Exynos + WoA | Maybe not such a bad idea?

 

So, reports from Windows central, Engadget, and ZDNet Korea come pouring in with reports of an Exynos laptop with and AMD GPU inside that's set to release sometime in the second half of 2021. Now, I don't usually cover these on the blog or the channel, but I'm really intrigued by this report and what it might mean for Windows-on-ARM (henceforth referred to as WoA). As always, I must warn you that no matter what this device may not exist, it may be exclusive to certain regions, or it just might be completely different from what we expected. After all, there's only so much we can get from "Exynos processor" and "AMD GPU". So, I'm going to try to be as realistic as possible and try to explain the plausibility of this product and what it might be, and of course, why it's so important for the sake of WoA. Let's get started.  

 
 

So, the first thing you need to know before we start analyzing the report is that in 2019, AMD and Samsung entered a partnership where AMD would share (excuse me *cough* license) it's Radeon GPU knowledge (*cough* IP) for mobile uses, such as its Exynos processors. Here's a snippet from the official AMD press release: 

“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 Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. “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.”

Exynos is starting to catch up on the CPU side as seen with the Exynos 2100 in 2021, unfortunately we've also seen how GPU has been its biggest weakness. Mali GPUs from ARM corporate just aren't cutting against custom solutions such as Qualcomm's Adreno and Apple's integrated graphics cores. Reports from several sources however suspect that the Exynos 2200 or 2300 will include the first GPU made with AMD, only then will we see what might be of AMD on the mobile front. For more info on the deal go ahead and check out my credits page at the bottom with all the articles I used in this article along with a video from YouTube channel Gary Explains that I think does a fantastic job of explaining the deal between AMD and Samsung. 

 

Image Credit Samsung

With that being said we can move onto the actual report, the report mentions that Samsung will release a Windows 10 laptop that will have an Exynos processor with AMD graphics. Nothing else was mentioned in the report and honestly, I'm not surprised that so little was mentioned, unlike the smartphone industry truly little is leaked in the laptop industry. There's no "leaker" culture as there is for smartphones and even then, Samsung is surprisingly good a preventing leaks on most hardware and software inside the company. Although the details are vague it makes sense. One reason is because we know that AMD already makes full Radeon GPUs such as the RX 6000 series and it also makes integrated graphics for its mobile processors such as the Ryzen 5000 series. It's one thing to create a low-power 5-watt GPU for the next Galaxy S phone, and it's a whole other create one for a lightweight WoA device, and I feel that a laptop is closer to AMD's comfort zone. With the RDNA architecture AMD has proven that there's room for someone other than Nvidia in the GPU game, and I agree, AMD has proven over the past year that RDNA and Radeon are  

 
 

Image Credit Samsung; Side Note: This is one of the original Galaxy Book devices

So, we realize that AMD is suited for the laptop form-factor, but what about Samsung? I think it's easier to work with ARM in a laptop environment because you can now forget the heat profile that comes with a phone. Although Exynos processors have always had competitive performance its always come at the price of heat with heat being the biggest bottleneck along with the GPU. I think having a laptop chassis will help Samsung not meet those same heat issues, the only problem is that because of their inexperience in laptop processors they might end up revving up the processor to the point that it could overheat. However, on the other side of the spectrum, we have an Exynos that's fast enough for basic tasks but just not good enough for WoA, the result might be a processor better used in a Chromebook. Hopefully, Samsung can aim for somewhere in the middle to achieve a nice balance of power and efficiency with their new 5nm process. 

 
 

I don't expect it to be even close to the M1, but it must be better than what Qualcomm is doing, which at the moment is nothing. Although there have been rumors of a successor to the 8Cx on the horizon the fact remains that although it was a breakthrough for WoA in 2019 it still wasn't even close to the intel chips of that year. There's a chip shortage at the moment and right now WoA isn't doing great because the chipsets aren't fast enough and don't have enough app support, Qualcomm isn't racing to a new chipset because WoA isn't doing great, and developers aren't investing enough in app support because of the blunders of the chipset.

Image Credit Samsung

 In any case I don't think WoA is going to come even close to what Apple is doing with the M1 even if Samsung decides to enter Exynos into the game and that's ok. Right now, WoA needs to stop being reliant on Qualcomm because no matter what being at Qualcomm's mercy instead of the market's mercy is always going to work against innovation.  

Qualcomm has showed that their fine with gaps between their WoA chipset releases and their perfectly content to release "gen 2" versions that are basically the same as their predecessors. Exynos may or may not be great for WoA but no matter what it might finally tell Qualcomm and the entire ecosystem that WoA deserves to exist. 

 

 

I just hope Samsung can release it. 

Best,

BenTechCoder

Credits: 

https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2019-06-03-amd-and-samsung-announce-strategic-partnership-ultra-low-power-high

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/4/18651894/amd-radeon-samsung-graphics-soc-chipset-exynos-smartphones

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/12/22226849/samsung-exynos-2100-chip-processor-galaxy-s21-international

https://www.engadget.com/2019-06-03-amd-samsung-smartphone-graphics-radeon-ip.html    

https://www.engadget.com/samsung-amd-exynos-gpu-update-ces-2021-191359122.html

https://www.engadget.com/samsung-exynos-amd-2200-windows-10-171058288.html

https://www.windowscentral.com/samsung-reportedly-set-launch-windows-10-laptop-exynos-and-amd

Want to support the channel and Blog? You can Buy Me a coffee with the button below!