Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone vendor in terms of volume and pretty soon the world’s largest phone vendor by volume if Nokia continues nose diving, is also a component supplier. Doesn’t matter what device you have, an Apple iPhone, an HTC Desire, a Nokia N97, there’s a strong chance that there’s a chip inside there that was made by Samsung. One of the components Samsung is known for is making are the system-on-chips that power smartphones and tablets. The “Hummingbird” that shipped in the first generation Galaxy S put them on the map, in part because for all intents and purposes it was the exact same chip that Apple rebranded the A4 and then shoved inside the iPhone 4 and first generation iPad. The Hummingbird featured a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor and a PowerVR SGX540 GPU that was designed by Imagination Technologies. Now when it came time to release the Galaxy S II, Samsung built a new chip called the Exynos 4210. It packed a pair of ARM Cortex A9 processors and a Mali-400 GPU that was designed by ARM. Notice how Samsung switched the GPU vendor?
Today Imagination Technologies is announcing that Samsung has agreed to license the PowerVR SGX MP family. That includes the PowerVR SGX543 that’s in the Apple A5 chip that’s in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Curiously, Samsung didn’t go for the next generation PowerVR Series6 GPU. Also intriguing is a report we filed yesterday on ARM’s new Mali-T658 GPU; guess who signed up to be one of the first companies to use it? Samsung. At this point you’re probably thinking what the hell is going on, and we have to agree with that sentiment, because frankly we have no idea why Samsung is using multiple vendors. Maybe they’re pitting ARM and Imagination against each other to get better pricing on future licensing deals?
It’s anyones guess.