Samsung to use AMD graphics technology for mobile devices

Samsung strikes deal with AMD to use Radeon graphics technology in ultra-low power mobile devices

Samsung and AMD have announced a new partnership that will see the South Korean company adopt AMD's graphics technology in ultra-low power mobile devices.

The deal will see the two companies create "advanced graphics technologies and solutions" for mobile devices, including smartphones.

Under the new partnership, Samsung will pay AMD royalties and licensing fees for its Radeon technology. AMD will also license custom graphics intellectual property based on its recently unveiled RDNA graphics architecture.

Samsung now plans to integrate AMD's Radeon graphics intellectual property into all of its future system-on-a-chip for mobile applications.

While detailed terms of deal were not revealed, AMD is expected to get hundreds of millions of dollars over the entire lifetime of the deal. The new partnership will also help the chipmaker to expand its reach for its RDNA graphics architecture and to introduce its intellectual property and graphics processors in new markets around the world.

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Radeon graphics are already being used across personal computers, consoles and high-performance computing, including PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Sonly has also said that its upcoming PlayStation 5 will feature a custom AMD chip equipped with Radeon RDNA graphics cores and Ryzen CPU cores.

According to Jon Peddie Research, 53 per cent of gaming machines (including consoles and other devices) currently use AMD GPUs. AMD also claims to power more than 400 million gaming devices worldwide.

The chipmaker first announced its RDNA graphics architecture last month at Computex, revealing that the architecture will power its RX 5700-series. It is also expected to be used in Microsoft's and Sony's forthcoming next-generation consoles.

The company claimed that Radeon RX 5700 will offer 25 per cent better performance per clock than the current Radeon Vega GPUs.

However, it is unclear when the new technology will land in Samsung smartphones and mobile devices, but analysts believe that AMD Radeon will be able to bring a significant improvement for future devices, especially in gaming.

"Adoption of our Radeon graphics technologies across the PC, game console, cloud and HPC markets has grown significantly and we are thrilled to now partner with industry leader Samsung to accelerate graphics innovation in the mobile market," said AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su.

"This strategic partnership will extend the reach of our high-performance Radeon graphics into the mobile market, significantly expanding the Radeon user base and development ecosystem," she added.

Inyup Kang, president of Samsung Electronics' LSI Business, said that AMD would help "to accelerate innovations in mobile graphics technologies that will help take future mobile computing to the next level".

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