MediaTek says its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 rival will be a beast (Updated)

Update: May 30, 2023 (2:15 AM ET): A long-time leaker has dished out apparent Dimensity 9300 details, including CPU information. And it turns out that the chipset might not have little cores at all, going for an aggressive setup instead. You can read our full news story with all the details here.

Original article: May 29, 2023 (7:12 AM ET): MediaTek’s Dimensity 9200 is one of the most powerful smartphone processors of 2023, taking the fight to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in a few areas. Now, the Taiwanese chipmaker has shed more light on its next-generation chipset.

MediaTek announced on Weibo that its next-generation flagship Dimensity chipset would be powered by Arm’s newly announced Cortex-X4 CPU core, Cortex-A720 CPU core, and Arm Immortalis Mali-G720 GPU. Check out the accompanying video below.

This isn’t a surprise, as MediaTek has utilized the latest CPU and GPU tech in its flagship silicon for the past two years. But the news means that you can expect the next-generation Dimensity chipset (presumably called the Dimensity 9300) to be a major rival to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor.

The Taiwanese chipmaker also noted that the new chipset will offer a “groundbreaking” architecture, adding that the processor will enable improved multitasking and better performance in “heavily” multi-threaded apps and games.

The curious case of the little core

MediaTek didn’t mention whether its new processor will use the brand-new Cortex-A520 little CPU core which debuted alongside the Cortex-X4 and A720. This could be a case of the company not wanting to reveal too many major details right now. It’s also theoretically possible (but unlikely) that the new processor simply doesn’t have little cores, although we haven’t seen a major flagship chipmaker ditch these little cores before.

In saying so, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 switched from four little CPU cores to three (adding a fourth medium core instead). Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 leaks also point to the company switching to just two little cores (adding a fifth medium CPU core). So it certainly seems like there’s a trend to reduce the number of little cores, but cutting them all together would be an aggressive move and potentially have ramifications for efficiency and multi-core performance.

Nevertheless, MediaTek says the Dimensity 9300 (or whatever the new chipset is called) will bring major performance and efficiency gains. You can read our guide to Arm’s next-generation CPU and GPU technology for all the details on what to expect from next year’s flagship chips.