Samsung’s crisis and TSMC’s dominance

Today, the contract chip manufacturing market is almost entirely owned by Taiwan’s TSMC, which controls about 70% of orders. Samsung’s main problem is the Yield rate (the output of usable chips). On the 3 nm process, it was only 50%, while TSMC reached over 90% by mid-2025. This forced giants such as Qualcomm and Google to abandon the services of the Koreans.

Even the new $44 billion Taylor plant has run into problems: the launch has been postponed to 2026 due to a lack of customers. But it is this desperation that is pushing Samsung to the boldest experiments in the history of mobile platforms.

The transistor revolution: from FinFET to GAA

The main trump card of the Exynos 2600 is the transition to a new generation of transistor architecture. While the world was using the FinFET (fin-film transistor) structure, Samsung was the first to introduce GAA (Gate-All-Around) technology.

• MBCFET (Multi-Bridge Channel FET): Samsung’s own implementation of GAA, where the gate spans the nanosheet channel on all four sides.

• Current control: The new structure radically reduces power leakage, which is critical for the autonomy of smartphones.

• Second generation: The Exynos 2600 uses an improved version of this architecture, which gives it an advantage in experience over TSMC, which is only just starting to implement similar solutions.

HPB Cooling: Heatsink inside the processor

One of the most interesting innovations is the Heat Path Block (HPB) technology. Instead of relying solely on external evaporation chambers in the smartphone body, Samsung integrated a copper heat spreader directly into the chip structure.

To do this, engineers moved the RAM to the side, freeing up space for heat dissipation. The results are impressive: thermal resistance is reduced by 16% and the average operating temperature has dropped by 30% compared to previous generations. This should solve the throttling problem in the Galaxy series for good.

Specifications and performance

The Exynos 2600 has an unusual core configuration of 1+3+6, which gives a total of 10 computing units. The main Cortex-C1 Ultra core operates at a frequency of 3.8 GHz, providing a 39% increase in CPU performance.

• Graphics: The new Eclipse 960 accelerator based on the AMD RDNA4 (MGFX4) architecture promises a twofold increase in power.

• AI capabilities: The updated NPU demonstrates a 113% jump in generative AI tasks, allowing complex neural networks to be run locally.

• Cameras: Support for sensors up to 320 MP and 8K video recording at 30 FPS or 4K at 120 FPS.

The future of competition with Apple and Intel

On paper, the Exynos 2600 looks like a technological breakthrough. Insiders claim that the new chip could be 59% more power efficient than the expected Apple A19 Pro. Meanwhile, Intel Foundry is also hot on its heels by introducing power delivery from the back of the wafer (PowerVia).

However, Samsung’s success depends not only on numbers, but also on the stability of mass production. At the start of the 2 nm process, the company achieved a 60% yield of usable products. This is a decent result, although TSMC already claims 80% on its similar N2 process. Competition is intensifying, and this is the best news for the end user.