MediaTek to rival Snapdragon with a new Dimensity 9400e

There are many great chipsets to choose from and soon, there'll be one more added to the ever-expanding list: MediaTek's Dimensity 9400e.

Previously, it was thought that this chipset was going to arrive with the Dimensity 9350 moniker, but credible leakster Digital Chat Station claims it will have a new name to align it closely with the Dimensity 94xx family.



Chipsets (or systems-on-chip) are an essential part of your smartphone. It's what you might call a smartphone's "brain". This is where the majority of components are integrated into and it includes a CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit), memory interfaces for RAM and ROM, communication modules, and more.

As Digital Chat Station claims, the Dimensity 9400e is essentially "an upgrade based on Dimensity 9300". The Dimensity 9300 silicon is installed in Vivo's X100 series, for example. It's powerful, as it packs four Cortex-X4 Prime CPU cores and four Cortex-A720 Performance CPU cores. What's notable about it is that there are no low-power efficiency CPU cores. Dimensity 9400 (unveiled in the fall of 2024) is powering Vivo's X200 series.

The new Dimensity 9400e should be regarded as the competitor to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 (this one is also unreleased and it's the successor to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 from 2024).

So far, it's not clear which phones will be powered by the Dimensity 9400e, but it will most likely be some exotic devices from the Far East.

Although there is no official confirmation regarding GPU upgrades, the Dimensity 9400e is expected to continue using the Immortalis G720 GPU, which demonstrated strong performance in the 9300 series, particularly with its 46% enhanced ray tracing capabilities.

AI performance may also see gradual improvements, potentially through refinements in MediaTek's APU 790 and enhancements to its NeuroPilot architecture. I have zero to none expectations about a 2025 chipset not being promoted as focused on AI. After all, that's today's hype!

Like its predecessors, the Dimensity 9400e could be manufactured on TSMC's 4nm process node. While specific details are still unknown, any advancements in power optimization or thermal management could have a significant impact, especially for a chip designed to maximize performance across all cores.

MediaTek's Dimensity 9400e might be around the corner, although no exact release dates are mentioned by the tipster.