The current SoC engraved in 4nm is already overloaded with Performance cores; its successor, which will benefit from 3 nm, will continue on this path, with a promising feature.
To equip the most high-end smartphones, Qualcomm and Mediatek have been in fierce competition for several years. The Snapdragon 8 Gen With its Dimensity 9400, successor to the Dimensity 9300, MediaTek will continue its momentum in 2023.
2024, transition to 3 nm for MediaTek
Every year, smartphone manufacturers release their latest trendy adult toys. Some brands, like Apple, whose latest achievement is the iPhone 15 series, rely on their own SoCs. The most advanced version, the A17 Pro of the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, has the distinction of being the first chip for smartphones engraved in 3 nm. Indeed, the Dimensity 9300 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – as well as the Exynos 2300 which equips certain Galaxy S24s – have remained at 4 nm.
The situation will change this year, with the transition to 3 nm for the Dimensity 9400 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. These SoCs will not be marketed for several months, but they are already getting people talking: that of the American company recently stood out in a benchmark, while that of the Taiwanese firm was mentioned by Rick Tsai, the current CEO, in front of our colleagues at China Times.
The allegations unfortunately remain quite vague for the moment; but unsurprisingly, the CEO promised “enhanced artificial intelligence capabilities”. Nothing crazy, since AI seems to be the magic formula of the moment, both for smartphones and for computers.
In practice, the AI performance of SoCs mainly depends on a specific engine – often called NPU for Neural Processing Unit – and a fast and substantial RAM.
The Dimensity 9300 can handle up to 33 billion parameters and supports LPDDR5T-9600 (Turbo) memory. According to the indices under Stable Diffusion 1.5 and Llama2 7B provided by the source, substantial performance gains should be expected.
A brand new Cortex-X5 core for the Dimensity 9400?
The other very interesting detail of this table concerns the CPU part. The Dimensity 9300 has an original design based on Performance cores only: four Cortex-X4s and four Cortex-A720s. No Cortex-A520 type efficiency cores therefore.
Still according to the China Times, MediaTek will maintain its strategy for the Dimensity 9400, and will even replace a Cortex-X4 with a Cortex-X5. In recent days, rumors have suggested that the Exynos 2500 would also be entitled to this new generation core, codenamed Blackhawk; ARM would make it official in the coming months. Projections show a very significant generational gap.
Based on the schedule of its predecessor, the Dimensity 9400 will be inducted during the fourth quarter of 2024.
The processor market is among the most dynamic in the world of tech, but also the most extensive. AMD/Intel references are numerous and often updated. It’s not easy to find your way in such a jungle: our selection should help you.
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Source : China Times
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