Samsung is helping AMD get back into the phone GPU market

AMD licensed its graphics technology to samsung's smartphones and tablets, according to bloomberg.The partnership brings AMD's graphics technology to a new market and gives samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, a chance to differentiate its products.

After conquering the CPU and baseband chips, samsung has been eyeing the GPU for the past two years.In August last year, foreign media reported that samsung hired chien-ping Lu, a former NVIDIA (NVIDIA), mediatek (mediatek), Intel (intc) and other companies to develop the GPU, in order to accelerate the development of the GPU.

According to the report, citing chien-ping Lu's LinkedIn profile, chien-ping Lu joined NVIDIA in 2002 as a senior GPU architect, playing a key role in NVIDIA's RSX GPU for Sony's Cell processor for PS3 games.After that, I participated in the development of GPU chips such as NV40, NV44 and NV46.From 2007 to 2011, chien-ping Lu served as NVIDIA's senior architecture manager, setting up NVIDIA's IGP team and eventually completing the development of IGP chips.

After NVIDIA, chien-ping Lu joined mediatek, led its self-developed GPU plan, and jointly created HSA heterogeneous computing project, namely HSA foundation participated by AMD, ARM, IMGTech, qualcomm, samsung and other companies.After that, chien-ping Lu went on to Intel, Novamind and others.Finally, in September 2017, chien-ping Lu joined samsung as vice President of GPU business and participated in samsung's self-developed GPU plan.

The report further pointed out that the GPU architecture design in the "Samsung's GPU" plan is a special novel design for nearly 10 years, which can be used not only in the processors of smart phones, but also in TVS, game consoles, PCS and even car platforms, and assist in the popular artificial intelligence (AI) computing.Moreover, after the birth of GPU developed by samsung itself, it is expected to bring more independent space for samsung.Samsung's gpus are expected to launch as soon as mid-2019, adding another option to the market.

Back to AMD, acquired in 2006 GPU giant ATI, AMD had briefly owned mobile GPU technology, but then they sell the business to qualcomm, this is qualcomm later Adreno shock river's lake in the name of the predecessor, as the key Xiao dragon heterogeneous computing components, to help support deal with intensive GPGPU computing tasks, the giant power for qualcomm mobile GPU.

According to bloomberg, the partnership between AMD and samsung will help them expand into mobile devices that currently don't offer chips, increasing their growth opportunities and bringing AMD hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing revenue.AMD, one of the two big makers of graphics chips for PCS, has built up a deep foundation in GPU technology to help improve the performance of samsung devices.AMD shares rose 7.5 per cent to $29.47 in New York on Monday, while samsung shares rose 3 per cent in Seoul.

For samsung, there is a future opportunity to use AMD's graphics technology to help its products stand out.AMD is the second-largest maker of graphics for computer games, a market dominated by Nvidia.The smartphone market typically USES graphics chips from qualcomm inc. 's or softbank corp.' s ARM division, with the exception of apple inc., which USES chips of its own design.

Under chief executive Lisa Su, AMD has focused on regaining lost market share in the PC and server markets by revamping its offerings.By licensing its technology to samsung, which can only supply some of samsung's mobile products with its own chips, AMD will give AMD a way to participate in the massive smartphone parts market without direct investment.Previously, Lisa Su said she was willing to work with rival Intel to monetize AMD's technology flexibly.

AMD's earnings rebound and promise of market share growth have helped its stock rise nearly 50 percent this year, making it the best-performing company in the Philadelphia stock exchange semiconductor index.

Tag: AMD