Seoul:  Samsung Electronics on Thursday hinted at a new Exynos application processor (AP) widely expected to power the upcoming flagship Galaxy S26 smartphone.

The South Korean tech giant uploaded a clip titled "The next Exynos" on YouTube, featuring the Exynos 2600. Exynos is the company's proprietary mobile chipset, reports Yonhap news agency.

APs, often described as the brains of mobile devices, handle the core computing tasks that run operating systems and applications.

Industry sources said Samsung Electronics began commercial production of the Exynos 2600 last month, making it the first AP manufactured using the 2-nanometer process technology.

While Samsung Electronics has not yet provided additional details, the new AP is expected to feature a more powerful neural processing unit, which plays a key role in artificial intelligence (AI) functions.

Compared with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the new Exynos is expected to deliver a 30 per cent improvement in NPU performance and a 29 per cent gain in graphics processing capability, the sources said.

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics has shared more than 100 patents for mobile, communications, display and other technologies with smaller businesses as part of efforts to promote industry-wide shared growth, the industry ministry said on Thursday.

The South Korean tech giant transferred 125 patents to 99 companies this year to help them develop innovative products using Samsung's technologies in the mobile, communications, display, home appliances and other sectors, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources.

Samsung Electronics first launched the programme in 2015 and has offered a combined 1,335 patents to 772 companies so far.

The latest set of technologies transferred by Samsung includes an artificial intelligence (AI)-based automated content search and recommendation system, a video scaling device, a cleaning robot and its control system, said the report. IANS