When it rains, it pours, and challenges have been coming down hard and fast for Samsung's semiconductor division in particular. The foundry's issues with yields on the 3nm process have prevented the company from winning lucrative orders.

They've also prevented Samsung from using the Exynos 2500 chipset in its upcoming Galaxy S25 series, forcing the mobile division to opt for the Snapdragon 8 Elite from Qualcomm. Not only is Qualcomm charging more for the chipset but it's also going to cost Samsung more to buy them due to an unfavorable foreign exchange environment.

Samsung hasn't given up on its Exynos ambitions. It's reportedly developing the Exynos 2600 for next year's Galaxy S26 series, even as there have been some reports that it may go Snapdragon-only in 2026 as well. However, there's a new challenge on the horizon that may end up burying Exynos for good.

A new report indicates that ARM has developed a strategy to increase prices by up to 300%. Samsung buys off-the-shelf CPU cores from ARM. The Exynos 2400 has 10-core CPU made up of ARM's Cortex-X4, A720 and A520 cores. Previous Exynos chipsets even had GPU cores from ARM but for the Exynos 2400, Samsung went for the Xclipse 940 based on AMD's RNDA3 technology.

This would present a major problem for Samsung. It's going to cost the company a lot more to buy cores from ARM. This is particularly problematic for the top-of-the-line Exynos chipsets that are used in Samsung's own flagships, because there hasn't been much appetite from other Android OEMs for these chips, who mostly prefer the Qualcomm Snapdragon or Dimensity chips from MediaTek. Even the mid-range Exynos chipsets would be impacted as they also use ARM cores.

If the foundry does sort things out and there are no bottlenecks like it faced with the Exynos 2500, the device solutions (DS) business that handles all of this might not find favor with MX, the mobile division that makes Samsung's phones. There's already internal conflict between the divisions. MX reportedly chose Micron as the memory supplier for the Galaxy S25 series because DS was selling them LPDDR5X RAM with overheating and performance issues at higher prices.

Qualcomm could just as easily come in and offer MX lower prices of future Snapdragon chips vs Exynos. That's because its chipsets no longer use ARM cores. The Snapdragon 8 Elite introduced Qualcomm's custom Oryon cores to mobile, and even though the company licenses ARM's instruction set architecture to ensure compatibility with ARM-based software like Android, any impact of a price hike from ARM would be limited compared to what Samsung would face because it also buys the cores from them.

Samsung used to make custom cores for Exynos chipsets back in the day. It did that up until 2020 with the Exynos 990 featuring the final M5 custom core. The chipset powered the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 series. Samsung eventually fired the entire CPU dev team and began buying off-the-shelf cores from ARM.

It was a noble effort to develop custom cores but back then Exynos chipsets would struggle against Snapdragon, even as Qualcomm was licensing ARM cores at that time with a semi-custom design. The decision was ultimately made to stop lighting money on fire supporting a fool's errand and just license ARM cores.

That idea is done and dusted so it's unlikely we'll see Samsung return to making custom cores. Rumors swirled in 2023 that the company was forming a new CPU dev team that would develop custom CPU cores, but Samsung shot down those rumors itself.

Such projects aren't initiated on a whim. They require years of dedication and investment. Even if it were to start now, there's no guarantee of results, and at the end it may be more cost-effective for MX to go with Snapdragon. The question then becomes, if even MX isn't buying Exynos chipsets, why would DS make them?

There are many reasons why Samsung keeps Exynos around. It's always good to have depth in the supply chain. The company recently picked the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ for the Galaxy Tab S10 series for this very reason.

It's not just the expected 300% price bomb that ARM intends to drop, but with all of the challenges its facing in core foundry and memory businesses, there may come a point where shedding the Exynos burden becomes inevitable.

The post ARM’s 300% time bomb could bury Samsung’s Exynos for good appeared first on SamMobile.