MediaTek Dimensity 9200 Technology Overview

Just before its Executive Summit, which starts today, MediaTek announced its flagship SoC, the Dimensity 9200, the successor of the MediaTek Dimensity 9000. Alongside better performance and enhanced power efficiency, the new chipset brings many “firsts” to the mobile semiconductor industry.

The Dimensity 9200 is the first chip made with the TSMC 2nd Gen 4nm Process and to feature an  Arm Cortex-X3 primary core clocked at 3.05 GHz based on the Gen 2 ARMv9 architecture.

8 Cores CPU for performance and power efficiency

The heart of this system-on-chip (SoC) is a heterogeneous CPU cluster combining 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The Cortex-X3 (3.05 GHz) and 3 Cortex-A715 (2.85 GHz) are used for the workload that requires performance, while the 4 Cortex-A510 (1.8GHz) are selected by the cluster scheduler and OS thread scheduler to process less compute-intensive tasks.

As measured by MediaTek using GeekBench 5.0, the single-core performance has increased by 12%, and the multi-core performance is 10% better than the Dimensity 9000. The improved power efficiency is the most impressive gain over the previous generation. The new chip consumes 25% less power despite the increased performance.

The CPU cores access speedy LPDDR5X RAM with up to 8,533Mbps of bandwidth, an industry first offered by MediaTek in the Dimensity 9200.

For storing data permanently, the UFS 4.0 with Multi Circular Queue (MCQ) storage communication protocol offers the fastest data transmission currently available for direct access to storage.

Immortalis-G715, 11 Cores GPU with hardware ray tracing

The Dimensity 9000’s graphics processor Mali G710 offered software-based ray tracing, and the new Immortalis-G715 GPU features hardware-based ray tracing (RT).

We have not seen specific ray tracing performance indicators, but MediaTek’s messaging suggests that RT could be used in 3D games for basic use cases such as soft shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion.

MediaTek’s GFXBench Manhattan benchmark numbers show that the GPU is 32% faster than the previous generation while using 41% less power.

"THE GPU IS 32% FASTER THAN THE PREVIOUS GENERATION WHILE USING 41% LESS POWER."

Gaming and Viewing Experience Enhancements

On the gaming side, the new SoC features MediaTek’s HyperEngine 6.0 Gaming Technology that automatically optimizes system settings to ensure maximum gaming performance.

According to MediaTek, the chipset’s MiraVision 890 display technology intelligently adjusts many display and video stream parameters and provides hardware and software optimizations that improve viewing quality.

Additionally, for a better gaming experience, the new hardware supports Full HD+ up to 240Hz, WHQD up to 144Hz, and 5K (2.5Kx2) up to 60Hz, with an adaptive refresh rate.

APU 690, 6th Gen AI Processing Unit

The AI compute unit named APU 690 is the 6th generation AI Processing Unit developed by MediaTek.

On paper, the APU 690 should bring a 35% performance improvement over the previous generation in the ETHZ 5.0 benchmark and 45% lower power consumption for AI-super resolution tasks (AI-SR).

For example, when you play a 1080p video stored on your smartphone on a 4K monitor or TV, the APU will help the graphics system upsample the video with higher quality. This task is compute-intensive, so it is great that MediaTek made it significantly more power efficient.

The AI architecture has been improved from the previous APU with mixed precision. The 5th Gen used the traditional integer 16 computing method, which means that each whole number (integer) was always encoded with 16 bits. With mixed-precision computing, the APU 690 can now process both floating point (fractional number) and integer (whole number) with various number binary formats, 4 bits, 8 bits, or 16 bits.

For instance, 4 bits encode numbers from 0 to 7 while16 bits encoding reaches 65,535. For numbers from 0 to 7 or from 0 to 255, there is no need to use the 16 bits format. Allowing the arithmetic units in the hardware to operate on more data blocks simultaneously (parallelism). MediaTek claims that the introduction of mixed precision for the APU 690 boosts the computing speed by 98%.

"MIXED PRECISION BOOSTS THE APU 690’S COMPUTE SPEED BY 98%"

Camera features and Imagiq 890 image signal processor (ISP)

The APU usually plays a vital role for AI-driven image segmentation. The GPU and the ISP can also participate in that task.

The new hardware enables real-time detection of photo and video content to identify the different areas of the image, such as people, sky, ocean, buildings, greenery, foreground, and background. Once image segmentation is executed, the system can apply different filters or algorithms to the various parts of the scene in real time. It is used for saturation, color, and contrast tuning.

AI-driven image segmentation enhances image quality for both the camera and the display.

MediaTek uses AI in the Dimensity 9200 to enable the Dual Stream AI Shutter feature, eliminating the blur in action and sports shots. A feature that MediaTek nicknamed “Motion Unblur.”

The Imagiq 890 is the first RGBW ISP to support the new RGBW sensors. In addition to the traditional RGB pixels, the new sensors have white pixels to capture brightness regardless of color. This helps to shoot better night pictures as MediaTek claims a 30% boost in brightness for night shots.

Connectivity

The Dimensity 9200 is the first SoC to support WiFi 7 with up to 6.5 Gbps data speed.

The chipset supports mmWave 5G and sub-6GHz connectivity and features mmWave SMART Beamforming which is 25% faster than regular beamforming, according to MediaTek. The new mmWave technology delivers an impressive 7.9 Gbps peak speed for data transfer!

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: MediaTek, Processors, SoC, TSMC