Samsung partners w/ AMD to bring Radeon graphics tech to smartphones

Ben Schoon | Jun 3 2019 - 9:27 am PT

We’re demanding more and more of our smartphones constantly, and rendering graphics is a huge part of that. With big games hitting Android more frequently, Samsung has just announced a partnership with AMD to bring some Radeon technology to its future smartphones.

Samsung’s partnership with AMD essentially comes down to licensing some of the custom graphics Ip that AMD recently announced with the highly-scalable RDNA graphics architecture. The multi-year partnership will bring “ultra low power, high-performance” graphics technologies to smartphones.

AMD first announced the RDNA graphics architecture at Computex last week, and it’s going to be powering the company’s RX 5700-series which outpowers some NVIDIA RTX cards. This architecture is going to be powering everything from PCs to gaming consoles, and its inclusion in smartphones is a pretty big deal.

AMD and Samsung Electronics today announced a multi-year strategic partnership in ultra low power, high performance mobile graphics IP based on AMD Radeon graphics technologies. As part of the partnership, Samsung will license AMD graphics IP and will focus on advanced graphics technologies and solutions that are critical for enhancing innovation across mobile applications, including smartphones.

Samsung and AMD haven’t revealed most of the details of this partnership just yet, but users shouldn’t be expecting a fully capable Radeon graphics card by any means. This partnership allows Samsung to use RDNA with AMD to work on better graphics solutions in a smartphone. Inyup Kang, president of Samsung Electronics’ S.LSI Business said:

As we prepare for disruptive changes in technology and discover new opportunities, our partnership with AMD will allow us to bring groundbreaking graphics products and solutions to market for tomorrow’s mobile applications. We look forward to working with AMD to accelerate innovations in mobile graphics technologies that will help take future mobile computing to the next level.

It’s unclear when this technology will land in Samsung smartphones, but AMD Radeon would be a huge improvement especially to the gaming experience on future devices. Hopefully, we’ll see the fruits of this partnership next year.