Samsung had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars extra to have the Snapdragon 8 Elite power the Galaxy S25 line
The reason that yield is so important is that the figure is a percentage showing how many usable dies have been created against the maximum number that can be diced from a silicon wafer. Samsung Foundry was rumored to have a 30% yield for production using the same process node earmarked for the Exynos 2500. A low yield increases the number of defective dies and decreases the number of usable ones. As a result, not only does the price for working chips rise, at a yield of 30% it was possible that Samsung would not be able to build enough chips to cover the amount it needed.
A big change to the Exynos 2600 AP’s configuration is rumored
Another point to consider is that tweet from tipster @OreXda doesn’t mention the efficiency of the Exynos 2600. As a result, it is a possibility that in order to achieve the high mjlti-core benchmark results, the chipset had to use an unrealistic amount of power, certainly more than the component will be fed if used to drive the Galaxy S26 line when the phones are released during Q1 next year.
An interesting change in the configuration of the Exynos 2600 AP was mentioned by @OreXda. Originally designed with 10 cores (giving it the “decacore” designation), the tipster says that the Exynos 2600 will feature two Cortex Prime “X” CPU cores along with six Cortex-A cores. That would make the Exynos 2600 an octa-core AP.
If Samsung Foundry doesn’t improve its yield, Samsung would have to consider using the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 for Galaxy to power all of the models in the flagship series with Qualcomm’s flagship processor. The phones won’t be released until next January or February but because of lead times, Samsung will have to decide by the end of this year whether yields are sufficient (60%-70% and higher is required) to allow Samsung Foundry to manufacture enough Exynos 2600 SoCs to power the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ units in all markets other than the U.S., China, and Canada. In those countries, the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 for Galaxy AP.
