Over the years, MediaTek has inched its way closer to Qualcomm in terms of chip performance. Its upcoming chip, the Dimensity 9400 is set to compete against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Well, power comes at a price, as the Dimensity 9400 might be more expensive than its predecessor.
Smartphones don’t only cost money to buy, but they also cost money to build. A fair amount of the cost of building a phone is the processor. The price of the processor can, unfortunately, trickle down to the end user. So, if we get reports that a chipmaker is raising the price of its chips, then you can expect to see a price hike for the phone using it. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s one reason for smartphone prices slowly crawling up.
The Dimensity 9400 might be more expensive
You’ll want to take this news with a grain of salt, as it’s still a rumor. It comes from reputable tipster Digital Chat Station. They made a short and sweet post talking about the upcoming chip. In the post, they said that the price of flagships launching with this chip may “increase slightly,” which points to an increase in the price of the chip itself. The post doesn’t mention just how much the price has increased. However, it mentions why it’s more expensive.
According to this post and WCCTECH, the Dimensity 9400 will have some notable improvements across the board. It will be built on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process.
From the information we have, this chip will show the most potent improvement in AI processing. Digital Chat Station says that NPU (Neural Processing Unit) processing will be increased by 40% over last year’s chip. This will, ostensibly, better facilitate on-device AI processing. It should come as no surprise that the company is targeting AI with its next release.
We’re sure that this chip will be better in other areas, but the leak just didn’t say so. It’s still believed that this chip will lack efficiency cores, which makes us wonder about this chip’s thermal performance. Hopefully, the software processing from the phones running the chips will mitigate overheating and poor battery life.
A big chip for big power
Other rumored information points to the Dimensity 9400 being a larger chip in general. It could have a 150mm² die size, which will be the largest on mobile. This chip could boast 30 billion transistors. That’s a massive 32% increase over the Dimensity 9300.
Already, it seems like this is shaping up to be an interesting chip. It’s going to power some of the most powerful devices on the market later this year and next year. MediaTek is making gains in the market. Even Samsung could use a Dimensity chip in the Galaxy Tab S10 series.
