Arm Cortex-A78 and LPDDR5 would have been premium features not so long ago, but time flies, and the just-announced MediaTek Dimensity 900 5G SoC for mid-range smartphones includes two Cortex-A78 cores, six Cortex-A55 cores, support for LPDRR5/4 memory, UFS 3.1 storage, and of course 5G cellular connectivity up to 2.77Gbps.
The mobile processor’s multimedia capabilities are pretty good as well with support for displays up to 2520 x 1080 resolution at 120 Hz, up to 108MP camera, 4Kp30 video with H.265, H.264, AV1, as well as an Arm Mali-G68 MC4 GPU and third-generation APU 3.0 AI accelerator.
MediaTek Dimensity 900 specifications:
- CPU – Octa-core DynamIQ processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A78 @ Up to 2.4GHz, 6x Arm Cortex-A55 @ Up to 2GHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G68 MC4
- AI Accelerator – MediaTek APU 3.0
- VPU
- Video Encoding – H.264, H.265 / HEVC up to 4K @ 30FPS
- Video Playback – H.264, H.265 / HEVC, MPEG-1/2/4, VP-9, AV1 up to 4K @ 30FPS, HDR10+
- Memory – LPDDR4x, LPDDR5
- Storage – UFS 2.1, UFS 3.1
- Display – Up to 2520 x 1080 with 120Hz refresh rate
- Camera
- ISP support up to 108MP, 20MP + 20MP @ 30 fps
- Max Video Capture resolution – 3840 x 2160
- Features – 4K hardware video HDR, 3X HDR-ISP, MFNR, 3DNR, AINR, Hardware Depth Engine, Warping Engine
- Connectivity
- Cellular Technologies
- 5G – FDD/TDD, Carrier Aggregation (CA)
- 4G – FDD/TDD, Carrier Aggregation (CA)
- 3G – TD-SCDMA, WCDMA
- 2G – EDGE, GSM
- Dual 5G SIM
- Specific Functions – SA & NSA modes; SA Option2, NSA Option3/3a/3x, NR TDD Band, NR FDD Band, DSS, NR DL 2CC, 120 MHz bandwidth, 256QAM NR UL 2CC, 256QAM VoNR / EPS fallback
- Peak 5G download speed – 2.77Gbps
- 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax Wi-Fi 6 with 2T2R antenna
Bluetooth 5.2 - GNSS – GPS L1CA+L5, BeiDou B1I+ B2a, Glonass L1OF, Galileo E1 + E5a, QZSS L1CA+ L5, NavIC
- Cellular Technologies
- Process – TSMC 6nm
That means Dimensity 900 “mid-range” processor is now basically better than the Dimensity 1000 “premium” SoC announced at the end of 2019, except for 4Kp60 support and the faster 4.7Gbps 5G download speed.
The new MediaTek Dimensity 900 is expected to found in smartphones launched in Q2 2021, which would be this month or next. More details may be found on the product page and press release.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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the prompt adoption of av1 by mediatek is encouraging
The MediaTek processor line for TV’s already had AV1 as of last year 🙂
It was absent on Dimensity 700, 720, 800, and 820. Hopefully every new SoC has it.
Is it just me or is 2520×1080 a bit low for display capability? No 1440p.
I’ve seen this on other MediaTek SoCs, e.g. MT8183 does 2400×1080.
If you look to Samsung and Sony phones yes but they iirc run at a lower resolution (720 or 1080) most of the time and only use native resolution for videos. Is there much benefit from going over 1080 and is it enough to offset the extra battery drain?
I guess 1440p doesn’t exist in the mid-range, just previous flagships.
I was also wondering if MediaTek would put Dimensity in laptops, but I don’t see any evidence of them doing that.
On a phone it’s possibly overkill.
But Chromebooks… a Mediatek driving an extended 4K desktop over usb c alt mode seems a generation or two away. e.g. Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet seems limited at 60hz to 720p
Yeah time just flies for the Linux SBC world as well — as we wait for affordable SOC’s past cortex-a73 with mainline support.
You know what they say, life is suffering.