Samsung also said to be working on mobile AI chips for smarter processing

There are many ongoing races in AI right now but one of the most important relates to smartphone chips themselves. HUAWEI has already planted a flag firmly in the earth in this regard, having recently announced the AI related features that will make their way to its Kirin 970 processor. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone 8 series smartphones will make use of its A11 chips’ “neural engine” for more advanced AI processing.

Now, news from South Korea has suggested that Samsung is targeting the development of dedicated smartphone CPU cores specifically for handling AI related tasks. The speculation arrives via The Korean Herald, which claims that Samsung has already begun research and development on the AI chips and is seeking to commercialize them “in the next few years.”

What would set Samsung’s AI chips apart from its typical Exynos SoCs is that they would rely less on cloud-based processing. Samsung’s previous AI chipsets had to interact with cloud servers to retrieve information. With this stored locally on devices, future chips could be more efficient.

“In the next three years or so, smartphones will have designated chips that will improve the processing of AI features by 50 percent from today,” said one of The Korea Herald‘s sources. Other specific advantages that the chips could potentially provide weren’t outlined, but less power consumption is also likely.

As the world’s biggest chipmaker, and developer of many AI-reliant products, it’s no surprise that Samsung is also climbing aboard the AI chip train. Samsung is currently developing its Bixby mobile assistant, while it recently confirmed that is also working on its own smart speaker. Improving the AI capabilities of its chips would no doubt have far-reaching benefits for the company’s products, as well as keeping its chipsets competitive.