MediaTek's new powerhouse Dimensity 9400 processor could be powering new phones by October

How do you follow up a chipset that brought over $1 billion of revenue into your coffers? Why, you make an even more powerful and efficient chipset, that's how. MediaTek, the largest supplier of chipsets to the smartphone industry, released the Dimensity 9300 last year and its flagship processor had zero small, low-power, efficiency cores. After an early hiccup over rumors of overheating, the chip has been a big winner for MediaTek and powers the Vivo X100 series and other devices.

The Dimensity 9400 application processor (AP) is expected to feature a configuration consisting of one Cortex-X5 super CPU core running up to 3.4GHz, three Cortex-X4 super CPU cores with a clock speed as high as 2.96GHz, and four Cortex-A720 efficiency-performance CPU cores running as fast as 2.27GHz. Once again, MediaTek will offer a flagship AP without any low-power efficiency cores. It is expected to deliver a 30% improvement in performance over its predecessor.

According to reliable leaker Digital Chat Station, the first phones powered by the Dimensity 9400 AP will be released in the middle of October. This will beat the release of phones powered by the Dimensity 9400 chipset's top rival, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The latter will first be unveiled on October 21st and if Digital Chat Station is correct, phones powered by the Dimensity 9400 AP will already be on the shelves.

The post by Digital Chat Station dovetails with rumors that two phone lines expected to be powered by the Dimensity 9400, the Vivo X200 series and the Oppo Find X8 series, could be released before the Xiaomi 15 series. The Xiaomi phones are rumored to be the first equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 AP.

Digital Chat Station expects the first phones carrying the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 to premiere in November or December giving the MediaTek powerhouse anywhere from a two-week to six-week head start over Qualcomm's upcoming flagship AP. MediaTek’s CEO, Rick Tsai, says that he expects the success of the Dimensity 9400 to hike the company's revenues by 50%. The chip will be produced by leading foundry TSMC using its second-generation 3nm process node (N3E).

The post from Digital Chat Station also mentions a lower priced Dimensity 8400 chipset that would be used by phones in a slightly lower-price range than the flagship models running the Dimensity 9400. The chip might be the largest AP ever made for a smartphone and is rumored to include 30 billion transistors.