Samsung Exynos 2500 ‘Dream Chip’ specifications may have leaked

Samsung unveiled its newest flagship smartphones for the year last week. The Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra are available for pre-order in several countries worldwide, and but they haven’t even reached customers yet. The performance and efficiency of the Exynos 2400 haven’t been tested widely, but some information about the Exynos 2500 processor has been leaked already.

The Exynos 2500 could power the Galaxy S25 in most countries and could be Samsung’s first truly Exynos good chipset in years.

Exynos 2500 specifications reveal ARM’s

The Exynos 2500 (tentative name) will likely power at least some units in the Galaxy S25 series. Tipster @OreXda has claimed that the Exynos 2500 will use a 10-core CPU like the Exynos 2400, but it will use Samsung’s most advanced chip manufacturing process and ARM’s upcoming CPU cores. Apparently, the Exynos 2500 will be the first chip to use Samsung Foundry’s second-generation 3nm (3nm GAP/SF3) process. It is said to be better than TSMC’s 3nm process in terms of area and efficiency. The Exynos 2500 will reportedly use one Cortex-X5 CPU core clocked at 3.2GHz or higher, three Cortex-A720 CPU cores clocked at 2.3GHz or above, three Cortex-A720 CPU cores, and four Cortex-A530 CPU cores.

Some reports claim that ARM’s upcoming Blackhawk CPU core (Cortex-X5) will surpass Apple’s latest custom CPU core in terms of single-core performance. ARM has already teased its Blackhawk (Cortex-X5) prime CPU core, Chaberton (Cortex-A730) performance CPU core, and Hayes (Cortex-A530) power efficiency CPU cores in mid-2023. If this information is correct, Samsung’s Exynos 2500 chipset, equipped with ARM’s upcoming CPU cores, could defeat Apple in terms of performance for the first time in over a decade. But how it performs in terms of efficiency remains to be seen.

The Exynos 2500 could feature AMD’s RDNA-based Xlipse 950 GPU, and it is expected to bring even better performance. The AMD RDNA3-based Xclipse 940 GPU inside the Exynos 2400 already defeats the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in ray-tracing performance.

Author’s Note: We expect the Exynos 2500 to be announced before the end of this year, and the chipset will be ready in early 2025 for the launch of the Galaxy S25 series. The Exynos 2400 appears to be performing a lot better in both performance and efficiency compared to previous-generation Exynos chips and is almost on par with the latest flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. So, it seems Exynos is finally seeing the turnaround that everyone wanted.

The combination of Samsung Foundry’s 3nm process, Samsung’s improved optimization, and ARM’s upcoming powerful Blackhawk CPU cores could give the Exynos 2500 a big boost, and it could really turn out to be a ‘Dream Chip’ for the South Korean firm. Samsung could even opt to rename the Exynos processor lineup to leave the ruined brand image behind.