The most fierce Dimensity core was first exposed, and Apple A18 Pro was overturned before it was released?

In November last year, MediaTek held a global press conference in Shenzhen, and the new flagship mobile platform Dimensity 9300 was officially unveiled. As the last manufacturer in the field of mobile semiconductors, the Dimensity 9300 is like the last dessert at the dinner party, delicious and greasy.

In the past few months, Xiaolei has experienced vivo X100, X100 Pro, and OPPO Find X7, three new phones equipped with MediaTek Dimensity 9300 mobile platform, and as mentioned in their respective reviews, there are almost no regrets in terms of performance.

I have to find a pity from it, that is, the manufacturing process.

The Apple A17 Pro chip, released two months earlier than the Dimensity 9300, uses TSMC's latest 3nm process technology, although in official data, the final performance of this chip is only about 10% higher than that of the previous generation. However, subsequent tests by many media came to a common conclusion: it was Apple that pulled, not the 3nm process.

(Source: MediaTek)

If MediaTek can also eat the dividends of TSMC's 3nm process, can it go further? In MediaTek's latest leaked running score data, we have found the answer.

The initial engineering machine equipped with the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 mobile platform scored 3.44 million points in the Antutu evaluation, and the GeekBench 6 single-core score was 2776 and the multi-core score was 11739, which was also the first time that the Dimensity platform broke through 1w points in the multi-core score.

(Source: Weibo)

Compared with the Dimensity 9300 mobile platform, the single-core is 26% higher and the multi-core is 55% higher, which is the most aggressive performance among all the next-generation flagship chips that have been exposed so far.

Of course, according to the plan, the Dimensity 9400 will not officially meet us until the end of this year, and it seems a bit premature to shout "awesome" now.

Dimensity 9400, a bit fierce

According to official sources, the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 mobile platform is expected to use TSMC's 3nm process technology, equipped with 1 ARM public Cortex-X5 super core, 3 Cortex-X4 super cores and 4 Cortex-A720 medium cores. If you have paid attention to the core solution of Dimensity 9300, you will definitely find that why MediaTek has "secretly" changed the formula again?

The Dimensity 9300 caused a lot of controversy when it was first exposed, after all, the flagship chip completely abandoned the small core, which is a challenge with a lot of pressure, such as the energy efficiency ratio, and the ideal effect can only be maximized if it is properly controlled. However, in the actual tests of the vivo X100 series, we also found that in the extreme game scenes, the Dimensity 9300 is still satisfactory overall, except for some occasional frame rate fluctuations, and the heat control is also excellent.

(Source: Weibo)

Looking back, the Dimensity 9400 replaced a super-large core with a Cortex-X5 super-large core on the basis of the previous "4 super-large cores + 4 large cores", which shows the degree of radicality. Of course, TSMC's 3nm process technology is expected to become more mature after nearly two years of polishing, and it is reasonable for MediaTek to want to let go of Yibo.

(Source: Weibo)

2023 is known as the "first year of AI" in the industry, and the shadow of AI has emerged from chip manufacturers, smart terminals, cloud service providers, and almost any link that ultimately points to the consumer market. So, after looking at the Dimensity 9400 benchmark data, I seem to be more concerned about how much performance support it will provide in the AI part.

Take the Dimensity 9300 mobile platform released last year as an example, it has a built-in seventh-generation AI processor APU 790, which is designed for generative AI and can run a large model with 33 billion parameters. And in terms of energy consumption, thanks to this chip, the Dimensity 9300 consumes 45% less power compared to the previous generation, but the performance of integer and floating-point arithmetic is twice that of the previous generation.

(Source: Lei Technology)

Although the Dimensity 9400 cannot be seen in the running score data, MediaTek CEO Cai Lixing revealed at the event that he is very optimistic about the new round of replacement brought by the large model on the end side, and will pay more attention to the improvement of computing power in this regard.

