Samsung's Exynos 990 snub in South Korea could be the final nail in the coffin for its beleaguered chipset subdivision

[Redaktion]

The Exynos 990 has come in for a lot of criticism internationally. As we have discussed in our reviews of the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra, the Exynos 990 is a bit of a stinker. Samsung even dropped its in-house chipset from the Galaxy S20 series in South Korea, apparently leading to feelings of humiliation for the company's Exynos team.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-s-Exynos-990-snub-in-South-Korea-could-be-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-for-its-beleaguered-chipset-subdivision.459870.0.html

[jeremy]

None of the words from former employees of the architecture team at Austin, TX were ever positive (founded with former AMD Bobcat CPU engineers). All quit within months, and it has been running on fumes for years.

The main team (I[m assuming they are in Korea) should have focused on just licensing ARM cores and getting them to work on Samsung's logic nodes (they are starting to do that nowadays).

They still have that 11nm (down to 65nm) 300mm fab in Austin, though, so I assume the architecture team in Austin is really just a side operation to the Samsung, and it shows.

[JohnMac]

None of the words from former employees of the architecture team at Austin, TX were ever positive (founded with former AMD Bobcat CPU engineers). All quit within months, and it has been running on fumes for years.

The main team (I[m assuming they are in Korea) should have focused on just licensing ARM cores and getting them to work on Samsung's logic nodes (they are starting to do that nowadays).

They still have that 11nm (down to 65nm) 300mm fab in Austin, though, so I assume the architecture team in Austin is really just a side operation to the Samsung, and it shows.

Samsung stopped customer CPU development late last year. Future Exynos chips will use Arm designs.

I'm pretty sure the author of this article already knows this too but just wants the clicks.

[S.Yu]

None of the words from former employees of the architecture team at Austin, TX were ever positive (founded with former AMD Bobcat CPU engineers). All quit within months, and it has been running on fumes for years.

The main team (I[m assuming they are in Korea) should have focused on just licensing ARM cores and getting them to work on Samsung's logic nodes (they are starting to do that nowadays).

They still have that 11nm (down to 65nm) 300mm fab in Austin, though, so I assume the architecture team in Austin is really just a side operation to the Samsung, and it shows.

Samsung stopped customer CPU development late last year. Future Exynos chips will use Arm designs.

I'm pretty sure the author of this article already knows this too but just wants the clicks.

Samsung also needs to overhaul the memory subsystem, their approach seems unconventional, in a bad way since it introduces erratic access latency. I have no idea exactly why they failed but they have, and simply going A78 next year does not guarantee a comeback.