MediaTek, the Taiwanese smartphone chip giant, recently revealed some details about its upcoming high-end processor, the Dimensity 9400, which is expected to hit the market in the fourth quarter of 2024. This is a highly anticipated chip, as it will be the first from MediaTek to be made with the TSMC's 3nm manufacturing process, the same one that Apple will use for its iPhone 16.
MediaTek Dimensity 9400 will be a bomb, the first info on the 3nm chip leaks
The Dimensity 9400 will be the successor to the Dimensity 9300, which launched in November last year and features an unusual configuration: four high-performance Cortex-X4 cores and four low-power Cortex-A720 cores, without any intermediate cores. This choice has allowed the Dimensity 9300 to achieve high performance, but also to consume and heat a lot.
The CEO of MediaTek, Cai Lixing, stated that the Dimensity 9400 will be even more powerful and intelligent than its predecessor, thanks to the use of new ARM architectures for the CPU and GPU. According to initial rumors, the chip will have one Cortex-X5 core as the main core, three Cortex-X4 cores as secondary cores and four Cortex-A720 cores as tertiary cores. The Cortex-X5 core is an absolute novelty, as it has not yet been officially announced by ARM.
The clock frequencies of the Dimensity 9400 are not yet known, but it is assumed that they will be higher than those of the Dimensity 9300, thanks to the 3 nm process which should guarantee greater energy efficiency and lower thermal dissipation. TSMC's 3nm process is divided into two variants: N3B and N3E. MediaTek will use the second, which is more advanced and offers a 15% improvement in performance and 30% in consumption compared to the first.
The Dimensity 9400 will also have an improved neural processing unit (NPU), capable of generating text and images faster with AI models such as Llama2 7B and Stable Diffusion v1.5. Furthermore, according to some reports, MediaTek has partnered with Nvidia to integrate a GeForce GPU in its chip, instead of the usual ARM Mali/Immortalis GPU. This could make the Dimensity 9400 a formidable opponent for Samsung's Exynos 2500, which is expected to have a single Cortex-X5 core, accompanied by Cortex-A730 and A520 cores, and an AMD-based GPU.
