AMD and Samsung's RDNA-based mobile GPU hammers the Galaxy S20

[midian182]

Something to look forward to: There was plenty of excitement when AMD last year announced a partnership with Samsung that would bring RDNA graphics to smartphones, but we’ve not heard much since then. Now, though, an online leak claims to show the results of the companies’ deal: an RDNA-based mobile GPU that kills the Adreno 650 found in top flagships, including the Galaxy S20 series

AMD and Samsung's multi-year strategic partnership licenses AMD’s graphics IP for use in mobile applications, including smartphones. In August, the Korean giant revealed in its earnings call that the first RDNA-Exynos chips would arrive in 2021 at the earliest.

Last week, Twitter user @Kaz9837 noticed that benchmark figures for the RDNA-Exynos mobile GPU had appeared on South Korean tech forum Clien. The performance numbers come from a GFXBench test, and as you can see below, they’re very impressive. Notebookcheck included the same results from the Adreno 650 for comparison.

Test	RDNA Mobile Chip	Adreno 650	Performance difference
Manhatten 3.1	181.8 fps	123 fps	48% increase
Aztec Normal	138.25 fps	53.5 fps	158% increase
Aztec High	58 fps	20 fps	190% increase

The Adeno 650 is the mobile GPU that’s part of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 system on a chip. It’s found on many high-end handsets, such as the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20 Plus, and Galaxy S20 Ultra.

Samsung's Exynos chip, which replaces the Snapdragon SoC in many overseas locations, including all of Europe, has faced plenty of criticism lately. Some S20-series owners have complained about the chip, with reported issues including overheating, poor autofocus performance, limited battery life, and incompatibility problems that have stopped games such as Pokémon Go from working. There was even a petition demanding Samsung stops using Exynos SoCs because they're supposedly inferior to the Snapdragon chips.

The post also says the RDNA chip still needs work, especially in the area of power consumption, but the companies should have the it ready by that 2021 date.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/85098-amd-samsung-rdna-based-mobile-gpu-hammers-galaxy.html

 

[amstech]

I wonder what real life GPU the Adeno 650 would compare to....and I am too lazy to look this up and actually do the work myself. Nvidia GT310?...hmm maybe not quite that much...

 

[neeyik]

IIRC, the 650 has something like 512 'shader' units, 50-odd TMUs and about 25 ROPs. So, in theory, that's quite a bit better than the GT310 as it has 16 shaders, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs. GTX 560-ish? Probably quite bandwidth limited, I should imagine.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Well it would have been a bit embarrassing if it had lost to the Adreno as that was the tech that AMD foolishly sold off a few years back.

Also, I’d rather have a snapdragon with an Adreno in it than an Exynos with a Radeon GPU. Exynos is garbage and I don’t really care about the frame rate of games on my phone as much as I care about stability, battery life and speed of the device in general.

 

[Lionvibez]

Well it would have been a bit embarrassing if it had lost to the Adreno as that was the tech that AMD foolishly sold off a few years back.

Also, I’d rather have a snapdragon with an Adreno in it than an Exynos with a Radeon GPU. Exynos is garbage and I don’t really care about the frame rate of games on my phone as much as I care about stability, battery life and speed of the device in general.

But look at the fun they are having now.

Ati Engineer's vs AMD Engineers

 

[Evernessince]

Well it would have been a bit embarrassing if it had lost to the Adreno as that was the tech that AMD foolishly sold off a few years back.

Also, I’d rather have a snapdragon with an Adreno in it than an Exynos with a Radeon GPU. Exynos is garbage and I don’t really care about the frame rate of games on my phone as much as I care about stability, battery life and speed of the device in general.

Partnered, not sold. Massive difference.

 

[Shadowboxer]

But look at the fun they are having now.

Ati Engineer's vs AMD Engineers

Maybe but you would expect newer silicon to outperform older stuff. It would have been bigger news if AMDs new stuff had lost! This is more about Samsung than AMD/ATI. Samsung want to be able to make all their devices chips for obvious reasons and stop buying designs from Qualcomm. Somehow I don’t think a few extra frame rates attained by licensing GPU design from AMD is going to see them beat Qualcomm’s dominance. They need to design better silicon themselves.

