After announcing its partnership with Meta to develop System-on-Chips (SoCs) for Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, MediaTek has unveiled its latest 5G RedCap modem IP and T300 chip. Touted the “world 1st Modem-RF SoC for 5G IoT and Wearables”, the new MediaTek M60 design, alongside the T300 chip, aims at bringing 5G connectivity to low-power and low-compute wearable and IoT devices.
MediaTek is the first chipmaker to announce a 5G modem design based on the new 3GPP RedCap standard, an acronym that stands for Reduced Capability. The RedCap standard enables 5G modems to provide a reduced set of features tailored for devices that demand very low latency, fast connectivity at low power, and do not need 5G peak performance required by laptops or smartphones.
The MediaTek M60 will be embedded into various devices, including smartwatches, compact AR headsets, and IoT and industrial adevices.
“Our RedCap solutions are a significant part of our mission to democratize 5G, providing our customers the ability to optimize components and deliver 5G-enabled devices from a range of applications and a range of price points,” said JC Hsu, Corporate Senior Vice President at MediaTek. “The migration to 5G RedCap will replace legacy 4G/LTE solutions, offering significantly better power efficiency and more reliable user experiences compared to leading edge 5G eMMB modem solutions and legacy 4G LTE Cat 4 and Cat 6 devices.”
MediaTek touts the MediaTek T300 as the “world’s first 6nm Radio Frequency System-On-Chip (RFSOC) single die solution for RedCap”. The T300 series SoC, which includes an M60 modem, features a single-core Arm Cortex a35 on a compact PCB, and supports up to 227 Mbps downlink and 122 Mbps data rates.
According to the company, the M60 offers up to a 70% reduction in power consumption compared to similar 5G eMBB solutions and up to 75% power savings compared to 4G LTE solutions.
At the MediaTek Summit, I saw two demos, one simulating voice transmission from a T300 development kit to a 5G simulated cell tower and another simulating data transmission. In the photo, the simulated cell tower is the big box under the table, and the T300 kit is the black box on the table.