Gonna cost you an ARM and a leg: Samsung disbands core CPU team

[williamcll]

It seems like Samsung has given competing with other CPU brands in CPU designs and is going to layoff around 290 employees that were originally in its CPU department.

Quote

Technology giant Samsung plans to shut down an Austin research and development facility project and lay off nearly 300 workers, according to documents filed with the state of Texas.

Samsung is shutting down the Central Processing Unit project at its Samsung Austin Research Center, according to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. That will result in 290 employees being laid off, according to the letter.

 

A WARN letter, which stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, is a federally mandated notice employers must provide to state governments in the event of major layoffs. The layoffs will be effective Dec. 31 and are permanent, according to the WARN letter. The affected employees do not have bumping rights, according to the letter. Samsung also said in the WARN letter that layoffs would affect the Advanced Computer Lab in San Jose, Calif. It was unclear from the WARN letter how many of the 290 layoffs would be in Austin and how many in California. Michele Glaze, a spokeswoman for Samsung Austin, told the American-Statesman that the company’s Austin manufacturing facility, which employs about 3,000 people, will not be affected by the layoffs. “There will be no impact to the Samsung Austin Semiconductor manufacturing facility,” Glaze said. Glaze said Samsung’s decision to lay off workers was based on a thorough assessment of its business and its need to stay competitive in the market. “We have treated all employees with respect. They all have been given appropriate packages and advanced notice,” Glaze said. “These things are very tough. People always wonder, ‘Did they treat them right?’ And we did. It’s unfortunate that they are losing their jobs, but it is based upon the fact that we’re always assessing our business.”

 

Industry analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy said he had heard speculation about possible layoffs tied to Samsung’s CPU project over the past month or so.Moorhead said that for the project, Samsung had licensed some intellectual property from Arm Holdings, a U.K.-based semiconductor design company, which also has an office in Austin. “Their last few custom CPUs, they were powerful, but they pulled a lot of power,” Moorhead said. “What (Samsung) is going to do now is actually license the design, not just the IP from Arm.” Moorhead said the employees who were part of Samsung’s CPU project are “highly employable,” given their backgrounds in engineering and design.

Samsung is the world’s biggest producer of smartphone screens, semiconductors and mobile phones. The company has a significant presence in Austin, where it has had operations since 1997. Samsung has invested $17 billion in its Austin campus through the years, according to the company.

Source:https://www.statesman.com/business/20191101/samsung-to-lay-off-nearly-300-as-it-closes-austin-unit-project

https://wccftech.com/samsung-custom-cpu-core-department-shutting-down/

Thoughts: With the Samsung S11 coming perhaps within the ends of this year, I was hoping to see some SoC that can finally compete with Qualcomm or Apple, however, dashed are my hopes are considering the Exynos 9830 might possibly be the last samsung chip out there and the Snapdragon 865 will probably kick it around like a rugby ball.

[3vitor]

Quote

This is good news for consumers.

Is it though?

 

With the mobile market full of only Qualcomm phones, prices could get higher since there is no other option.

 

Qualcomms are already extremely expensive on a few countries outside of US.

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, huilun02 said:

There is Mediatek

 

Phones with flagship chipsets are cheaper than ever before. Look at Xiaomi/Realme. Especially after you factor in inflation

 

Goods being more expensive in one country is a problem of the country's policies and economics. Not the item itself

And that's with Exynos in the market...

[Doobeedoo]

Kinda sad to see though. They're working with AMD for graphics with all the RDNA thing. Could it be that in future they may create a mobile x86 potentially that can definitely rival performance /efficiency in phones. Definitely a stretch but yeah. 

[Commodus]

It's at once sad and not.  Variety is good for competition.  You rarely see Exynos chips outside of Samsung phones, though, and they don't really confer advantages (in fact, many people prefer the Snapdragon variants of Samsung phones).  It has a degree of independence from Qualcomm, but never a performance edge like Apple has with its A-series chips.  There's fragmentation in the lineup without a practical benefit.

[LAwLz]

Exynos is not going anywhere. This is strictly the CPU team who were behind the Samsung M series of core architectures being disbanded. 

Things like custom GPUs, SoCs, AI accelerators and stuff like that are still actively in development. 

