Dimensity 9500: Mediatek launches new high-end chip with lots of AI for smartphones
Mediatek presents the Dimensity 9500 - a new high-end chip for Android smartphones. The SoC is based on TSMC's 3 nm process and features its own NPU architecture for generative AI for the first time.
With the Dimensity 9500, Mediatek is bringing its own AI architecture to smartphones for the first time. The «NPU 990» integrated on the chip performs computing operations directly in memory («Compute-in-Memory») and is designed to make generative models significantly more efficient - for example, for local text-to-image generation in 4K or token calculation, which should run twice as fast as before.
The CPU has also been revised: The «All Big Core» design with the new C1-Ultra (1 ×), C1-Premium (3 ×) and C1-Pro (4 ×) cores is said to increase single-core performance by up to 32 per cent and multi-core performance by up to 17 per cent - compared to the Dimensity 9300. The L1 cache is twice as large and the L3 cache has been expanded by a third. Armv9.3 and SME2 instructions are also on board.
Graphics are provided by the «Mali-G1 Ultra» GPU with twelve shader cores (MC12). It supports ray tracing and is natively compatible with Unreal Engine 5.5 - including features such as Nanite and Megalights. Mediatek claims up to 119 per cent more ray tracing performance and upscaling from 60 to 120 FPS via MRFC 3.0.
The chip supports LPDDR5X RAM with up to 10,667 MT/s and UFS 4.1 with four lanes - this should not only double the data rate, but also speed up the loading of AI models by 40 per cent.
Mediatek is also focussing on speed when it comes to connectivity - and AI. A 5G modem, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 are integrated, each with AI-supported optimisation: for example for data traffic forecasting, channel selection and energy efficiency. Satellite positioning (GNSS) has also been revised - thanks to AI-supported signal processing, location data should be determined faster and more precisely.
The first devices with the new SoC are expected by the end of 2025.
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