Adreno was sold for $65 million to Qualcomm with a non-compete deal for several years (I can’t remember exactly how many). Qualcomm have since made billions on the chips using Adreno as the GPU part of the SOC. I’m guessing that non-compete deal must have now expired. Or maybe that by going through Samsung it exempts them from it somehow.

 

[Lionvibez]

I see RDNA replacing Adreno in all samsung devices over the course of the next few years so then AMD will be getting a piece of that action.

 

[Evernessince]

Maybe but you would expect newer silicon to outperform older stuff. It would have been bigger news if AMDs new stuff had lost! This is more about Samsung than AMD/ATI. Samsung want to be able to make all their devices chips for obvious reasons and stop buying designs from Qualcomm. Somehow I don’t think a few extra frame rates attained by licensing GPU design from AMD is going to see them beat Qualcomm’s dominance. They need to design better silicon themselves.

AMD doesn't have a ton of experience designing for phones and tablets nor do they have a ton of resources. I imagine those are two of the driving factors that pushed them to work with Samsung.

I think you are vastly underestimating the difficulty of just stepping into the ultra mobile market. Just ask Intel about that one.

"They need to design better silicon themselves"

Doing everything in house is great for restaurants but bad for most things in the tech industry. Unless your company is going to dedicate an enormous amount of time and effort into making sure you continuously have the best chips on the market you are either going to:

a) hamstring your own products with subpar chips
b) Take up valuable human and fiat capital that could have been invested better elsewhere
c) Get outrun by companies that just design chips. After all, you still have to worry about selling phones, chips are just a small part of them.

People see Apple and think everyone can emulate them but they don't realize that Apple has always been about controlling everything on their devices from the hardware to the software. You don't work for the product, the product works for you.

 

[krizby]

Ugh...why do people game on mobile phones anyways...do they even value their eye sights ? I get temporary myopia after playing game on tablet for a couple of hours, mobile phones are even worse for your eye sight.

 

[Lionvibez]

Ugh...why do people game on mobile phones anyways...do they even value their eye sights ? I get temporary myopia after playing game on tablet for a couple of hours, mobile phones are even worse for your eye sight.

Most likely teens that do it and its usually a money and convenience thing. They don't have the same disposable income as adults so they consolidate things alot more. Also eye sight is strong at that age and everyone is different. I personally never cared for it, give me a dedicated device to game on instead of killing my cell battery playing games.

Also the word gamer takes on many forms.

Technically someone that plays board games is a gamer

 

[Shadowboxer]

Ugh...why do people game on mobile phones anyways...do they even value their eye sights ? I get temporary myopia after playing game on tablet for a couple of hours, mobile phones are even worse for your eye sight.

Yeah I don’t get it and I’m a huge gamer. For me it’s not so much the screen or the strain on your eyes, portable games consoles from my childhood had much smaller screens with no backlighting etc. But what they had that phones don’t is buttons, tactile feedback. I can’t ever get used to using a touchscreen to control a character in real time. Also games on phones all seem to have micro-transactions hiding around every corner.

Actually it made me laugh when I was in Istanbul airport waiting for my flight a few weeks ago when we could fly. I heard a whining sound coming from the bloke next to me. Turned out he had some gaming phone and opening whatever app he opened caused the fan inside it to spool up. I mean, who wants a phone with a dam fan inside it!? The worlds gone crazy!

 

[krizby]

Most likely teens that do it and its usually a money and convenience thing. They don't have the same disposable income as adults so they consolidate things alot more. Also eye sight is strong at that age and everyone is different. I personally never cared for it, give me a dedicated device to game on instead of killing my cell battery playing games.

Also the word gamer takes on many forms.

Technically someone that plays board games is a gamer

It's actually the exact opposite, young children can develop myopia which worsen at a fast rate. You don't want your kid to have a 6 diopters myopia or more because then laser eye surgeries can't complete cure myopia and they have to wear a freaking thick corrective glasses. I have a friend with 10 diopters and he wears 2 beer bottle bottoms for glasses.

I have a daughter and no way in hell I would let her play on mobile phones, I would rather build her a PC

 

[actionjksn]

I wonder if Qualcomm will end up doing a deal with Nvidia? I think Qualcomm should also start customizing their CPUs again so they can completely catch up with Apple. Surely they have the money and long term it would probably be good for them. Because other companies seem to be catching up with them on performance in the flagship category. If Qualcomm wants to hang onto their near monopoly they need to invest in developing the highest performing chips possible.