Samsung has been interested in developing an in-house GPU for use with its own Exynos chipset for some time now with rumors on the matter dating back more than two years. The original plan was to have a solution in place prior to the Galaxy Note 5's arrival in August 2015 but of course, that never materialized.
As you likely know, Samsung currently uses ARM's Mali series of GPUs with its Exynos chipsets. The South Korean electronics giant is still very much interested in developing a custom GPU, the foundation of which may come from an established player in the graphics industry.
According to an exclusive report from SamMobile, Samsung is in talks with AMD and Nvidia about licensing GPU technology for future mobile devices.
One would think that Nvidia might be the favorite thanks to its superior Pascal architecture although AMD's Polaris architecture shouldn't be counted out. Just the other day, for example, Sony revealed a more powerful version of its PlayStation 4 game console powered by AMD's graphics technology.
Moving to an in-house GPU solution would allow Samsung to cut costs as it would seemingly be cheaper to license GPU technology from AMD or Nvidia rather than outsource the hardware from a third party. Samsung could then pass those savings on to the consumer by lowering the price of its handsets or simply create larger profit margins (or perhaps even a mix of both).