In an unexpected turn of events, the South Korean electronics giant, Samsung is shutting down its custom CPU Core division. Therefore we will not be seeing any future in-house developed cores like the Moongoose M4 found in Exynos 9820, Samsung’s current flagship silicon. According to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission, Samsung is shutting down the CPU project at its Samsung Austin Research Center that will result in 290 employees being laid off.
A WARN letter aka Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification is a mandated notice that employers must provide to state governments in the event of major layoffs. The previously mentioned layoffs will be effective from the 31st of December and the affected employees do not have any bumping rights. The WARN letter does not specify how many of the layoffs would be in Austin and how many in California.
Michele Glaze, a spokeswoman for Samsung Austin told that company’s Austin manufacturing facility, which employs about 3,000 people, will remain unaffected by the layoffs. While talking to an American-Statesman she made the following statement.
We have treated all employees with respect. They all have been given appropriate packages and advanced notice. These things are very tough. People always wonder, ‘Did they treat them right?’ And we did. It’s unfortunate that they are losing their jobs, but it is based upon the fact that we’re always assessing our business.
Even though Samsung’s Exynos range of chipsets offer praiseworthy performance they usually come second to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon family in performance benchmarks. In plain language, current offerings from Qualcomm provide better performance with lower power consumption which is vital to prolonging battery backup in smartphones.
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Patrick Moorhead, an industry analyst said that Samsung has licensed some intellectual property from Arm Holdings which could be put to use in upcoming chips from the South Korean company.
Noteworthy, while Samsung will no longer develop its own custom core’s, it will continue to manufacture chips under the Exynos brand which will be comprised of CPU cores that are developed by ARM. Accordingly, it is possible that the upcoming Exynos 9830 will be comprised of four Cortex-A77 cores high-performance cores in addition to four high-efficiency cores.
Apparently, it is a well thought out decision from Samsung, who is the world’s biggest producer of smartphone screens, semiconductors and mobile phones. According to the company, it has invested $17 billion in its Austin campus until now which first started operations in the year 1977.
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