When it rains, it pours, and challenges have been coming down hard and fast for Samsung's semiconductor division in particular. The foundry's issues with yields on the 3nm process have prevented the company from winning lucrative orders.
They've also prevented Samsung from using the Exynos 2500 chipset in its upcoming Galaxy S25 series, forcing the mobile division to opt for the Snapdragon 8 Elite from Qualcomm. Not only is Qualcomm charging more for the chipset but it's also going to cost Samsung more to buy them due to an unfavorable foreign exchange environment.
Samsung hasn't given up on its Exynos ambitions. It's reportedly developing the Exynos 2600 for next year's Galaxy S26 series, even as there have been some reports that it may go Snapdragon-only in 2026 as well. However, there's a new challenge on the horizon that may end up burying Exynos for good.
A new report indicates that ARM has developed a strategy to increase prices by up to 300%. Samsung buys off-the-shelf CPU cores from ARM. The Exynos 2400 has a 10-core CPU made up of ARM's Cortex-X4, A720 and A520 cores. Previous Exynos chipsets even had GPU cores from ARM, but from 2022, Samsung has been using an Xclipse GPU based on AMD's RNDA technology.
Not having custom CPU cores could cost Samsung in the future
This would present a major problem for Samsung. It's going to cost the company a lot more to buy cores from ARM. This is particularly problematic for the top-of-the-line Exynos chipsets that are used in Samsung's own flagships.
That's because there hasn't been much appetite from other Android OEMs for these chips. They mostly prefer Qualcomm Snapdragon or MediaTek Dimensity chips. Even the mid-range Exynos chipsets would be impacted as they also use ARM cores.
If the foundry does sort things out and there are no bottlenecks like it faced with the Exynos 2500, the device solutions (DS) business that handles all of this might not find favor with MX, the mobile division that makes Samsung's phones.
There's already internal conflict between the divisions. MX reportedly chose Micron as the memory supplier for the Galaxy S25 series because DS was selling them LPDDR5X RAM with overheating and performance issues at higher prices.
Qualcomm could just as easily come in and offer MX lower prices of future Snapdragon chips vs Exynos. That's because its chipsets no longer use ARM cores.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite introduced Qualcomm's custom Oryon cores to mobile. While Qualcomm licenses ARM's instruction set architecture to ensure compatibility with ARM-based software like Android, any impact of a price hike from ARM would be limited compared to what Samsung would face.
Samsung used to make custom cores for Exynos chipsets back in the day. It did that up until 2020 with the Exynos 990 featuring the final M5 custom core. The chipset powered the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 series. Samsung eventually fired the entire CPU dev team and began buying off-the-shelf cores from ARM.
It was a noble effort to develop custom cores, but back then, Exynos chipsets would struggle against Snapdragon, even as Qualcomm was licensing ARM cores at that time with a semi-custom design. Samsung ultimately decided to stop pursuing such a fool's errand and just license ARM cores.
Samsung is unlikely to restart efforts to develop custom cores
It's unlikely that we'll see Samsung return to making custom cores. Rumors swirled in 2023 that the company was forming a new CPU dev team that would develop custom CPU cores, but Samsung shot down those rumors itself.
Corporations do not initiate such projects on a whim. They require years of dedication and investment. Even if it were to start now, there's no guarantee of results, and at the end it may be more cost-effective for MX to go with Snapdragon. The question then becomes, if even MX isn't buying Exynos chipsets, why would DS make them?
There are many reasons why Samsung keeps Exynos around. It's always good to have depth in the supply chain. The company recently picked the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ for the Galaxy Tab S10 series for this very reason.
It's not just the expected 300% price bomb that ARM intends to drop. With all of the challenges Samsung is facing in core foundry and memory businesses, there may come a point where shedding the Exynos burden becomes inevitable.
