Chip giants Qualcomm and MediaTek are both expected to unveil their respective next-gen flagship offerings later this year. Supposedly called the Snapdragon 898 and the Dimensity 2000 respectively, the new chips have been making rounds on the internet for some time now. Recently, noted Chinese tipster Digital Chat Stationshared the key specs of both upcoming chipsets and it reveals some interesting details.
According to the report, the Snapdragon 898 will be based on Samsung’s 4nm process node. It will feature one ARM Cortex-X2 Super Core clocked at 3.0GHz. Qualcomm will offer three mid-tier performance cores operating at 2.5GHZ and four power-efficient CPU cores running at a maximum frequency of 1.79GHz. Multiple reports in the past have suggested that these will be ARM’s new, V9 architecture-based Cortex-A710 and Cortex-A510 cores respectively. The Snapdragon 898 will feature an Adreno 730 GPU.
MediaTek will also use the same CPU core arrangement. In fact, the Dimensity 2000 will have the same base frequency of 1.8GHz as the Snapdragon 898, as well as the maximum frequency of 3.0GHz. But when it comes to those three Cortex-A710 middle cores, it offers a considerably higher clock speed of 2.85GHz. The Dimensity 2000 will be fabricated on TSMC’s 4nm architecture and will feature a Mali-G710 MC10 GPU.
These numbers suggest that MediaTek will have a slight upper hand over Qualcomm in terms of CPU performance. But this comes after recent reports that the Dimensity 2000 could be around 20-25 percent more power-efficient than the Snapdragon 898. If these rumors turn out to be true, MediaTek could give its American rival a good run for its money.
Qualcomm may finally have a true challenger in the flagship smartphone SoC market
A few years back, Qualcomm didn’t have a real competitor in the flagship smartphone SoC market. Samsung’s Exynos solutions have always underperformed its Snapdragon chipsets, and the same can be said for MediaTek’s offerings as well. The Taiwanese firm had withdrawn from the flagship segment for a few years before making a return with the Dimensity lineup in 2019.
But things have gradually changed in recent years. Samsung made a few strategic modifications such as ditching custom Mongoose CPU cores in favor of stock ARM cores. It also signed a partnership with AMD to use the latter’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture in mobile chipsets. Things are now shaping up nicely for the Korean company. It could finally be able to challenge Qualcomm with its upcoming Exynos 2200 flagship processor.
But it’s MediaTek, the world’s largest smartphone chipset vendor by market share, that could emerge as the real competitor to Qualcomm. Since returning to the flagship market a couple of years back, the Taiwanese firm has significantly closed the performance gap to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon counterparts. And if these rumors are anything to go by, that gap between the upcoming Dimensity 2200 and Snapdragon 898 could be almost negligible. Maybe we’ll even see the balance tilt in MediaTek’s favor.
Nonetheless, the chip wars are heating up nicely and we are excited to see what the companies have in store. You can expect to hear more about the upcoming solutions from Samsung, Qualcomm, and MediaTek in the coming weeks.