Samsung is about to mass produce its own chip for the Galaxy S26

Samsung wants to win the race for the first smartphone with a 2-nanometer processor. To this end, the Koreans will start series production of their in-house system-on-a-chip (SoC) called Exynos 2600 in September. This SoC is to power the Samsung S26 cell phone model planned for next year.

The Korea Times reports the imminent start of production, citing industry insiders. It would be an important success for Samsung Foundry, which has had little luck with its 3-nanometer technology, meaning that TSMC dominates this market. Smaller structures reduce power consumption and allow more transistors to be fitted into the same space. On the other hand, economic production becomes increasingly difficult the smaller the structures have to be.

In June, New Daily reported on the start of "prototype mass production" of Samsung's 2-nanometer chips. The tests initiated with this should have optimized the manufacturing process to such an extent that mass production can now begin. The first chip from a new production process rarely runs smoothly. In particular, the ratio of usable chips to unusable rejects, the so-called yield, initially tends towards rejects.

A question of pride and mammon

In previous Galaxy smartphones, Samsung has used both Exynos SoCs from its own development and production and Snapdragon SoCs from Qualcomm, depending on the market region and device class. In the current top model group Galaxy S25*, Samsung only uses Qualcomm chips – a disgrace that Samsung Foundry would like to quickly forget.

It has given the Exynos 2600 a new heat dissipation design to counter previous difficulties with overheating processors. If the chip factory also achieves a decent yield, this would probably result in production orders from other chip developers, including Qualcomm. The Korea Times is ventilating interest from Nintendo, Tesla and Valens. With such orders, Samsung Foundry's production facilities would be better utilized.

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