Samsung grows 'custom ARM' brains to outsmart arch-nemesis Apple

Samsung will join Apple and other mobile semiconductor rivals in producing chips powered by homegrown, proprietary application cores in 2016, according to a new report. The South Korean goliath has been shipping mobes featuring its own Exynos system-on-chips (SoCs) for a good while now, but the application processor cores in …

[Dusk]

"Other mobile chippery firms have experimented with custom application cores, too, but none has made them in the quantities that Qualcomm has. Huawei produces Kirin cores, for example, while LG Electronics and Mediatek have brought us Nuclun and Helio, respectively."

No, not really. All of the above are licensed ARM cores on custom SoCs. Nuclun is Cortex-A15+A7[1], Helio is a high-clocked A53[2], and Kirin has been several things, all of them licensed. [3][4][5]

What Qualcomm and Apple have historically done, and what Samsung is on its way to doing, is using a custom ARM-compatible core design, rather than one licensed directly from ARM Ltd.

[1] http://www.lgnewsroom.com/newsroom/contents/64743

[2] http://www.gsmarena.com/mediatek_helio_is_a_new_family_of_high_end_mobile_chipsets-news-11731.php

[3] http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_ascend_p7_pops_in_antutu_kirin_910_chipset_gets_tested-news-8345.php

[4] http://www.gsmarena.com/octacore_huawei_kirin_920_chipset_goes_official-news-8720.php

[5] http://www.androidheadlines.com/2015/04/report-huaweis-hisilicon-kirin-930-processor-built-using-28nm-process.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Does "ARM-compatible" also mean "ARM-licenced" here?

As title, prompted by "What Qualcomm and Apple have historically done, and what Samsung is on its way to doing, is using a custom ARM-compatible core design"

And prompted also by ARM's unwillingness in the past to let people make their own unlicenced "ARM-compatible" setups (e.g. iirc there was a Scandinavian university chap whose name I forget, ARM wanted him to stop what he was doing unofficially and start doing it through legally approved channels instead).

[anonymous boring coward]

Thanks Dusk

Thanks for straightening out the extremely sloppy and sensationalistic reporting here. Seems to be a recurring theme that the editors can't be bothered trying to understand. Are the stories getting more and more like the humorous tabloid like headlines? (I.e. silly nonsense)

[abufrejoval]

Deepening the value chain has always been Samsung's motto

I remember buying a Samsung notebook ten years ago for my wife: Main motivator was price/feature set on paper. Once I got my hands on it, the first thing I noticed was the quality and finish. Of course I had to add extra memory so when I opened it up, the next thing I noticed was that it used Samsung components exclusively, wherever that was possible: Display, DVD, disk, memory etc. nothing but Samsung.

It was quite evident even then that Samsung would have preferred Samsung CPU, Chipset, OS and applications.

It's still working just fine so, of course, I never bought her another notebook, from Samsung or anyone.

Samsung only ever used Qualcom SoC, where and when their Exynos wasn't competitive: They aren't suicidal about using their own stuff, just persistent and probably very aggressive. The smear campaign against the 810 is as sure an indicator as the sabotage aginst LG washing maschines.