There’s a Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” And Samsung’s ideology for Exynos is no different. The upcoming Galaxy S24 series is going to bring back Exynos once again.
After the launch of the Galaxy S22 series with both Exynos and Qualcomm, it became clear that Samsung needs improvement in their fabrication process. The chips made on Samsung’s process nodes consistently lagged behind TSMC’s in terms of power efficiency.
The successor Galaxy S23 series is powered solely by Qualcomm chips worldwide, while Samsung’s MX division is working on a separate AP solution exclusively made for Galaxy devices. This ‘for Galaxy’ dream chip is supposed to come in 2025 with the Galaxy S25 series.
But Samsung never quit the development of Exynos, even if it’s not financially profitable for them and doesn’t match the competition. And there’s a reason behind Samsung sticking to Exynos.
Exynos is the groundwork
Samsung aims to widen their chip manufacturing business. A major factor affecting this is the lower yield rate and power efficiency of the chips manufactured on the Samsung foundry. Likely, their goal is to improve the foundry process, and Exynos is the test product for that.
Previously, System LSI fabricated the Snapdragon 888 and 8 Gen 1 chips. But due to efficiency issues with the fabrication process, Qualcomm again moved to TSMC, and we have also observed the difference in 8+ Gen 1.
Despite the partnership with Qualcomm and a dedicated team inside Samsung MX working on a Galaxy-exclusive chipset for future Galaxy devices, Samsung’s System LSI is still working on their high-end Exynos chips.
Perhaps the aim is to prepare Exynos for other manufacturers.
System LSI continuing to develop Exynos chips besides the development of Galaxy exclusive chips indicates that Samsung has plans to supply their in-house chips to the other smartphone manufacturers going forward.
Again, they have to improve the power efficiency of the chips to appeal to their customers. And to improve the process nodes, they must continue working on it, hence Exynos chips may return to Galaxy devices for now. Yes, Samsung is planning to push Exynos 2400 with the S24 series.
Executive Vice President of System LSI, said, “We are pushing for the return of Exynos to the flagship of the Galaxy series.”
System LSI hopes to work with TSMC’s present customers
Once they match the quality of their process node to TSMC’s, they can also work directly with other fabless manufacturers such as AMD to fabricate chips for them.
There is actually a report suggesting that many of TSMC’s customers, like AMD, are pursuing a dual-sourcing policy with Samsung foundry due to escalating geopolitical tension in Taiwan.
Samsung looks forward to grabbing this opportunity and expanding their semiconductor business, and Exynos is their rough work in this regard. Not to mention, it’s also safe for them to have an in-house chip foundry if the situation calls for it.
