Samsung hints at new chip in future devices

Samsung Electronics gave its biggest indication yet that the company’s upcoming high-end Galaxy smartphones will use only one chip to run applications and enable wireless connections.

The world’s biggest maker of smartphones last week unveiled its latest semiconductor, called the Exynos 8 Octa.

The new technology is designed to perform functions that currently require two chips, and mass production is scheduled to start this year.

“As a component provider you have to find the biggest customer in the world, and for us it happened to be Samsung,” Hong Kyu-shik, vice president for marketing at Samsung’s System LSI business, said Monday during an investor briefing held in Singapore.

“Exynos 8 is targeted for the premium segment.”

He declined to comment specifically on customers for the new chip. Combining two chips into one helps make devices more energy-efficient, and Samsung says the Exynos processor improves performance.

Samsung is the world’s biggest memory-chip maker, yet it’s trying to build scale in processing by developing Exynos as a direct challenger to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon lineup, which dominates the mobile device market. Bloomberg