by Jane Lanhee Lee and Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – Britain’s Arm semiconductor group, owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, unveiled new chip technology for mobile phones on Monday that will be used by MediaTek in its next generation of products, among others.
Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek, long confined to low-end and mid-range smartphones, has moved into the high-end, dominated in particular by Qualcomm, which has been in a legal dispute with Arm since 2022 over licensing agreements for semiconductors.
In Arm’s blog post about its new products, MediaTek pointed out that the new chips will help improve the performance of its next-gen smartphones.
On the stock market, SoftBank shares ended up 8.2%, their biggest gain in over a year, while MediaTek took 1.1%.
Arm’s new chips, which will be showcased at Computex in Taiwan, are dubbed Immortalis-G720 and Cortex-X4. The former specializes in video image processing and artificial intelligence applications, while the latter will be the brains of mobile devices.
According to Arm, a chip designer who essentially sells his blueprints to manufacturers, the two new chips are 15% better than previous generations. The Cortex-X4 also consumes 40% less energy, an essential characteristic to preserve the battery of smartphones longer.
Arm also said that the Cortex-X4 was produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing based on the Taiwanese giant’s N3E process and that it was a first in the sector.
The group, however, made it clear that it had no intention of directly marketing its own chips, while the Financial Times reported last month that Arm had plans to do so.
(Reporting Jane Lanhee Lee and Stephen Nellis; with Sam Nussey, French version Claude Chendjou)
Copyright © 2023 Thomson Reuters