Back in October last year, the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset was officially unveiled, which was built on the TSMC’s 3nm N3E process, and it featured an all-big core CPU architecture, which included one Cortex-X925 core, three Cortex-X4 cores, and four Cortex-A720 cores. While it is too early to expect the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 to launch, the key specifications of this SOC have surfaced online, revealing some big upgrades.
The MediaTek Dimensity 9500 is manufactured on the TSMC’s 3nm N3P process. The N3P process is an improved version of the N3E process, so it results in better performance and power efficiency. The CPU has the same all-big core architecture as the Dimensity 9400 but there are upgrades in the CPU cores. There are three types of cores used in the CPU, codenamed Travis, Alto, and Gelas. It is reported that Travis and Alto are the codename for ARM’s new generation X9 series cores, while Gelas is the codename for ARM’s new generation A7 series cores.
There is a new Immortalis ‘Drage’ GPU, and the L3 cache has increased to 16MB from 12MB. The GPU has an improved ray-tracing performance and a reduced power consumption. The new SOC will support LPDDR5X RAM with speeds up to 10667Mbps (the same as its predecessor), and 4-lane UFS 4.1 storage.
Finally, the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 has an improved NPU, which delivers speeds of up to 100 trillion operations per seconds, or TOPS. For comparison, the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset featured an NPU that delivered speeds of around 50 TOPS. So, this is a massive upgrade in the AI performance.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite currently leads the AI Benchmark among mobile SOCs, but with such an upgrade to the NPU, the Dimensity 9500 should easily beat it. But, we should not forget that the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 will be launched around the same time when we get the Dimensity 9500. So, it would be interesting to see how the two chipsets compare.