Samsung's Exynos May Become an ARMed SoC Competitor

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Samsung is expected to heat up the smartphone and tablet market with its in-house Exynos 4412 SoC.

Unnamed industry sources claim that Samsung's in-house developed Exynos ARM-based SoC in the upcoming Galaxy S3 signals the company's entry into the smartphone and tablet sector as a major chip provider.

According to the sources, Samsung will be competing with the likes of Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments once the Samsung Galaxy S3 hits the market. The smartphone will reportedly sport Samsung's in-house Exynos 4412 quad-core 32-nm SoC which features ARM A9 cores and integrated LTE and WCDMA radios. Previously Samsung used a dual-core Exynos 4210 SoC in the Galaxy S2 and the Exynos 3110 (AKA Hummingbird) in the original Galaxy S.

Looking back, Samsung has been using its own solutions for quite some time. Why is the Exynos a threat all of a sudden? Because the company is expected to decrease its orders from Qualcomm which provides Snapdragon SoCs for other Samsung smartphones including the Galaxy Note, the Windows Phone 7-powered Focus, the Focus S and the Focus Flash.

There's also indication that Samsung may offer the quad-core Exynos 4412 or later to other manufacturers, hence the immediate threat to Nvidia, TI and Qualcomm. Samsung will initially only produce a small quantity of the chips for its new Galaxy S3 smartphone since the processor will be a closed platform like Apple's A5 series. But sources claim Samsung's strategy will further heat up competition among ARM-based SoCs, leading to speculation that the Exynos may eventually not be quite so closed in the near future.

Sources say that Apple and Qualcomm will probably start taking measures to fight back against Samsung's platform to prevent growth. Industry watchers will keep a close eye on Samsung to see how it handles the pressure, but the company's strong financial resources are expected to allow the company to catch up with the competition by "headhunting" talent.

Kevin Parrish
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15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Parsian
    don don don daaahhn!!!

    but seriously, Samsung builds everything for their phone and tablets. I wonder why they havent taken over the whole industry through monopoly?

    To be honest though, i am more excited for Intel's solution.
    Reply
  • amk-aka-Phantom
    Parsiandon don don daaahhn!!!but seriously, Samsung builds everything for their phone and tablets. I wonder why they havent taken over the whole industry through monopoly? To be honest though, i am more excited for Intel's solution.
    'Cause there's already another monopoly and it's called Apple. I hope Samsung doesn't turn into the thing they're trying to kill.
    Reply
  • ajay_vishvanathan
    samsung does good hardware.. but sucks the software part man.. try to improve the software part.. btw dual core is more than enough.. there are hardly any apps that take full advantage of dual core (ok there may be few.. very few.. but not many right??) and the quad core?? they are practically useless and power hungry!! and there are only four games AFAIK that are deigned to take the full capabilities of all the cores in nvidia tegra...
    and nvidia tegra itself uses only the companion chip at 500 mhz when the user actually uses the phone so practically android can run off in 500 mhz chip.. but whats the point?? adding more cores are just marketing gimmics?? im happy with dual core.. just try and support that!! more cores may not show performance improvement unless the application is designed to do so.. when the hell they will grow up and on top of all this - Patent trolls!! burn in hell all of you!!
    Reply
  • darkchazz
    the dual core exynos in GS2 wiped the floor with tegra 2 and qualcomm's dual core snapdragon SoCs.
    so I have no doubt that the quad core exynos will do the same with tegra 3...
    Reply
  • jankeke
    I hope it will be able to disable unused cores. I want battery life.
    Can't wait to see the S3 !
    Reply
  • blackened144
    darkchazzthe dual core exynos in GS2 wiped the floor with tegra 2 and qualcomm's dual core snapdragon SoCs.so I have no doubt that the quad core exynos will do the same with tegra 3...While this quad core Exynos4421 is running at 1.5-1.8Ghz its still using the same A9 based Cortex CPUs that Tegra3 uses, only it wont have that 5th low power core that Tegra3 has to keep power usage down... Its not until they begin using the A15 based CPUs that performance will actually be raised.. The down side is that these will only be using the Mali-T604 GPU solution, which is just the Mali-400 with addition API support... While that will compete with Tegra3 GPU wise, its still slower than the SGX543MP2 and MP4 used in the iPad2/iPhone4S and new iPad..
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    It would be hilarious if they get sued for infringing on a design by another company, haha...
    Reply
  • tntom
    I was hoping that the SGS3 would surprise everyone by using the new A15. A dual A15 would blow everything away with performance and battery life. I will be waiting for the SGS4 because I am plenty happy with my Galaxy S Vibrant running ICS, which has brought new life and speed to my phone. I am not going to reward Samsung for their incremental upgrades.
    Reply
  • tiang
    Go Samsung, prove that you can do more than or on par with Apple!
    Reply
  • aznshinobi
    Would be so happy to have a Exynos 4412 in my HTC phone, after all the dual-core Exynos 4210 showed that it could wipe the floor with Qualcomm and Tegra 2 chips in benches.
    Reply