MediaTek to show off new chips at CES

Low-priced chip manufacturer MediaTek says that it packed some new silicon in its suitcase for the trip to Las Vegas for CES. With wearables poised to take off as the next hot mobile category, the company will introduce the world's smallest SoC, which it dubs Aster. The small design is perfect for smartwatches, a number of which are expected to be released this year. It will also show off the first "multimode inductive Qi and resonance wireless charging SOC".

In addition, the Taiwan based MediaTek is expected to show off the MT6290 LTE modem. This chip will support LTE Category 4 with the potential to provide downlink speeds as fast as 150Mbps. The advantage for technology OEMs is that the design is perfectly compatible with existing MediaTek LTE chips, allowing handset manufacturers to easily work the chip into the designs of their new phones.

Also expected to be displayed at CES is the new MT8135 SoC. This includes a quad-core CPU using the big.LITTLE architecture. That means that at any one time, one set of two cores is in operation. The Cortex A-15 cores are used for the heavy lifting, while the Cortex A-7 cores are used for light housekeeping. The MT8135 also includes the PowerVR Series 6 GPU which is also found in the Apple iPhone 5s.

Also at CES will be the world's first true octa-core processor, the MT6592 which MediaTek first introduced last July.

source: MediaTek via IntoMobile