We reported last year that Samsung is working on an in-house mobile GPU or graphics processor for its Exynos mobile CPUs, it was reported to have lured away engineers from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and other companies for this purpose. Developing its own GPU would free Samsung from having to license mobile GPUs from other companies, the company currently relies upon ARM’s Mali series of GPUs for its mobile devices and only recently signed a long-term agreement with ARM to license its GPUs.
Towards the end of last year it was rumored that Samsung’s in-house mobile GPU is going to debut in mid-2015 but so far the company has made no such announcement. A report out of Korea today cites industry sources which claim that the development of Samsung’s mobile GPU has been delayed by as much as five years. It’s also points out that Samsung would have invested a significant amount of money in its long-term licensing deal with AMD, a deal which is expected to be good for five years.
Samsung may have chosen to stick with ARM GPUs for now because they deliver proven performance while the possibility remains that its first in-house mobile GPU may or may not be up to that mark. Moreover with GPUs from rivals like Adreno and PowerVR rapidly improving in performance, sticking with ARM ensures that Samsung’s devices offer graphics performance that is at least at par if not greater than other devices in the market. Samsung has not yet officially confirmed if it has delayed the launch of its first in-house mobile GPU.