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Thread: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

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    Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    It will lay-off 290 staff at its Austin R&D lab and an undisclosed number at its San Jose facility.
    Read more.

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Looks like Samsung are regrouping to focus on the product design and outsource the CPU Cores and GPU to QualComm and AMD respectively in the handset/tablet space... probably wise with a host of up & coming Chinese manufacturers chasing them down.

    Should also mean we see Qualcom-driven Samsung Flagship phones in the UK at last... previously we've had Exynos-driven versions of the top-end phones that offer differing levels (usually slightly weaker) performance than the U.S. version of the same phone.

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Perhaps this means all future Samsung phones will have Exynos SoC's in them...
    Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Quote Originally Posted by KultiVator View Post
    Looks like Samsung are regrouping to focus on the product design and outsource the CPU Cores and GPU to QualComm and AMD respectively in the handset/tablet space... probably wise with a host of up & coming Chinese manufacturers chasing them down.

    Should also mean we see Qualcom-driven Samsung Flagship phones in the UK at last... previously we've had Exynos-driven versions of the top-end phones that offer differing levels (usually slightly weaker) performance than the U.S. version of the same phone.
    I thought most of the mobile industry wanted to be shot of Qualcomm?

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Quote Originally Posted by Tabbykatze View Post
    I thought most of the mobile industry wanted to be shot of Qualcomm?
    The majority of Android flagship phones have the high-end SnapDragon SoCs... and it's what tech-savvy consumers have come to expect.

    Samsung's own Exynos chips differentiate them, but at the same time, generally don't perform quite as well as the equivalent SnapDragon - yet must cost billions in development costs for no real advantage over the competition.

    This runs at odds of what Apple has managed to achieve by bringing a lot of the SoC design in-house over recent years.

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Quote Originally Posted by KultiVator View Post
    Should also mean we see Qualcom-driven Samsung Flagship phones in the UK at last... previously we've had Exynos-driven versions of the top-end phones that offer differing levels (usually slightly weaker) performance than the U.S. version of the same phone.
    Thank fornicating rats for that.

    The ones we've had in the UK haven't just had weaker SoC grunt. Everything is worse. The sound output, the camera ISP, even the display has been worse due to the poorer processing (even though the actual panel is the same). It's infuriating that we get a product with worse almost everything, including battery life and product longevity (poorer baseline performance means that it'll start to become sluggish with more demanding apps faster as relative performance is lower) and we're expected to believe it's the same product (it just isn't!) and value it the same.

    I think from a business perspective it made sense to have their own SoC to avoid another QC screw up where their Snapdragon was just a disaster. This hasn't happened for ages though and really is unlikely to ever happen again. There was a chance they could do better but they didn't manage it so it makes sense to now give up on the project.

    I think Apple having control of the entire ecosystem and available apps / SDKs / APIs really does make a massive difference to what they can achieve with optimisations and inhouse design.

    But I am probably talking tosh.

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Quote Originally Posted by 3dcandy View Post
    Perhaps this means all future Samsung phones will have Exynos SoC's in them...
    I believe the use of Qualcomm in some regions was down to 4G modem types needed.

    This just means that Samsung SoCs will have an off the shelf ARM core in them rather than one designed by Samsung. Even with standard ARM IP there are still customizing options like cache sizes when placing it so Samsung can still go for a performance implementation of a standard core.

    So another ARM architectural licencee throws the towel in on actually using their licence. I'm sure that's partly down to how good a job ARM are doing with their high end cores, though Apple and Nvidia both seem to be able to knock out faster designs. 300 engineers, probably costing the company $100K each on average between wages & equipment etc, that's about $30M a year saved. A tidy sum if they think the off the shelf hard cell will do. But somehow it seems a shame.

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    Re: Samsung closes down CPU research and development

    Quote Originally Posted by philehidiot View Post
    Thank fornicating rats for that.

    The ones we've had in the UK haven't just had weaker SoC grunt. Everything is worse. The sound output, the camera ISP, even the display has been worse due to the poorer processing (even though the actual panel is the same). It's infuriating that we get a product with worse almost everything, including battery life and product longevity (poorer baseline performance means that it'll start to become sluggish with more demanding apps faster as relative performance is lower) and we're expected to believe it's the same product (it just isn't!) and value it the same.

    I think from a business perspective it made sense to have their own SoC to avoid another QC screw up where their Snapdragon was just a disaster. This hasn't happened for ages though and really is unlikely to ever happen again. There was a chance they could do better but they didn't manage it so it makes sense to now give up on the project.

    I think Apple having control of the entire ecosystem and available apps / SDKs / APIs really does make a massive difference to what they can achieve with optimisations and inhouse design.

    But I am probably talking tosh.
    Nah - all makes good sense.

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