Arm rolls out new smartphone tech and MediaTek signs up to use
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29 May 2023 08:33AM
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Arm Ltd on Monday rolled out new chip technology for mobile devices and Taiwan smartphone chip maker MediaTek Inc said it will be using it for its next-generation product.
MediaTek, a longtime supplier of low- and mid-tier smart phone chips, has been pushing into the market to supply chips for premium smartphones, once dominated by rival Qualcomm Inc, which has been in a legal battle with Arm since last year over chip licensing agreements.
In Arm's blog announcing the new products, MediaTek said the new chips will help improve the performance of its next-generation smartphones.
Arm sells blueprints chip designers use to build their own hardware. It is launching Immortalis-G720, a chip for video image processing and AI applications, and the Cortex-X4, a processor that would be the brains of the mobile device at Taiwan's Computex conference.
Arm said both new chips have 15 per cent better performance than their previous generations, and the Cortex-X4 uses 40 per cent less power, key for smartphones that need to keep battery use time long.
Arm also said it has "taped out" the Cortex-X4 at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which means it had a chip manufactured at the factory, an expensive process usually done by chip designers that sell the final chip.
Asked by Reuters during a briefing if the tape out meant Arm was making a chip to sell instead of its long-time business model of providing the blueprint to chip makers, Chris Bergey, the general manager of Arm's Client Line of Business, said this was a step it sometimes takes to help test out new manufacturing technology for customers.
"Arm is not in the business of selling chips. That's not what we do," he said.
Last month the Financial Times reported that Arm was developing its own chip to showcase the capabilities of its designs.
Arm said the Cortex-X4 was taped out on TSMC's N3E process and said it was an industry first.
SoftBank Group Corp owned chip designer Arm on Monday rolled out new technology for mobile devices and Taiwan smartphone chip maker MediaTek Inc said it will be using it for its next-generation product.MediaTek, a longtime supplier of low- and mid-tier smart phone chips, has been pushing into...
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Could you soon be running AI tasks right on your smartphone? MediaTek says yes
MediaTek is working with Meta's Lllama 2 LLM to run generative AI tasks directly on mobile devices, no cloud-based processing required.
For on-device generative AI to access these datasets, mobile carriers would have to rely on low-latency edge networks -- small data centers/equipment closets with fast connections to the 5G towers. These data centers would reside directly on the carrier's network, so LLMs running on smartphones would not need to go through many network "hops" before accessing the parameter data.
Here we go: MediaTek is throwing down the gauntlet to Apple, Google (Nandan Nayampally recently liked the LinkedIn announcement of their Tensor G3 chip in the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro
), Qualcomm…
MediaTek’s New All Big Core Design for Flagship Dimensity 9300 Chipset Maximizes Smartphone Performance and Efficiency
Supercharged SoC supports generative AI on-device processing for seamless, secure edge AI experiences
Nov 6, 2023 - 7:30 PM
HSINCHU, Taiwan – Nov. 6, 2023 –
MediaTek today announced the Dimensity 9300, its newest flagship mobile chip with a one-of-a-kind All Big Core design. The unique configuration combines extreme performance with MediaTek’s industry-leading power efficiency to deliver unmatched user experiences in gaming, video capture, and on-device generative AI processing.
“The Dimensity 9300 is MediaTek’s most powerful flagship chip yet, bringing a huge boost in raw computing power to flagship smartphones with our groundbreaking All Big Core design,” said Joe Chen, President at MediaTek. “This unique architecture, combined with our upgraded on-chip AI Processing Unit, will usher in a new era of generative AI applications as developers push the limits with edge AI and hybrid AI computing capabilities.”
MediaTek’s next generation APU 790 AI processor is integrated into the Dimensity 9300 and designed to significantly improve generative AI performance and energy efficiency for faster and more secure edge computing. The APU 790 doubles the integer and floating-point operations performance, while reducing power consumption by 45%. By adapting the Transformer model for operator acceleration, the processing speed of the APU 790 is 8 times faster than the previous generation, with image generation within one second using Stable Diffusion.
MediaTek has developed mixed-precision INT4 quantization technology, which when combined with the company’s NeuroPilot memory hardware compression, can more efficiently utilize memory bandwidth and significantly reduce memory requirements for large AI models. The APU 790 provides support for NeuroPilot Fusion, which can continuously perform LoRA low-rank adaptation, and is capable of supporting large language models with 1B, 7B, and 13B parameters, with scalability up to 33B. As part of MediaTek’s rich AI ecosystem, the Dimensity 9300 will support cutting-edge mainstream large language models including Meta Llama 2, Baichuan 2, Baidu AI LLM, and more. This helps developers quickly and efficiently deploy multi-modal generative AI applications to provide users with generative AI experiences such as text, images, and music.
