Samsung may be looking to make custom chipsets for Galaxy devices
You might be already familiar with Samsung’s Exynos troubles. It has struggled to match the performance of competing solutions from Qualcomm in recent years, at least in the flagship segment. The performance gap has widened with each new generation, so much so that the company will not use Exynos processors in its upcoming flagships. The Galaxy S23 series will ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC globally. Since Samsung’s smartphone and semiconductor divisions operate independently, it was a business decision from the former. It was not happy with the performance of its sister firm’s chipsets. However, there have been rumors that the Korean behemoth still plans to use in-house processors in its flagship devices in the future. The Korean media reported in May that Samsung’s smartphone division will make custom processors for Galaxy smartphones, with a different name. The Exynos brand doesn’t have a good reputation anymore. It was said to have formed a 1000-personnel strong force together with the semiconductor division. The latest report now confirms that, though it doesn’t mention that the two business divisions will work closely on this project. Nonetheless, the report adds that Samsung’s executive vice president Choi Won-joon will lead the new team. Choi joined the Korean firm from Qualcomm in 2016 and is regarded as a chipset expert. Unfortunately, it’s unclear when this team will start work on its first project. Perhaps it isn’t even confirmed whether this application processor (AP) solution development team within the company’s smartphone division will design and develop smartphone chipsets from scratch or if it will optimize solutions from System LSI for Galaxy devices. Things should get clearer in the coming months.
The Galaxy S23 series will feature a special version of the latest Snapdragon chip
For the first time in several years, Samsung will launch a new flagship lineup with the same processor globally. The Galaxy S23 series will come with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset wherever you buy it. And it’s not the standard chipset that Qualcomm launched last month. The upcoming Samsung flagships will get a special version with a higher-clocked prime CPU core — 3.36GHz vs. 3.2GHz. While that means a substantial boost in raw performance, we hope the Korean firm will work closely with Qualcomm for deeper optimizations. The Galaxy S23 series is rumored to arrive in February of next year.
