Samsung, AMD strike multiyear pact on graphics technology

AMD announced it will be licensing its AMD Radeon graphics technologies to Samsung Electronics for use in devices including smartphones.

The multi-year agreement involves ultra low power, high performance mobile graphics IP based on AMD Radeon graphics technologies.

“As we prepare for disruptive changes in technology and discover new opportunities, our partnership with AMD will allow us to bring groundbreaking graphics products and solutions to market for tomorrow’s mobile applications," said Inyup Kang, president of Samsung Electronics’ S.LSI Business, in a prepared statement. "We look forward to working with AMD to accelerate innovations in mobile graphics technologies that will help take future mobile computing to the next level.”

Terms of the partnership include:

  • AMD will license custom graphics IP based on the recently announced RDNA graphics architecture to Samsung for use in mobile devices, including smartphones, and other products that complement AMD product offerings.
  • Samsung will pay AMD an unspecified amount in technology license fees and royalties.

“Adoption of our Radeon graphics technologies across the PC, game console, cloud and HPC markets has grown significantly, and we are thrilled to now partner with industry leader Samsung to accelerate graphics innovation in the mobile market,” said Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO, in the release. “This strategic partnership will extend the reach of our high-performance Radeon graphics into the mobile market, significantly expanding the Radeon user base and development ecosystem.”

According to Tirias Research analyst and Forbes contributor Kevin Krewell, the deal marks a return of AMD to the smartphone graphics business after it sold the Imageon graphics business to Qualcomm in 2009. The Imageon graphics products became the basis for Qualcomm’s Adreno graphics used in its Snapdragon processors.

AMD’s shares were up more than 6% today after the news, trading around $29.14.