(Image source from: semiconductor.samsung.com)
Samsung Foundry announced on Friday the Exynos 2600 as its newest top-level mobile SoC, showcasing its in-house chip development. This new processor is highlighted as not just Samsung's innovation, but also the first globally to be manufactured using a 2nm technology alongside advanced GAA (Gate-All-Around) methods. The Exynos 2600 is designed to integrate CPU, GPU, and NPU functions into one small chip, enhancing artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and gaming performance. It is projected to launch early next year, likely with the upcoming Galaxy S26 series. Samsung indicates that the Exynos chipset takes a step up from the Exynos 2500 as its latest mobile solution for high-end devices. This chip utilizes Samsung Foundry's 2-nanometre GAA manufacturing process. It includes a custom CPU featuring eight cores. The design consists of a C1-Ultra core running at 3.8GHz, three C1-Pro cores at 3.25GHz, and six C1-Pro cores capped at 2.75GHz. Samsung asserts that Galaxy devices with this chipset can support up to LPDDR5x RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. Exynos incorporates the Samsung Xclipse 960 deca-core GPU based on ARMv9.3 framework, along with an AI engine boasting a 32K MAC NPU within the single unified chip.
Additionally, it includes ARM's Scalable Matrix Extension 2 (SME 2), which is a type of Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) addition that can speed up AI and ML applications while improving matrix operation support. This upgrade is said to increase overall CPU performance by as much as 39 percent, while also enhancing power efficiency. Samsung claims a leap of 113 percent in generative AI performance compared to the Exynos 2500, along with a 50 percent advantage in ray tracing ability. It also features Exynos Neural Super Sampling (ENSS) technology, which aims to enhance gaming by using AI for resolution upscaling and frame generation. To address the heat problems linked with Exynos chipsets, Samsung utilizes a method known as Heat Pass Block. This is said to optimize the path for heat to escape more effectively, functioning similarly to a heat sink while reducing thermal resistance by up to 16 percent.
The chip supports device displays with resolutions reaching 4K or WQUXGA and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. According to the company, Galaxy smartphones featuring the Exynos 2600 chip can handle up to 320-megapixel single camera sensors or options for dual cameras with configurations of 64-megapixels and 32-megapixels. It can also record video at 108-megapixel resolution at 30 frames per second, as well as support 8K encoding and decoding at 30fps. Samsung informs that the Exynos 2600 incorporates hardware-assisted hybrid Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), facilitating ROM-rooted security for future protection.
