MediaTek's next flagship smartphone chip will be very powerful; here's why

MediaTek's next flagship chipset following the Dimensity 9200 is going to be a powerhouse. That's because it will be powered by Arm's new high-performance Cortex-X4 CPU core, balanced Cortex-A720 CPU core, and Immortalis-G720 GPU. MediaTek made the announcement on Weibo in the form of a video that you can view here. The announcement didn't mention Arm's new Cortex-A520 efficiency cores which deliver as much as a 22% boost in efficiency over the Cortex-A515 core. Arm announced its new cores and three new GPU components last night.

MediaTek's current flagship chip, the Dimensity 9200, is right up there with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on the list of this year's most powerful application processors (AP). And while Arm's new cores are expected to be employed in the 2024 flagship Snapdragon AP, the next Dimensity flagship (possibly named the Dimensity 9300) should be extremely competitive with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC.

Arm says that the Immortalis-G720 GPU increases performance by 15% while using 40% less memory bandwidth. The Cortex-X4 delivers a 15% increase in performance compared with the previous generation's Cortex-X3 high-performance CPU core. The Cortex-A720 cores are 20% more efficient than the Cortex-A715.

It isn't clear whether MediaTek ignored the Cortex-A520 efficiency core on purpose or if it was just being coy. Previous leaks contend that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset will feature one high-efficiency (or "Prime") CPU core, five performance (or "Balanced) CPU cores, and just two efficiency CPU cores.

MediaTek says that its next flagship smartphone chip will have "groundbreaking architecture and innovations." The chip will meet the demands of multitasking, multi-threaded apps, and mobile games. The new cores that will be used by MediaTek's next flagship smartphone chip will "enable users to do more at once than ever before," and will make the experience of using a smartphone "smoother and faster."

The Taiwan-based chipmaker usually relies on the world's leading foundry, TSMC, to manufacture its chips although we might not see the cutting-edge 3nm process node employed for the next flagship MediaTek smartphone chip. That's most likely due to the high price of the wafers used for 3nm production which are currently priced at $20,000 each. Wafer prices for 3nm chips are expected to decline next year.