Samsung prepares for mass production of its first 3nm Exynos chip

In a press release by Samsung and Synopsys, the two companies announced that Samsung's foundries are preparing for the mass production of the first 3nm Exynos chip. Although, the press release isn't explicitly clear about the Exynos part.

Samsung has collaborated with Synopsys, which is a firm specializing in electronics design automation, to fine-tune the whole manufacturing process and thus maximizing yields and improving the chip's performance.

The press release says the two tech companies are in the final process of designing, called "taping out". Essentially, that means the final design is being sent to the foundry so it can adapt the production lines for the mass production process.

This is going to be Samsung's first complex and high-performance chip based on the 3nm node using Samsung's Gate All Around (GAA) process. Samsung's foundries have already been manufacturing 3nm chips since 2022, but those are simple chips used for cryptocurrency mining, whereas the SoC used on mobile devices is a more complex piece of hardware requiring different design and manufacturing processes.

If everything goes to plan, Samsung's foundries should start mass production of the next-generation SoC in a few months' time. However, it's unclear whether the first 3nm chip will actually be the Exynos 2500 for the Galaxy S25 lineup or another SoC. For example, the Galaxy Watch7 is just around the corner and may get an upgrade with Samsung's most recent hardware.

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