- Kyle Chua
Samsung Has Reportedly Set Up a Team Developing Galaxy-Only Silicon
Samsung could be taking a page out of Apple's playbook as it looks to develop silicon that'll be exclusive to its flagship smartphones.
According to Korea JoongAng Daily, the South Korean electronics giant wants to change the way it designs the microprocessors for its devices. Instead of coming out with all-new ones, it wants to design microprocessors from the ground up in tandem with the devices they'll power.
The smartphone-making division is reportedly spearheading the project, not the microprocessor design unit. A team called AP Solution Development has already been set up at the end of last year, with former Qualcomm engineer Choi Won-joon leading the charge.
"The company set up the team to make the so-called Galaxy-only chip led by employees from mobile eXperience (MX) division, although there are engineers from the System LSI division, which designs semiconductors,” a source told the Korea JoongAng Daily.
The new microprocessor the team designs is expected to debut with the Galaxy S25, which, if the yearly release cycle is followed, would arrive in 2025. Samsung declined to share details about the timeframe of the microprocessor's development, but it did confirm the AP Solution Development team.
The development comes amid chatter of Samsung being disappointed by the performance of Exynos silicon that powered the Galaxy S21 and S22. Sources said, when designing the processors, the smartphone and process divisions worked like separate companies, resulting in less-than-stellar performance. Samsung wants to change that by having AP Solution Development be more involved in the development of new smartphones from the onset to better optimise the processors that'll power them.
Apple similarly designs its own processors that power a lot of its products, including the iPhone and the iPad, and only licences the essential instruction set from ARM. By using its own silicon, the Cupertino giant is able to have more control over various performance metrics like speed and battery consumption, and match hardware with the software features it wants to implement.
Samsung could be taking a page out of Apple's playbook as it looks to develop silicon that'll be exclusive to its flagship smartphones.
The electronics giant wants to design microprocessors from the ground up in tandem with the devices they'll power.
The development comes amid chatter of Samsung being disappointed by the performance of Exynos silicon that powered the Galaxy S21 and S22.