Samsung has just lifted the curtain on its new flagship mobile processor, the Exynos 2600 and this is the world’s first smartphone chip built on a 2nm process, courtesy of Samsung Foundry’s latest GAA tech.
The heart of it is a 10-core CPU based on Arm’s v9.3 architecture. That’s split into one prime core ticking along at 3.8GHz, three performance cores at 3.25GHz, and another six efficiency cores humming at 2.75GHz. Samsung reckons this setup delivers a solid 39% performance bump over last year’s Exynos 2500, all while sips less power.
But the real party piece might be the new Heat Path Block, or HPB. It uses a special High-K EMC (Epoxy Moulding Compound) to shunt heat away more effectively, which should mean the chip can keep its cool and its speed, during a long gaming session or other heavy lifting.
Speaking of gaming, the integrated Xclipse 960 GPU is promising some serious gains. Samsung claims ray-tracing performance gets a 50% lift, while general compute performance is said to have doubled.
Then there’s the AI side of things. A brand new NPU is on board, and it’s touted to more than double the AI performance of the previous generation. Security gets a boost as well, with features like hardware-backed post-quantum cryptography and virtualisation security thrown into the mix.
For the shutterbugs, the image signal processor now includes an AI-based Visual Perception System. It’s meant to recognise scenes and objects more accurately, and it supports sensors up to a whopping 320MP. There’s also a new deep learning trick to reduce video noise, which should help with those dimly-lit clips.
The rest of the spec sheet rounds out with support for fast LPDDR5X memory, UFS 4.1 storage, and 4K displays running at up to 120Hz.
As for when you’ll get your hands on it, the word is Samsung plans to slot the Exynos 2600 into its Galaxy S26 and S26+ flagships next year. Though, as with recent years, we expect this chip will only pop up in certain regions.