Samsung, first in 2nm?

Samsung has just unveiled the very first mobile System-on-a-Chip (SoC) built on a 2nm process, the Exynos 2600. If it's integrated into the Galaxy S26 smartphones in early 2026, the Korean manufacturer will be ahead of Apple in this area, which is expected to use TSMC's 2nm chips in the iPhone 18 Pro and the foldable iPhone. What are the performance advantages of this 2nm manufacturing process? The Exynos 2600 is a deca-core (10-core) model offering 39% faster CPU speeds compared to the previous generation, and 113% faster NPU speeds (which handle AI). The GPU is based on the latest Xclipse architecture, which Samsung claims doubles graphics performance and improves ray tracing by 50%. As a reminder, previous Exynos processors had a reputation for overheating quickly, especially compared to Apple processors, and Samsung has reportedly addressed this issue with a new thermal approach called Heat Path Block (HPB), which utilizes a High-k EMC material that improves heat dissipation. As a reminder, in the world of processors, the smaller the manufacturing process, the more powerful the chip, the lower its energy consumption, and the less prone it is to overheating. Indeed, the smaller the manufacturing process, the smaller the space between transistors, meaning more transistors can be packed onto the same surface area.