Samsung is courting Nvidia and AMD to give Galaxy smartphones a leg up in the graphics department, apparently.
A new report claims that Samsung is “in talks” with the two computing giants in a bid to license their GPU technologies. That’s according to specialist blog Sammobile, which cites information from an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
It’s said that Samsung hopes to use GPU technologies from one of the two companies in its own Exynos series of SoCs (system-on-a-chip). Currently, Samsung uses British semiconductor giant ARM’s Mali line of GPUs in the Exynos chips, which power top-end smartphones like the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, and Galaxy Note 7.
It’s no surprise that Nvidia is in the running, considering the strong performance and reception of this year’s Pascal architecture (read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080). However, AMD has also successfully landed a deal with Sony to provide its Polaris architecture for the upcoming PS4 Pro, so either firm could woo Samsung.
So when might we see an Nvidia-powered Samsung phone? We’re still around six months away from the launch of the Galaxy S8, so there’s a chance that Samsung could turn things around quickly and integrate a new GPU in its processors. But it seems more probable that 2018’s Galaxy S9 – should it even exist – would feature a Samsung GPU built using licensed Nvidia or ARM technology, rather than depending on ARM’s Mali or Qualcomm’s Adreno graphics processors.
Related: iPhone 8
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.