The Exynos 2600 is an application processor (AP) that will be manufactured by Samsung Foundry using its 2nm process node. If everything goes as expected, this SoC could make any of the The Samsung Galaxy S26 series phones are the first to use a 2nm chipset. Although it could be expected that Galaxy T26 and Galaxy T26+ to be equipped with the Exynos 2600 AP in most markets, there is a rumor that the Galaxy S26 Ultra will also sport the Exynos 2600 in Europe and South Korea.
Exynos 2600 Reportedly Generates M5-Like Scorers on Geekbench
All Galaxy T26 Models in the US, China and Japan could be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Eliter Gen 5 for Galaxy. In the past, any hint that a Galaxy S Ultra model would feature a Samsung Exynos chip would have been laughed at. But Sammy has been working on the chipset which seems to have improved a lot. In addition to being manufactured with the 2nm process node, it will use Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistors that prevent current leakage and improve drive current. This makes the chip more powerful and energy efficient.
This is reportedly the Geekbench test result for the Exynos 2600 AP. | Image credit-Wccftech
We should put an asterisk next to these numbers because a visit to the Geekbench data itself does not show these results. We can then conclude that either the results were written down, the numbers were made up, or the reference test was never performed. And these numbers are important because, if legitimate, the single-core results would match those achieved by Apple’s M5 chip and would be the fastest smartphone SoC in the single-core category, a metric that Apple’s A-series AP has historically owned.
The 2nm Exynos 2600 has a higher reference count than the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
Assuming the score is legitimate, even more exciting for Samsung, the Exynos 2600 Geekbench score beat the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s single-core and multi-core scores of 2,865 and 9,487 respectively. This could be an exciting time for Samsung Foundry, which is a distant number two in the contract foundry business, far behind TSMC. In the second quarter, TSMC had 70.2% of the foundry market compared to Samsung Foundry’s 7.3%.
Samsung Foundry’s returns are believed to have improved considerably. While Samsung does not provide this information, it became clear in 2022 that there was a problem with Samsung Foundry’s returns when Qualcomm removed its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 AP business from Samsung and moved it to TSMC. After a slight design change, Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. Since then, Qualcomm has relied on TSMC to produce all of its flagship application processors.
It’s been an impressive rise for Samsung’s Exynos AP
It’s hard to imagine the Exynos 2600 being mentioned in the same breath as the Apple M5. In 2019-2020, Samsung shut down its custom core development team as its “Mongoose” cores caused its Exynos chips to consistently underperform Qualcomm’s Snapdragon components while also being less efficient. Incidentally, the M5 achieved a single-core score of 4,263 or 1.09% higher than the Exynos 2600’s results. The M5’s multi-core score of 17,862 was 32% higher than the Exynos 2600’s score.