With the latest flagship GPU from Arm, the Arm® Immortalis™-G720, the Dimensity 9300 supercharges mobile gaming experiences. The Dimensity 9300 offers an almost 46% boost in GPU performance while at the same level of power consumption as the Dimensity 9200. Similarly impressive, the Dimensity 9300 provides a 40% reduction in GPU power consumption at the same level of performance as the previous generation chipset. This provides users with a big performance upgrade without sacrificing battery life. By combining the chipset’s extreme octa-core CPU design with MediaTek’s second generation hardware raytracing engine, smartphones powered by the Dimensity 9300 will deliver console-level global illumination effects at a smooth 60 FPS. Plus, this powerful chipset allows users to seamlessly multi-task so they can game and video stream at the same time or watch another video while they play.
The Dimensity 9300 reimagines mobile photography and video capture by combining a low-power AI-ISP and always-on HDR up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second (fps). The chipset also supports 4K at 30 fps cinematic mode with real-time bokeh tracking for professional quality bokeh enhancements, as well as 4K AI Noise Reduction (AI-NR) and AI processing on RAW photos and videos. Additionally, the Dimensity 9300 will support the new Ultra HDR format in Android 14 for the next generation of smartphones. Ultra HDR is a big step forward for mobile photography, making photos look much more vibrant while ensuring that files are compatible with the nearly universally-supported JPEG format. Further enhancing users’ photography, the Dimensity 9300 supports groundbreaking ambient light adaptive HDR recovery technology.
The Dimensity 9300 display system leverages the chipset’s powerful on-device AI capability to detect primary objects and background images in real-time. Coupled with the MiraVision Picture Quality (PQ) engine, it will dynamically adjust the optimal contrast, sharpness, and color of the primary objects, enhancing the overall image with a sense of depth creating lifelike video experiences, comparable to today’s Flagship DTVs.
Since connectivity is essential part of the user experience, the Dimensity 9300 supports Wi-Fi 7 speeds up to 6.5 Gbps and integrates MediaTek Xtra RangeTM Technology for better long-range connectivity. With MediaTek’s Multi-Link Hotspot technology, Dimensity 9300 also improves smartphone tethering speeds by up to 3X compared to competitive solutions.
Other key features of the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 include:
- Big core power: The Dimensity 9300 is built on TSMC’s third generation 4nm process with four Arm Cortex™-X4 cores with operating speeds of up to 3.25GHz and four Cortex-A720 cores operating up to 2.0GHz to maximize performance.
- Faster display speeds: The chipset supports WQHD at 180Hz and 4K up to 120Hz to provide stunning visuals, along with dual active display support for foldable form factors.
- Seamless 5G connectivity: The 5G R16 modem supports 4CC-CA Sub-6GHz and 8CC-CA mmWave with MediaTek’s UltraSave 3.0+ technology for improved power efficiency.
- Speedy memory: Dimensity 9300 supports LPDDR5T 9600Mbps memory, currently the highest speed available.
Equally important to these features centered around the user experience, the Dimensity 9300
offers superior security for flagship Android devices. The chipset’s privacy-focused security design resists physical attacks on data access by protecting important processes during boot-up and when performing secure computing. With the Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 processors built on the latest Armv9 architecture, the chipset supports Arm’s advanced Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) technology that makes it easier for developers to find memory related bugs before and after deployment. MTE, which Google has committed to supporting across its entire Android stack, will help keep users safe and accelerate the development process so OEMs can speed up time to market.
The first smartphones featuring the Dimensity 9300 chipset will be available in the market by end of 2023.
To learn more about MediaTek's Dimensity portfolio, please visit:
https://i.mediatek.com/mediatek-5g.
###
About MediaTek Inc.
MediaTek Incorporated (TWSE: 2454) is a global fabless semiconductor company that enables nearly 2 billion connected devices a year. We are a market leader in developing innovative systems-on-chip (SoC) for mobile, home entertainment, connectivity and IoT products. Our dedication to innovation has positioned us as a driving market force in several key technology areas, including highly power-efficient mobile technologies, automotive solutions and a broad range of advanced multimedia products such as smartphones, tablets, digital televisions, 5G, Voice Assistant Devices (VAD) and wearables. MediaTek empowers and inspires people to expand their horizons and achieve their goals through smart technology, more easily and efficiently than ever before. We work with the brands you love to make great technology accessible to everyone, and it drives everything we do. Visit
www.mediatek.com for more information.
