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Today MediaTek formally announced their new flagship chipset which looks set to bring back MediaTek into the world of flagship devices with some impressive specs.
This chipset was the “first” 5G chipset to be announced all the way back in May, it seemed like a market stunt, just to get the news out, with no details of the spec announced at the time apart from the technologies used.
Now we know the full specification, so how does it compare against all the other flagship chipsets that will feature in our phones next year?
At the moment the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 so any specs mentioned are purely speculative.
Manufacturing Process
It probably comes as no surprise that this uses the 7nm fabrication process just like all the other flagship chipsets. The Helio G90T used a 12nm process, so at least Mediatek has significantly improved things in this regards.
CPU
The MediaTek Dimensity 1000 uses an octa-core CPU with a dual cluster 4×4 design making it a little different than the competing models.
The exact specification is:
- 4x Cortex A77 @ 2.6GHz
- 4x Cortex A55 @ 2.0GHz
All the other brands (assuming Qualcomm sticks to their same design) have a tri-cluster design with either 1 or 2 performance cores.
The Samsung Exynos 990 uses:
- 2x Exynos M5 @ ? GHz
- 2x Cortex A76 @ ? GHz
- 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.95GHz
The frequencies have no been revealed for this CPU yet. This will also be the last chipset to feature the custom M cores, and they will switch to the Arm Coretex cores for their primary cores in the future.
Purely speculative, but it is expected the Qualcomm will have:
- 1x Kryo 585 Gold (A77) @?
- 3x Kryo 585 Gold (A77) @?
- 4x Kryo 585 Silver (A55)?
Leaked have indicated this would be 2.84GHz/2.42GHz/1.80GHz but those frequencies line up with the last generation SD855 so I am sceptical how accurate it is.
The odd one of the group is the Huawei Kirin 990 5G which does not feature the new Coretex A77, instead, using last years A76. It has been reported that Huawei has said the reason for this was that it is hard to achieve high frequencies on the A77 using 7nm. The relatively low frequencies of the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 could confirm this, but with them using a single cluster of A77 they probably had no choice to use lower clocks.
GPU
The MediaTek Dimensity 1000 will make use of the Mali-G77 and features 9 cores and the frequencies have not been revealed.
The only chipset with an easily comparable spec is the Exynos 990 which has Mali G77MP11 also with undisclosed frequencies but the higher core count should give it an advantage.
Just like the CPU, Huawei Hisilicon has chosen to use last years tech with the Mali-G76 MP16 – the increased core count should help make up for its older tech, but it will be interesting to see how well it performs in real life when phones with all the chipsets have been released.
Lastly is Qualcomm which we assume will use the Adreno 650
Artificial Intelligence – APU/NPU
MediaTek also employs its own third-generation neural processing unit which it calls “APU 3.0”. They claim they have doubled the performance over its previous generation chipsets.
The Samsung uses a Dual NPU with DSP capable of 10 TOPs – not much else has been revealed here.
The Huawei Kirin 990 5G has 2+1 NPU with real-time cloud AI. With this chipset being out in the wild we know roughly how well it performs. Looking at ai-benchmark.com, it currently dominates the charts scoring more than double the Snapdragon 855 Plus.
Nothing is known about the Qualcomm solution here.
Memory
MediaTek has not revealed what memory technology is being used. Samsung was the first company to announce LPDDR5 on the Exynos 990 and this runs at 2750MHz.
The fact that MediaTek has not mentioned LPDDR5 likely will mean they will continue to use the older LPDDR4.
The Huawei Kirin 990 5G uses LPDDR4X @ 2133MHz
Nothing is known about Qualcomm but I would expect them to use LPDDR5.
Imaging / ISP
The Meditek comes with a capable ISP that should compete with other flagships. They have announced the new SoC will support camera sensors with resolutions of up to 80MP at 24fps, or multi-camera setups with 32+16MP sensors. Media encoding capabilities fall in at 4K60.
The Exynos has support for a single 108MP sensor and dual 25MP sensors.
Huawei has just stated the Kirin 990 5G features a new ISP 5.0
5G Support
Each manufacturer approach to 5G has been interesting. MediaTek is perhaps taking the most radical approach and this is the first chipset to have an integrated 5G modem with no 4G alternative. So all phones with the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 should be 5G.
The Samsung Exynos 990 went a different route than expected. This lacks an integrated modem, giving them the flexibility to add whatever they want. The 5G functionality will come from the Exynos Modem 5123. They haven’t stated that there will be none 5G Exynos 990 phone, but I would expect so.
Huawei made it look like the Kirin 990 5G was the only option during their keynote, then snuck in a lesser specced none 5G Kirin 990 right at the end.
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