In any case, the Dimensity 9000 series has made MediaTek emerge in the high-end smartphone market with a clear direction, making steady progress, and making people have more expectations for each iteration and upgrade.

In the high-end market, is Dimensity really stable?

MediaTek first gained recognition in the high-end smartphone market, roughly when the Dimensity 9000 mobile platform came out, at that time, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo all used the Dimensity 9000+ chip on contemporary flagship models, and the effect was also quite significant.

(Source: Xiaomi Forum)

But it wasn't until the Dimensity 9300 mobile platform released last year that Xiaolei really felt that MediaTek may really have become in the high-end market.

On the one hand, the Dimensity 9300's performance is really top-notch. The configuration of this flagship chip, as mentioned earlier, is the scheme of "4 super cores + 4 large cores", and the peak performance is excellent. Taking the Antutu running score as an example, the vivo X100 Pro equipped with Dimensity 9300 can easily break through 2 million points.

On the other hand, games, AI and other peripheral configurations are piled up. The Dimensity 9300 supports hardware-level ray tracing on the mobile side in the game part, and supports high-quality mobile games such as "Dark Zone Breakout" and "Sword and Fairy World" at the first launch;

(Source: OPPO)

On the whole, it is not surprising that the Dimensity 9300 can be firmly chosen by manufacturers. The first two models of the vivo X100 series are equipped with the Dimensity 9300 mobile platform, the OPPO Find X7 series also has a place for MediaTek in the standard version, and Redmi will also release the K70 Ultra in March and April. From the perspective of market performance, these two flagship series are also remarkable: vivo X100 series sales exceeded 1 billion in the first 6 hours of sales, and the first sales of OPPO Find X7 series were 402% of the previous generation.

But it's a pity that MediaTek's coverage in the high-end market is not very wide, and only three brands are using the Dimensity 9300 so far, among which the only models that are really positioned as high-end are vivo X100 Pro and OPPO Find X7. How to make more flagship models use Dimensity core, this is what MediaTek needs to consider next.

Dimensity 9400, can it help MediaTek win a wider market?

In the past three years, MediaTek's share in the high-end market has risen, but on the whole, its coverage in the low-end level is much wider than that of the high-end.

However, MediaTek CFO Gu Dawei responded to the relevant controversy in the third quarter of 2023 earnings call, saying that MediaTek's revenue from flagship chips in 2023 is roughly around $1 billion, which is considerable. However, the brand coverage is not wide enough, which still makes consumers' confidence somewhat insufficient.

(Source: iQOO)

From the manufacturer's point of view, most brands did not establish cooperation with MediaTek on flagship models in the early days, and although the Dimensity 9000 series mobile platform has achieved good results since its inception, some manufacturers are still on the sidelines. The entire smartphone market is "involuted", and there are not many brands that dare to take this step.

There are also improvements, such as the vivo X100 series debuted two flagship models only equipped with Dimensity 9300 chips, which is enough to see that MediaTek has begun to establish enough confidence in the high-end market for the brand.

The new inflection point may be the upcoming Dimensity 9400.

The smartphone market in 2024 is full of unknowns, such as the establishment of the concept of AI mobile phones, the performance pressure brought about by the launch of a large number of high-quality mobile games, and the general belief in the industry that the wave of replacement is coming. It can be seen from the Dimensity 9300 that MediaTek is ready for the next unknown.

Write at the end

As an ordinary consumer, Xiaolei is still very much looking forward to MediaTek getting a piece of the pie in the high-end mobile phone market, not for anything else, just to be able to have more diverse choices.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400 mobile platform uses TSMC's 3nm process technology and ARM's new public X5 super-large core, and its progress in AI is also traceable. It can be said that compared to how many triple-A masterpieces the A18 Pro can support, I am more looking forward to whether the Dimensity 9400 can make more surprising upgrades in the next generation of flagship phones in terms of smoothness, AI, imaging and stable extreme performance.