Is this the model that will be able to move the mid-market forward in 2023 thanks to an efficient and advanced 4nm manufacturing process?
Chip developer MediaTek managed to dominate the mid-market performance charts last year, so that was primarily because its main competitor Qualcomm apparently didn’t even try to provide a meaningful challenge.
It did announce its Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 models that are based on modern cores and advanced manufacturing processes, but the number of models that are based on this pair in practice can be counted with less than the number of fingers on one hand – and in the absence of continuity for the Snapdragon 860 and Snapdragon 870 Most of the mid-range models that chose the side of the American developer had to make do with the old Snapdragon 695 or Snapdragon 778G, so Dimensity 8000 and Dimensity 8100 had no problem jumping over them on the way to the top.
Will MediaTek be able to reproduce this success in the coming year? The Dimensity 8200 that was introduced at the end of last year based on TSMC’s 4nm manufacturing process and offers for the first time operating frequencies above 3GHz outside the flagship category looks like a good start – and now it is joined by the Dimensity 7200 which could be an impressive leap in relation to For the Snapdragon 778G or the Snapdragon 695 in question, if Qualcomm fails to expand the supply of its modern mid-range models in the near future.
The Dimensity 7200 will be based on TSMC’s improved N4P process at 4 nm, just like the flagship Dimensity 9200 – but will settle for cheap powerful cores and six economical cores, unlike most modern chips in the mid-range and high-end market that prefer a configuration with four advanced cores and four cores Economical. The pair of powerful cores of the Dimensity 7200 are based on the latest Cortex-A715 architecture that ARM has to offer in this segment with an operating frequency of up to 2.8GHz, and the other six cores are of the Cortex-A510 type with an operating frequency of up to 2GHz – this alongside the Mali core – G610 MC4 graphics with an operating frequency that is unknown at this time.
If we are practical and assume that the operating frequency of the Mali G610 MC4 core in the chip will not be significantly higher than the operating frequency of the Mali G610 MC6 core in the company’s Dimension 8100 (860MHz), it can be cautiously assumed that it will provide about two-thirds of the principle performance – or 700GFLOPS with standard 32-bit precision.
Additional features with a four-channel 16-bit memory controller that supports modern LPDDR5 memories at a speed of 6,400MT/s and also LPDDR4X memories at a speed of 4,266MT/s as a discounted alternative, an image processing engine that supports sensors with a resolution of up to 200 megapixels and HDR video shooting in 4K with a rate of up to 30 frames per second, support for FullHD displays with a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz and Dolby HDR and HDR10 Plus technologies, support for internal UFS 3.1 storage, support for dual-channel Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, support for Bluetooth 5.3, sample accelerator MediaTek APU 650 of the new generation for computational learning applications, HyperEngine 5.0 engine with VRS (Variable Rate Shading) support to improve graphics processing performance in games and also a built-in 5G cellular modem with theoretical download speeds of up to 4.7Gbps.
The chip should be ready for commercial adoption during the first quarter of 2023, which means that we may (or maybe even should) see models based on it announced as early as the next month – with general prices and perhaps also popularity that will properly clarify its status in relation to competing chips from the company and the competing series.