Introduction

Amidst a lot of hype and rumours, MediaTek last week announced its flagship Dimensity 9000 chipset during its Tech Summit. The Dimensity 9000 will be the first smartphone chipset that will be built on the 4nm process. This new chipset is set to provide serious competition to its counterpart Snapdragon 8Gx Gen1 which will be announced in the coming weeks by Qualcomm in their tech summit.

Over the last few years, MediaTek has been facing a lot of competition from other flagship SoC products launched by Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, etc. MediaTek’s previous flagship SoC which were launched a few years ago under the name Helio X20 and X30, did not receive as much success as the company wanted. So, they started focusing again on the premium and mid-range segments. After experiencing back-to-back years of gain in market share in the above-mentioned segment as well as the 5G SoC segment, MediaTek is now aiming to achieve a position of leadership in the flagship SoC market. This position would be possible through its launch of Dimensity 9000 which will give tough competition in their war of MediaTek vs Snapdragon.

High-performance cores for giving snapdragon 888 tough competition

MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset would be equipped with three sets of cores. A primary Cortex-X2 core, with full 1MB of L2 cache, and runs at up to 3.05 GHz. Three Cortex-A710 cores which would run at 2.85 GHz and lastly, four Cortex-A510 cores which would operate in more power-efficient modes.
The clock frequency is higher for Dimensity 9000 as compared to designs of X1 cores like Snapdragon 888 which clocks at around 2.86 GHz. This high-performance core is expected to provide tough competition to Snapdragon 888 due to its frequency advantage. This new chipset is expected to roughly have a score of over 4000 on the Geekbench Multi-Core Benchmark, which measures the multi-core power of the processor.

Gaming with dimensity 9000 will be fun

Dimensity 9000 would be the first SoC that would be equipped with the new Mali-G710 GPU. This new GPU is almost comparable to the Google Tensor GPU in terms of size and performance. In addition to that, it may have an expected 20% performance boost due to presence of generational IP improvements.

The other flagship that launched in this year had below-par gaming efficiency. MediaTek has noted that along with a powerful octa-core processor, the new chipset would have a powerful graphics processor. It would support ray-tracing (more realistic reflections and lighting support in Android games), through Software development kit (SDK) using Vulkan for Android. This would definitely make gaming fun and a never-before experience for the user.

Display and refresh rate support

Assuming a full HD+ display on this new processor, it will support a 180 Hz refresh rate. The WQHD+ display is also supported which has a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz, which is still very impressive. It will also be the first smartphone chip to support Bluetooth 5.3. Other features provided in terms of connectivity would be Wi-Fi 6E and 5G support for the smartphone.

Upcoming phones with Dimensity 9000

A few models by the smartphone manufacturer Realme, Poco, and Oneplus are expected to be upcoming phones that would feature Dimensity 9000. The smartphone with this chipset would probably hit the market in February next year.

It would be appearing in phones in Asia, Europe, and Latin America where the company has a dominating position and good market hold.

AI capabilities will be better than Google tensor

The new Mali-G710 GPU that is a significant feature of Dimensity 9000, has a per-core performance approximately equal to two G78 cores. This would mean that in terms of size and performance, this new GPU is better than the Google Tensor G78MP20 GPU by an expected additional 20% performance boost due to generational IP improvements.

New ISP for better images

This chipset will allow capturing of 4K HDR video using upto three cameras simultaneously as it is the first chipset to have 18-bit image signal processor (ISP). This would also mean that it will be possible for the user to capture still photos using up to a massive 320 MP sensor.The ISP is a massive 9 Gigapixels per second which will allow capturing 150 MP images at 60 frames per second. It also has the ability to capture two 8K streams at 120fps. All in all, the camera resolutions of the flagship devices are expected to increase by providing more pixel sites for processing and dynamic range potential for both still image capture and video capture.

Mediatek vs Snapdragon - The battle of real performance

Through the announcement of Dimensity 9000, MediaTek has shown its commitment to create one-of-its kind flagship SoC which would be a perfect opportunity to lock horns with the likes of Snapdragon. This chipset is equipped with a lot of features and specifications that haven't been introduced in the market before by any other player. It includes a new Mali-G710 GPU, A710’s and A510’s CPUs, camera ISP claims, first Arm9 SoC with Cortex X2, and first TSMC N4 silicon design in the industry.

The smartphone manufacturers would be able to provide excellent performance in the upcoming phones through the use of Dimensity 9000. MediaTek have introduced the features which would position them very well and allow them to compete against the chipset by Snapdragon that is due to release soon.