Samsung begins development of 2 nm Exynos SoC

Samsung recently taped out its first-ever 3 nm smartphone SoC on its SF3GAP node. It is widely believed to be the Exynos 2500, which will power the Galaxy S25 series next year. It isn't scheduled to enter mass production until later this year, presumably due to sub-par yields. However, that hasn't deterred Samsung from starting development of its next-gen 2 nm chip codenamed "Thetis", as confirmed by a report from Naver. 

In all likelihood, Thetis is the putative Exynos 2600, Samsung's primary contender against the Apple A19 Pro, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and MediaTek Dimensity 9500. That said, there's a chance it could be a successor to the 3 nm Galaxy Watch SoC slated to debut later this year. Nevertheless, it won't enter mass production until Samsung's 2 nm node is up and running, which is slated to happen sometime in late 2025.

Given it has just entered development, information about Thetis is scarce. However, it would be reasonable to assume it will leverage Arm's Cortex X6 CPU core because it is also being developed on the same SF2 node. Plus, a recent rumour said Samsung plans to use an in-house GPU with its 2026 chips, meaning there's a chance it could debut alongside Thetis/Exynos 2600.