 

Samsung's cores were never all that competitive compared to the reference ARM architectures. For example the M4 in the Galaxy S10 has significantly higher power consumption while not really performing any better (often even worse). That coupled with the fact that ARM will soon move to ARMv9, which is a new instruction set, plus the extreme cost of developing your own architecture (not even Qualcomm does that anymore) made it illogical to continue. 

 

Why spend a fortune on developing something that can't compete with what you can license for much cheaper, especially when you have to scrap everything in the near future?

 

It's a shame though. The next architecture they were working on had SMT. It would have been cool to see that in a phone SoC. They were also working on large, custom architecture ARM chips for servers. 

[rcmaehl]

Exynos is Gone 

[Results45]

Maybe this thread should have been titled: Cease P.U. Samsung breaks-up development team working on x86 architecture alternatives.

 

Would have been much more informative given that they're doubling down on Exynos.

[mr moose]

I understand the nature of corporate governance and making things work financially for long term stability,  but part of me still wonders why a company with 300K plus employees can't re-shuffle to avoid a mere 300 layoff's.

[Kisai]

20 hours ago, 3vitor said:

Is it though?

 

With the mobile market full of only Qualcomm phones, prices could get higher since there is no other option.

 

Qualcomms are already extremely expensive on a few countries outside of US.

This isn't a Exynos vs Qualcomm like AMD vs Intel (where AMD generally plays catch up, but isn't so far behind to be a joke.) It's more like neither of these SoC's are even in the ballpark of Apple. So the comparison ends up looking more like comparing a Lexus to a Vespa.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14031/samsung-galaxy-s10-first-exynos-9820-vs-snapdragon-855-scores

 

 

Like, why even bother with the lower spec chips unless they have so many defects they can just straight up bin them that way.

 

This is yet another reason why I woudn't pick Android. You have no idea what you're getting even in a phone with the same brand and supposed model.

 

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

finally some good news!

never have to worry not getting s snapdragon again

 

[LAwLz]

22 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Without Exynos there will be fewer versions of phones in the wild.

22 hours ago, 3vitor said:

With the mobile market full of only Qualcomm phones

21 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

And that's with Exynos in the market...

18 hours ago, Commodus said:

You rarely see Exynos chips outside of Samsung phones, though, and they don't really confer advantages (in fact, many people prefer the Snapdragon variants of Samsung phones).

12 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Exynos is Gone 

2 hours ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

finally some good news!

never have to worry not getting s snapdragon again

 

Exynos will keep on living. This is ONLY the custom CPU architecture team being canceled.

This means Samsung will go back to licensing the standard ARM architecture for use in their Exynos SoCs.

This is how things used to be until the Exynos 8890 (used in the Galaxy S7). The Galaxy S6 had an Exynos chip but with standard Cortex-A57 cores in the big cluster.

 

 

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

This is yet another reason why I woudn't pick Android. You have no idea what you're getting even in a phone with the same brand and supposed model.

It's not that difficult to figure out. First of all, the model numbers for the Exynos and Qualcomm versions are different.

Secondly, it was basically "if you're in the US you get Qualcomm, everyone else gets Exynos". Not that hard to keep track of.

[Kroon]

This is the "death" to Mongoose, not Exynos.  Mongoose was developed in Austin and nothing else.  Now when Samsung have decided to move away from Mongoose there is no reason to keep investing in Austin. 

 

 

[realpetertdm]

I really wish Samsung would keep developing custom CPUs. The mobile CPU industry needs more competition, and if this goes on them Qualcomm's going to have a monopoly.

 

Samsung, if you're reading this, please revive Mongoose or make a new custom architecture or whatever. Buy in people from AMD and Qualcomm and Apple and just get your stuff sorted out and pump out new and better CPUs. Please.

[Orcblood]

1 hour ago, realpetertdm said:

I really wish Samsung would keep developing custom CPUs. The mobile CPU industry needs more competition, and if this goes on them Qualcomm's going to have a monopoly.

 

Samsung, if you're reading this, please revive Mongoose or make a new custom architecture or whatever. Buy in people from AMD and Qualcomm and Apple and just get your stuff sorted out and pump out new and better CPUs. Please.

Or maybe AMD should hire those ex Samsung engineers for their AMD K12 ARM based cpu. Than maybe they could scale it down for mobile. That is if AMD K12 is still being worked on and not yet abandoned.