Samsung Shutting Down Custom CPU Division in the US (androidauthority.com) 42
Samsung's Exynos flagship processors have been a mainstay for years now, and they've mostly featured Samsung's Mongoose custom CPU cores. Unfortunately, the Korean brand is now shutting down its custom CPU division. From a report: Samsung filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining (WARN) letter in Texas, according to The Statesman, notifying the state that 290 employees will be laid off as part of its CPU unit being shut down. The layoffs reportedly go into effect from December 31. The Korean manufacturer confirmed the news to Android Authority, while also explaining the reasoning behind the decision. "Based upon a thorough assessment of our System LSI [large scale integration - ed] business and the need to stay competitive in the global market, Samsung has decided to transition part of our U.S.-based R&D teams in Austin and San Jose," the company told us in a statement, adding that it remained committed to its US workforce.
How about an article from an informed writer? (Score:2)
"If Samsung is indeed abandoning its custom CPU cores for flagship phones, then itâ(TM)s likely that the firm will adopt Arm CPUs or semi-custom versions of these CPUs for future devices"
Implying that Exynos is not based on ARM.
It sounds like they're just offshoring (Score:4, Insightful)
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Lower wages, eh? Which country is closest to sea level?
Hardly... (Score:4, Insightful)
off-shoring, when the company is actually from South Korea.
This is more likely an on-shoring exercise in order to by-pass the US government's seemingly-random embargoes and tariffs...
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This is more likely an on-shoring exercise in order to by-pass the US government's seemingly-random embargoes and tariffs...
Indeed. The trade embargoes hurt America's most competitive industries the most. So semiconductor design and manufacturing is shifting to Asia. Fewer aircraft orders for Boeing and more for Airbus.
Once these jobs are gone, they won't come back.
But America can still grow soybeans and make movies.
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Pretty sure Boeing orders were primarily impacted by something other than the trade war.
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Pretty sure Boeing orders were primarily impacted by something other than the trade war.
They crashlanded #toosoon
What movies? (Score:2)
You mean that crap that is designed to be accepted by everyone so.it is hated by nobody and loved by nobody either? Manufactured products that completelx and deliberately miss the point of art. (The communication of deeply resonating/touching insights. Usually of complex and hard to pinpoint things.)
Or straight-up US editions of Nazi Übersoldat propaganda... aka "super hero movies".
Yeah, ... *technically*, they are movies.
But not *really*. Fuck techicalities. Everyone knows that is not how it is meant.
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"need to stay competitive in the global market" is drone-speak for "Shipping the jobs to a country with lower wages and fewer worker protections".
Dude, we are not talking about low-value-added manufacturing jobs here, nor about an American company.
This is a foreign company that no longer sees value in having high-value-added R&D jobs (that require significant long-term investment and market security) in American soil.
I will leave up to the readers to conjure reasons why.
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Also implying that they're not just moving the custom-design department to another country...
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I swear people around here have no idea how business works. Even in something like fashion design, production and sales are the last thing to go, you know... the stuff that generates money.
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According to Wikipedia, Exynos processors already use Cortex cores.
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In 2012, Samsung began development of GPU IP called "S-GPU".’ After a three-year design cycle, SARC's first custom core called the M1 was released in the Exynos 8890 in 2016.
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If you look at the table below, it appears that the 8890 uses both the full custom M1 and a Cortex-A53 core.
Yes, there are full custom cores in the latest Exynos, but there are also standard ARM cores in the same chips.
So I guess that Samsung may be abandoning its own cores, although I think other people have suggested that Samsung is on-shoring its core development, not shutting it down.
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If you look at the table below, it appears that the 8890 uses both the full custom M1 and a Cortex-A53 core. . . So I guess that Samsung may be abandoning its own cores, although I think other people have suggested that Samsung is on-shoring its core development, not shutting it down.
Which is exactly what the reporter was saying. However CPU design being done onshore is anyone’s guess. It is not just anyone that has the experience and skill to design CPUs. This was the exact reason Samsung created and used SARC. Maybe in the years since the M1, Samsung Korea has developed the people they need. To design their Ax CPUs, Apple bought two companies with lots of experience and it took them several years for a truly custom design./p
Transition To Where? (Score:4, Insightful)
All that's mentioned is to "transition" from Austin and San Jose, but they don't say where exactly they're transitioning these jobs to. My guess is to China or SK, or maybe to a trash bin?
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Could well be moving it out of the US due to the trade war, i.e. not being able to sell those CPUs to China. ARM is doing the same thing, moving some engineering out of the US to avoid those rules as China is a major customer for them.