MediaTek claims its new flagship mobile processor, the Dimensity 9300, will provide the performance, AI power, and multimedia capabilities needed to take on the best chips from Apple, Google, and Qualcomm.
uk.pcmag.com
MediaTek Challenges Qualcomm With AI-Assisted Dimensity 9300 Chip for Phones
MediaTek claims its new flagship mobile processor, the Dimensity 9300, will provide the performance, AI power, and multimedia capabilities needed to take on the best chips from Apple, Google, and Qualcomm.
by
Eric Zeman
|Nov 06, 2023
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
MediaTek today announced the Dimensity 9300, its top chip for high-end
Android smartphones and
tablets. The 9300 arrives in a market full of capable mobile processors that target top-tier devices. What sets it apart are its new "all big core CPU" design for blazing speeds, re-engineered GPU for on-device AI, and boosted media engine for cinematic video capture. Here's what you need to know.
Extreme Performance
MediaTek is taking a different tack with its CPU. It's relying on TSMC's third-generation 4nm process. The Dimensity 9300 employs four ultra-large cores and four big cores to maximize power output. Competing CPUs, such as the
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's Kryo CPU, mix and match premium, performance, and efficiency cores to balance power with battery life.
The 9300 features four Cortex-X4 premium cores at up to 3.25GHz and four Cortex-A720 performance cores at up to 2.0GHz. MediaTek says this octa-core arrangement packs a 15% increase in single-core performance and a 40% increase in multi-core performance all while drawing 33% less power than the company's
Dimensity 9200. The CPU supports up to 8MB L3 cache and 10MB system cache with LPDDR5 memory running at up to 9,600Mbps. This means the chip has plenty of oomph.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The next piece of the Dimensity 9300 puzzle is the APU 790 AI processor, which MediaTek says is meant to generate faster, more secure artificial intelligence calculations on the device itself rather than the cloud. The company says the APU 790 doubles integer and floating-point operations and reduces power use by 45% at the same time.
On a whole, the APU is 8x faster than the previous APU and can generate images via Stable Diffusion as rapidly as one second. MediaTek is employing the Meta Llama 2, Baudi Ernie-3.5, and Baichuan AI large language models and can handle 7 billion parameters at 20 tokens per second and 13 billion parameters with 16GB of RAM. Peak rates of 33 billion parameters are possible with an additional, unspecified amount of RAM. In other words, the 9300 can assist with creative AI applications on-device.
MediaTek also overhauled the Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU, which now has 12 cores and produces 46% better
ray-tracing performance. The company claims it can handle "console level" illumination effects and still save 40% memory bandwidth. In early benchmarks, MediaTek suggests the GPU runs 23% faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in tests like GFXBench Manhattan 3.1.
In order to tackle the high-end media-capture capabilities of the 8 Gen 3, Apple's A17 Pro, and Google's Tensor G3, MediaTek tweaked the image-signal processor with what it calls second-generation semantic analysis aided by AI. It supports always-on HDR for 4K video capture with depth-of-field and bokeh effects in video. It handles up to 16 object segmentation for advanced editing, standalone optical image stabilization for sharp zoom shots, and up to three-mic HDR audio noise reduction. The chip also supports higher-tier displays. It can handle 4K screens at up to 120Hz and 2,560 by 1,440 screens at up to 180Hz, in addition to Google's Ultra HDR support on devices running
Android 14
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The Dimensity 9300 packs a modern connectivity suite to ensure the phones and tablets of 2024 always have a strong signal. To start, the chip supports 3GPP Rel. 16 with up to 7Gbps downloads on sub-6GHz and mmWave
5G networks. The modem includes
Wi-Fi 7, which, though not yet generally available to the public, will be during the lifetime of the 9300. Features on board include 320MHz of bandwidth, extended range, multi-link hotspot, and a combined Wi-Fi/Bluetooth UltraSave receiver. These radios all keep the 9300 current with its SoC peers and the networks of today and tomorrow.
MediaTek says the Dimensity 9300 will appear in smartphones before the end of the year, which is approximately the same timeline announced for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. MediaTek's SoC is likely to find itself in phones targeting China and similar markets. The company has not named its launch partners, but with just a few weeks left in the year those companies and their devices are sure to come to light soon.
About Eric Zeman
I’m PCMag’s managing editor for consumer electronics content, overseeing an experienced team of reviewers and product testers. I’ve been covering tech for more than 22 years. Prior to PCMag, I worked at outlets such as Android Authority, Fortune, InformationWeek, and Phonescoop.
