MediaTek Dimensity 9500 Breaks 4 GHz With All-Big CPU Design

Mediatek, Qualcomm’s largest competitor in the world of Android smartphones, recently presented its new high-end platform for the top smartphones with the Dimensity 9500. The eight upper class CPU cores of the chip are to run with up to 4.21 gigahertz.

MediaTek relies on all-Big design with up to 4.21 GHz

At MediaTek, too, the 4-gigahertz border is finally left behind. With the Dimensity 9500, the Taiwanese chip manufacturer has presented a new top chip, which should soon be used in various high-end smartphones. The SoC could also find its place in tablets, after all, Samsung also installs the dimensity chips in its most expensive tablets. The Mediatek Dimensity 9500 is preparing to become a big throw for the Taiwaner, after all, some signs indicate that the chip with regard to single-core performance could be ahead of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 elite. Qualcomm is likely to keep the front of the multicore performance, but the benchmarks already indicate a slight advantage of MediaTek.

Arms new C1 cores in use for the first time

Mediatek is the first ARM customer to fully use the new ARM architectures of the type C1 Ultra, C1 Premium and C1-Pro. In the Dimensity 9500 there is a single ultra-core that runs at a maximum of 4.21 gigahertz. In addition, three premium cores with up to 3.5 GHz and four pro cores with a maximum of 2.7 GHz are on board in two other clusters. MediaTek wants to offer a good mix of maximum performance and at the same time sufficient energy efficiency.

Among other things, the manufacturer promises a 32 percent increased single-core performance, and at the same time by 37 percent reduced maximum power consumption of the entire CPU. The chip is manufactured as before at TSMC in its 3NM node. In addition to the new arm cores, MediaTek also relies on the new ARM Mali-G1 Ultra graphics unit, which is intended to come up with a doubled number of raytracing units and an increased maximum performance by a total of 33 percent.

Thanks to the increased graphics performance, the quality should now reach the level of inpatient game consoles. A 5G modem with up to 7.4 gigabits per second of theoretical downstream bandwidth in sub-6 GHz networks should also include further equipment of the dimensity. With a new Neural Processing Unit (NPU), Mediatek also wants to be able to enable faster handling of local AI models. Overall, MediaTek should still have slight disadvantages in terms of connectivity and energy efficiency, but gradually the gap is probably shrinking towards Qualcomm’s top SoC.

The performance of the Dimensity 9500 should also be interesting with a view to future CPUs for use in notebooks or even desktop systems, after all, the Taiwanese manufacturer has long worked with Nvidia on a platform for “AI PCs”. The first smartphones with the new Mediatek Dimensity 9500 are likely to be presented shortly by the Chinese manufacturers Oppo and Vivo.