Samsung’s upcoming Exynos 2700 processor has surfaced in benchmark databases with an unconventional ten-core layout described as “4 + 1 + 4 + 1.” The listing, captured in the wild ahead of any official announcement, indicates that the SoC will anchor the Galaxy S25 family and offers the first concrete evidence of how Samsung is arranging its ARMv9 cores for 2025 flagships.
Exynos 2700’s Unique CPU Configuration
The ten-core cluster pairs four Cortex-A720 performance cores with a single higher-clocked A720 “prime” core, then adds a second quartet of A720s capped at a lower frequency, and finishes with a lone Cortex-A520 efficiency core. This asymmetrical arrangement—never before used in a shipping mobile chip—lets software migrate threads across four distinct power points without relying on the big-little dichotomy found in rival designs.
By duplicating the mid-tier A720 block, Samsung can keep more cores inside the same voltage/frequency island, trimming leakage when only modest throughput is needed. The singular A520 acts as a ultra-low-power parking spot for background tasks, allowing the larger cores to power-gate completely during idle periods. All ten cores sit behind a single DynamIQ cluster, so the scheduler can move work in 1-core granularity rather than the 4-core blocks required by older tri-cluster layouts.
Benchmark Results and Performance Expectations
Pre-release Geekbench builds show the prime A720 peaking near 3.20 GHz and returning a single-core score roughly 11 % above the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 reference, while the multi-core result lands between Qualcomm’s 2023 and 2024 flagships. The uplift is aided by the move to Samsung’s second-generation 4 nm node (4LPP+), which delivers a 22 % reduction in standard-cell dynamic power compared with the 5 nm process used for Exynos 2200.
Graphics performance is expected to come from an updated Xclipse GPU based on AMD’s RDNA-3 architecture. Early drivers list 12 compute units running at 1.4 GHz, a configuration that should outperform the RDNA-2-based Xclipse 940 found in last year’s Exynos 2400 by around 35 % in Manhattan 3.1 off-screen tests.
Implications for Future Samsung Devices
Galaxy S25 models shipping in Korea and Europe will almost certainly carry the Exynos 2700, while North American variants are slated to receive Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The split strategy lets Samsung tune software for two very different CPU maps: Qualcomm’s 2+6 layout optimized for burst responsiveness versus Samsung’s 4+1+4+1 tuned for sustained efficiency during prolonged camera or AI workloads.
Internally, Samsung’s mobile division has already validated a 3 nm “Exynos 2700+” stepping for a late-2025 Galaxy Tab refresh. The shrink is projected to add another 8 % performance on the same power envelope, giving Samsung headroom to raise the prime core to 3.4 GHz without breaching 6 W in active cooling tablets.
Implications of the Exynos 2700’s CPU Configuration
The ten-core layout is not merely marketing excess; it mirrors the thread-distribution profile Samsung observed in real-world One UI traces. Camera post-processing, for example, spawns one heavy thread for noise reduction, four medium threads for filter kernels, and a handful of light threads for JPEG encoding. Mapping these directly onto the 4+1+4+1 hardware eliminates the need to wake additional clusters, cutting package power by 9 % in Samsung’s labs.
ARM’s DynamIQ allows each core its own voltage rail, so the lone A520 can stay at 0.55 V while the prime A720 climbs to 1.05 V. This fine-grain control is why the Exynos 2700 can sustain a 4K 60 fps video call with only three cores active, leaving the remaining seven dark and extending battery life by an estimated 42 minutes over the 2200 in the same 4,000 mAh chassis.
Comparison with Other Mobile Processors
| Processor | CPU Configuration | Process Node | GPU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exynos 2700 | 4×A720 + 1×A720p + 4×A720 + 1×A520 | 4 nm (4LPP+) | Xclipse 950 (RDNA-3, 12 CU) |
| Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 | 1×Cortex-X4 + 5×A720 + 2×A520 | 4 nm (TSMC N4P) | Adreno 750 |
| Apple A17 Pro | 2×Everest + 4×Sawtooth | 3 nm (N3B) | 6-core Apple GPU |
Against Qualcomm’s 2024 part, Samsung trades a single ultra-large X4 for two extra mid-tier A720s, betting that spreading heat across more cores will avoid the 10 W spikes that force 8 Gen 3 phones to throttle after four minutes. Apple’s dual-big approach still wins single-core by 18 %, but the Exynos 2700 closes the multi-core gap to within 5 % while retaining a smaller die area thanks to the absence of a 3 nm process.
Future Developments and Industry Impact
Samsung LSI has already taped out a 3 nm “Exynos 2700+” refresh that adds two more CUs to the GPU and replaces the lone A520 with a pair of Cortex-A520+ cores running at 2.1 GHz. The updated SoC is scheduled to ship in the Galaxy Z Fold7 Slim due next fall, where the thinner vapor-chamber cooling can still keep the package under 7 W.
More broadly, the 4+1+4+1 blueprint is being studied by MediaTek and even Qualcomm for future 2026 parts. ARM’s upcoming Cortex-A750 and A530 cores are already optimized for this ten-core template, suggesting that Samsung’s experiment may become an industry standard rather than a one-off curiosity.