being sent out in consumer devices.
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