MediaTek Aims to Beat Qualcomm With New Flagship Smartphone Chip

MediaTek’s smartphone chips usually play second fiddle to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, however MediaTek simply introduced its new flagship Dimensity 9000 system-on-chip, and it options a lot of notable firsts.

The Dimensity 9000 is each the first smartphone chip to be constructed utilizing TSMC’s new 4nm course of and the primary chip to function Arm’s new Cortex-X2 CPU core. The flagship chip is predicated on the brand new ArmV9 structure and can function the Cortex X2 as an “ultra” efficiency core, three Cortex-A710 cores as common “super” efficiency cores, and 4 Cortex-A510 effectivity cores. The Dimensity 9000 will assist LPDDR5x reminiscence at bandwidths of as much as 7,500 Mbps.

The huge jumps in efficiency don’t cease there: The Dimensity 9000 can also be the primary chip to function Arm’s Mali G710-MC10 GPU, together with industry-leading assist for raytracing through the Vulkan SDK for Android. And whereas there aren’t any telephones at present obtainable which have pushed refresh charges this excessive, MediaTek claims the Dimensity 9000 can deal with screens with as much as a 180Hz refresh charge at FHD+ resolutions.

The Dimensity 9000 additionally helps the primary 18-bit picture sign processor, which provides the chip the power to seize 4K HDR video utilizing as much as three cameras on the identical time, or nonetheless images utilizing up to an enormous 320-MP sensor (assuming system makers can discover a 320-MP sensor that matches in a cellphone).

Even the Dimensity’s connectivity is getting a lift with assist for Bluetooth 5.3 (one other first amongst cell chips) and sooner wifi speeds with Wi-Fi 6E.

It appears the Dimensity 9000 doesn’t include an built-in modem that helps mmWave 5G, however MediaTek is touting the world’s first assist for 3CC provider aggregation for sub-6HZ 5G (which stays essentially the most extensively obtainable sort of 5G) with theoretical high information speeds of as much as 7Gbps.

The Dimensity 9000’s lack of assist for mmWave 5G might harm MediaTek’s possibilities of seeing its chip in additional telephones, notably within the U.S. the place carriers like Verizon have been pushing exhausting to develop the attain and pace of its mmWave 5G community.

Qualcomm is anticipated to announce its personal new flagship cell chip on the annual Snapdragon Summit in a pair weeks, however MediaTek appears to be having fun with beating its rival to the punch with a lot of next-gen options.

As with all chip bulletins, it’s necessary to do not forget that in the long run, it’s as much as the system makers to implement all these new options. But with the units powered by the Dimensity 9000 anticipated to be obtainable as quickly as the primary quarter of 2022, we shouldn’t must wait too lengthy to learn the way MediaTek’s new flagship smartphone chip performs in the actual world.