MediaTek To Launch First ARMv9 SoC For Smartphones Later This Year

The chip manufacturer ARM presented its latest architecture with ARMv9 just a few days ago, on the basis of which the first new processors will soon come onto the market. It has now been announced that the Taiwanese chip developer MediaTek will introduce the first ARMv9 SoC later this year.

As ARM boss Simon Segars announced on the occasion of the virtual hardware trade fair Computex 2021, the first chip based on ARMv9 will come onto the market this year. MediaTek will be the first to introduce such a product, Segars said. MediaTek is one of the first partners to launch an ARMv9-based platform into the mass market.

For its part, MediaTek announced that they want to make the first smartphone with ARMv9 SoC available to end customers this year together with a partner. The new architecture will play a key role in the development of the next generation of 5G-enabled MediaTek Dimensity products, as it enables new capabilities, features, and user experiences, according to the chip manufacturer’s chief technology officer.

It is currently unclear which of the three new ARMv9 variants MediaTek will use for its first such chip. ARM presented three new designs. ARM Cortex-A510 is the new edition for energy-saving CPU cores, which is to be used in addition to ARM Cortex-A710 cores. The latter are high-end cores that are primarily designed for maximum performance. The ARM Cortex-X2 is also a new high-end variant that can be modified by custom designs and used for even more performance.

MediaTek has so far not offered any chips with the previous generation Cortex-X1, but only uses the ARM designs below that on the performance scale. This is unlikely to change with the first ARMv9-based chips since more effort is required to integrate Cortex-X2 cores into a SoC design.