Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek is working on a groundbreaking new smartphone chip that will revolutionize processor architecture design. Finbarr Moynihan, the company’s vice president of corporate and global marketing, shared details about the upcoming chip in a recent interview with Digital Trends.
MediaTek is steadily gaining market share in the technology industry, with over 50% market share for Android devices projected in the European market this year. In the US, MediaTek powers around 45% of the Android market. The company is also making strides in the flagship smartphone market in China, reaching an estimated 20-30% market share.
The Dimensity 9300, MediaTek’s next chip release, is rumored to feature an all-big core design, moving away from the traditional big core/small core architecture. This means that the chip will not rely on efficiency cores for smaller tasks, but instead use a combination of big and performance cores for all tasks. Moynihan’s comments suggest that this shift in architecture will bring significant computing capabilities and advantages to various use cases.
While chipmakers like Qualcomm and Apple have used a multi-core design with a mix of big and small cores, MediaTek believes that an all-big core architecture will have advantages in terms of application responsiveness, multitasking, gaming, camera, video, and generative AI applications. The company aims to optimize power management techniques to efficiently handle tasks that were previously assigned to smaller cores.
MediaTek is also considering the evolving landscape of Android and foldable devices. With Android becoming larger and more complex, the new chip design accounts for the increased demands of the operating system. In addition, MediaTek’s architecture is expected to provide better user experiences in foldable devices, which heavily rely on CPU performance.
Despite the exciting prospects, there have been reports of thermal management challenges for the new chip due to the combination of powerful cores. MediaTek’s ability to address these challenges will be crucial in maximizing performance.
In addition to the upcoming chip, MediaTek has announced plans to use a 3-nanometer process for future processors. While this won’t be implemented in the 2023 chip, it shows the company’s commitment to pushing the limits of technology. MediaTek’s generative AI support will play a role in its future developments, offering unique benefits.
The new chip is expected to be unveiled at MediaTek’s annual technology summit, likely scheduled for October or November. At that time, we will also witness the capabilities of Apple’s A17 Bionic chip in the iPhone 15 and Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon chip. If the Dimensity 9300 delivers on its promises and sets itself apart from the competition, MediaTek will make the flagship processor market highly intriguing later this year.
