MediaTek released a 4nm chip to compete with Qualcomm and pull the platform of domestic mobile phone brands

(Source: Visual China)

On December 16, following the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen1, MediaTek also released its flagship chip, the Tianji 9000.

In terms of configuration, snapdragon 8 Gen1 and Tianji 9000 both use 4nm process and three-cluster architecture scheme, and are equipped with a 3.0GHz X2 large core, but Tianji 9000 is more obvious in terms of memory support, and Qualcomm's Adreno 730 GPU is better than Tianji 9000 in terms of performance.

In the choice of new technologies, the strategies of both sides also have their own emphases, MediaTek's Tianji 9000 has not yet been equipped with millimeter wave, the price will be more advantageous; Qualcomm's flagship chip has both millimeter wave, Sub-6 GHz frequency band, its advantage is that it is more closely coordinated with mobile phone manufacturers.

However, although the process is 4nm, the Tianji 9000 is foundry by TSMC, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 cooperates with Samsung. "Unlike the general perception of the outside world, Samsung Process has actually improved rapidly in recent years, and the gap with TSMC has been very small." However, in terms of yield, power consumption, heat generation and other aspects, TSMC's performance is indeed better. Mobile phone industry analyst Yuan Ke analyzed.

In fact, Samsung has always wanted to close the gap with TSMC's foundry level, and the gap is mainly due to the maturity of key process processes. At present, Samsung officially announced that it will establish a chip production base in Texas, USA, costing $17 billion and putting into production as soon as 2024.

In Yuan Ke's view, the wave of chip shortages in consumer electronics is still continuing, and the reason why Qualcomm chose to cooperate with Samsung in recent years is also because TSMC has prioritized more production capacity to Apple's A series. This also means that MediaTek chooses TSMC's 4nm process, or it will encounter the problem of limited production capacity.

Qualcomm and MediaTek have always been old rivals, but MediaTek has more business from the low-end market, and the brand label of the cottage machine has not been completely erased. But it is also with the strength of the low-end market that MediaTek surpassed Qualcomm for the first time in its shipments in the third quarter of 2020 to become the world's largest supplier of smartphone chips.

In recent years, MediaTek has tried to squeeze into the high-end, but either its own strategic swing, reluctant to market share, or the product is not powerful, consumers do not pay.

But the advantage this time is that domestic mobile phone manufacturers also hope to get rid of their excessive dependence on Qualcomm. Therefore, at the Tianji 9000 conference, OPPO, Xiaomi, Vivo and Glory four major manufacturers came to the platform, and even the mobile phone manufacturers grabbed the first launch, and the previous mobile phone manufacturers, when using MediaTek chips, will basically be low-key processing, will not be emphasized. (Written by Kang Jialin, editor/ You Yong)