Samsung is facing a number of challenges in its semiconductor business. The 3nm yield issues have prevented the company from securing lucrative orders. This has also prevented Samsung from equipping the Exynos 2500 for the upcoming Galaxy S25 series, forcing it to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite.
In addition to Qualcomm’s price hike for the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Samsung is also paying more to buy them due to unfavorable exchange rates.
Despite this, Samsung has not given up on its Exynos ambitions. The company is reportedly developing the Exynos 2600 for next year’s Galaxy S26 series, even as rumors suggest they will continue to use Qualcomm processors exclusively. However, a new challenge has emerged that could bury Samsung’s dream forever.
A new report claims that ARM is looking to increase prices by up to 300%. Samsung buys off-the-shelf CPU core designs from ARM. The Exynos 2400’s ten CPU cores include ARM’s Cortex-X4, Cortex-A720, and Cortex-A520.
Previous Exynos processors even used ARM’s GPU designs, but with the Exynos 2400, Samsung has switched to AMD’s RNDA3-based Xclipse 940.
ARM’s price hike is a huge problem for Samsung. It will have to pay more to use ARM’s designs. Things get even worse when we consider that not many other Android manufacturers want to use Exynos processors, preferring Qualcomm and MediaTek processors. Even mid-range Exynos processors will be affected because they have ARM CPU cores.
If the foundry successfully solves all the problems and doesn’t encounter any obstacles like the Exynos 2500, the device solutions (DS) division responsible for the above may still be out of favor with the mobile (MX) division.
There has been internal conflict between the divisions. MX reportedly chose Micron as the memory supplier for the Galaxy S25 series because DS sold them LPDDR5X RAM with performance and temperature issues at a higher price.
Qualcomm could easily cut in by offering Snapdragon in the future at a lower price than Exynos since Qualcomm’s processors no longer use ARM designs.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite uses Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU core. While the company still has to license ARM’s instruction set architecture to ensure compatibility with ARM-based software like Android, the impact of ARM’s price hike on Qualcomm would be relatively small compared to what Samsung would face.
Samsung used to make custom CPU cores for Exynos. It did so until 2020, with the Exynos 990 using its last custom CPU core. This is the processor used in the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 series. Samsung then fired the entire CPU development team and started buying CPU designs from ARM.
Although Samsung created custom cores at that time, Exynos still couldn’t compete with Snapdragon, even though Qualcomm was only using semi-custom CPU core designs at that time. Therefore, Samsung decided to stop burning money and only buy CPU designs from ARM.
Therefore, it is unlikely that Samsung will create custom CPU cores in the near future. There were rumors circulating in 2023 that the company was setting up a new CPU development team, but the company denied the rumor.
Such large projects cannot be started on a whim. They require years of continuous investment. Even if Samsung starts now, there is no guarantee that they will reap the rewards, and MX can still save money by buying Qualcomm processors. If even MX doesn’t want to use Exynos, why should DS make them?
There are many reasons why Samsung would want to stick with Exynos. A highly competitive supply chain is always beneficial. The company recently chose MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300+ for the Galaxy Tab S10 series for this reason.
Of course, ARM’s 300% price hike isn’t the only issue Samsung has to worry about. There are other challenges facing the company in the foundry and memory space. So it wouldn’t be surprising if the company were to kill off Exynos if things get even worse in the future.