Samsung is reportedly shutting down its custom CPU department for good. The company’s representatives say the move is meant to ensure the company’s Exynos Chipsets stay competitive on the market.
Samsung started making its in-house developed Mongoose CPU cores in 2016. The company’s first SoC with its Custom CPU cores debuted in 2016 in the Galaxy S7 duo stacked inside the Exynos 8890 SoC.
Samsung’s custom CPU department seems to have been left behind in terms of market competitiveness hence the move. As a result, Samsung will lay off around 300 employees in the Austin Texas Custom CPU department.
The shutdown is expected to be in effect as of December 31st. Moving forward, Samsung has been rumoured to opt for ARM CPU cores instead. Which makes the company join the likes of Huawei and even US chipmaker Qualcomm who rely on ARM for CPU Cores.
In June, Samsung partnered with AMD to bring Radeon graphic solutions on future devices, including smartphones. Samsung’s Inyup Kang, president of Samsung Electronics’ S.LSI Business said this partnership will “accelerate innovations in mobile graphics technologies that will help take future mobile computing to the next level.”
Although we have not seen any fruits from that partnership so far, next year might be the best time to raise our curiosity about what comes next.