Could also be that they just decided to give up on it for the same reason. Transitionally US models of Samsung phones have had different CPUs to the rest of the world. I think originally it had something to do with the unusual cellular networks over there but later was just to
It's a weasel word. (Score:2)
On corporate speak, nothing dies. It just "transitions".
Compare: "passed away"
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Yes, really. And all those employees are no flooding the Austin job market looking for jobs for experienced engineers. Austin does not have those jobs* and many of them are scrambling to find jobs in other cities while uprooting their families.
I live here and know many of these engineers. The ones who saw it coming have already moved out.
*Don't believe the hype about Austin. Most of the tech jobs in Austin are back office IT jobs at Visa, GM, Schwab, and Apple or customer support and sales jobs at Apple, Fa
Samsungs S-2 14nm line? (Score:5, Informative)
There Giheung fab in South Korea, which is 14nm, can litho about 0.744 million wafers/year.
Their Pyeongtaek fab in South Korea newly opened in 2017, is also 14nm, and can run 5.4 million wafers/year.
Read between the lines a bit and its plain as day that the Pyeongtaek fab is a consolidation of there 14nm production into one place. So these jobs arent "being moved" so much as they are being "phased out" as demand for 14nm declines.
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According to TFA, the affected jobs are in R&D, not manufacturing.
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According to TFA, the affected jobs are in R&D, not manufacturing.
Considering how piss-poor the Exynos SoCs are, I'm not at all surprised they are giving up on their in-house CPU R&D team:
https://appleinsider.com/artic... [appleinsider.com]
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A new factory was needed.. new parts, new methods, new start... new investment..
South Korea does not need another extra few decades of further US tech "support" after Fairchild Semiconductor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
South Korea can do its own math, production line design work, production, then sell to the world.
That is what "transitioning" means! (Score:2)
It is the coprorate version of "passed away".
old news (Score:1)
All the resumes came through weeks and weeks ago.
Then why didn't YOU tell us? (Score:2)
The world doesn't revolve around you, you dumb fuck.
RISC-V guys take note? (Score:3)
Wish the RISC-V people could take these CPU designers in.
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Lots of companies (Score:1)
Lots of companies quit producing their own processors.
I remember when AMD made their 29000 series 'bit slice' processors before they just became a clone shop.
Re:Lots of companies (Score:5, Informative)
I remember when AMD made their 29000 series 'bit slice' processors before they just became a clone shop.
AMD produced the 29000 through 1995.
The K5 (1995) was an original design, which was internally RISCy.
The K6 (1997) was an original design, which was not only internally RISCy, but which was faster clock-for-clock than a Pentium 2 if you optimized for it.
The K7 (1999) was also an original design, and wiped the floor with Intel in every way except sales figures.
K8 (2003) changed PC computing so much that Intel was forced to adopt AMD's instruction set.
When exactly was AMD was a straight clone shop? AFAICT, the answer is never.
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x86 clones. What other instruction set did any of those present?
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The instruction set is like an API. Being compatible doesn't make a clone if you find your own novel solutions to the problems.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
You mean amd64! (Score:2)
x86_64 was Intel's way of saying "amd64 on any CPU" without speaking the name of TEH EEEBIL.
Just like x86 is only x86, it is called amd64 and only amd64. Sorry, intel.
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The Pentium & Pentium Pro were x86 clones, running a RISCy core, as have every single x86 Intel CPU since.
All AMDs were similar to the PPro in that they translated the CISC x86 instruction set into RISC.
The AMD K6/2 added the 3dNow instructions (which lost out to SSE).
AMD gave us a usable 64bit extension to x86.
Hmm a quick check of the history of Intel Larabee GPU indicates it has a simplified Pentium core which is more akin to the 486, though of course with many ex
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x86 clones. What other instruction set did any of those present?
x86-64. Which means that according to your reasoning, Intel is now the clone shop.
Re: Lots of companies (Score:1)
Fine, they are all a bunch of clones. It's like the latter day of the PC clones. IBM had moved on to the micro channel architecture, but the main PC industry was churning out Baby-AT motherboards with 286/386/486/K5/P90 etc processors. PC clones after the PC being cloned was gone.
Freedom (Score:2)
Move those jobs/designs/manufacturing/etc to a freer country.
Good one Trump.
Now if they export to China (who doesn't) they also don't have to pay as much in tariffs. Thanks again Trump.
It's just good business sense.
Korean English (Score:2)