Why MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300 chip might launch without “small” cores

MediaTek Dimension 9300 — the Taiwanese chipmaker’s rumored next-gen flagship processor — could launch without “small” CPU cores. According to a tipster, MediaTek’s successor to the Dimensity 9200 SoC will not feature Arm’s latest Cortex-A520 efficiency cores. Meanwhile, the chipset’s power consumption is said to have dropped by 50 percent compared to the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chipset. MediaTek has already confirmed some details about the launch of its next flagship chipset.

Tipster Digital Chat Station (translated from Chinese) recently claims on Weibo that the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 will come with four Cortex-X4 “super” cores and four Cortex-A720 “big” cores. This suggests that the next flagship chipset out MediaTek will bring a very remarkable change in the design of smartphone chips – almost all smartphone chips released today are equipped with “Performance” and “Efficiency” cores.

On the other hand, MediaTek confirmed on Weibo that its next flagship chipset with “breakthrough architecture” – expected to launch as the Dimensity 9300 – would include the latest Arm Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 cores paired with the Immortalis Mali-G720 GPU. The chipmaker’s post doesn’t mention the Cortex-A520 core, which appears to be consistent with Digital Chat Station’s prediction that the chip won’t have small cores.

The tipster claims that MediaTek’s upcoming chipset will offer up to 50 percent lower power consumption compared to the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC of the time started last November. In a later post, she claim that the sample CPU schedule is “still 1+3+4,” suggesting the company could treat three of the four Cortex-X4 cores as mid-frequency cores and all four Cortex-A720 cores as low-frequency cores.

The incorporation of multiple “super” cores is not common in Android smartphones, and only the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series of smartphones are equipped with two Cortex-X1 cores. However, the tipster claims that the Dimensity 9300 chip has a higher running score than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Qualcomm’s Rumored flagship successor to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that will power most of the flagship smartphones to be launched in 2023. The Gen 3 chip is tipped It features an advanced Cortex-X4 Prime core with a peak clock speed of 3.7 GHz, as well as five performance cores and two efficiency cores.