Samsung has mastered the 2nm process, mass production of Exynos 2600 begins

After a long period of uncertainty, positive news from the Koreans has finally arrived. Samsung is officially preparing for mass production of the Exynos 2600, the brand's first mobile chip created using the 2-nm GAA process. For the company, this is not just an upgrade - it is an attempt to restore confidence in Exynos after several unsuccessful generations. In the current generation of S25 flagships, the company had to abandon the use of its own chips and switch to the products of the American Qualcomm.

Key features of the Exynos 2600:

• 2-nm GAA process - a modern technological process and competitive transistor density
• Heat Pass Block - a new cooling technology that should solve the overheating problems that plagued previous Exynos versions
• CPUarchitecture: 1 super core - up to 3.8 GHz
  3 performance cores - up to 3.26 GHz
  6 energy-efficient cores - up to 2.76 GHz

Where will we see it?

The Exynos 2600is expected to be installed in some Galaxy S26 models, depending on the region. Other models will traditionally get the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Context.

In the early 2020s, Samsung lagged behind in the development of advanced chip manufacturing processes. This led to other companies refusing to use the company's services (for example, Nvidia in the GeForce 40 line and Google in the Tensor G5), and then it had to install processors and memory from other companies in its own flagships.

This situation greatly affected the conglomerate's profitability, and the Korean authorities even granted amnesty in 2021 to the previous head of the company, Lee Jae-yong, who was convicted of corruption, to fix systemic problems in the company. This is due to the peculiarities of the traditional structure of South Korean companies, with large corporations being so-called chaebols, or family businesses. All key positions in such companies belong to the same family and, for example, the board of directors cannot replace an incompetent manager, only the managing family can do so. Such a business structure is vulnerable if there are no competent managers left in the family, as happened with Daewoo, which, despite being comparable in size to Samsung, was unable to overcome the effects of the 1998 Asian financial crisis and was liquidated through bankruptcy. Giants like Samsung, LG and Hyndai account for the majority of South Korea's budget, so the authorities are keeping a close eye on their financial health.

This is Samsung's first major move in response to TSMC's development of 2nm technology, which will be massively deployed at the end of 2025. Due to the political turbulence, it has already become known that all TSMC chips based on modern technologies have become more expensive. The same is happening with the production of memory chips, so Samsung needs to develop its own production of modern microelectronics at the fastest possible pace to have a better financial and negotiating position.