Mediatek Dimensity 9400+: Higher clock speed, more AI, more wireless

Mediatek processors, the most frequently installed smartphone chips globally, are also gaining market share in the premium class and especially in Europe. The new Dimensity 9400+ builds on its predecessor and increases the clock speed, but also brings further improvements.

The composition of the SoC's eight computing cores remains the same. A powerful Cortex-X925, three Cortex-X4 and four Cortex-A720 still form the processor's computing unit, but the most powerful of the eight big cores now clocks faster. While the maximum clock rate in the Dimensity 9400 was 3.62 GHz, the 9400+ now achieves 3.73 GHz. Mediatek does not provide any information on the clock frequencies of the other cores. The Immortalis-G925 GPU with twelve cores remains unchanged.

Nothing has changed in terms of caches. The level 2 caches remain at 2 MByte for the Cortex-X925, 1 MByte for the X4 cores and 512 MByte for the A720 units. The level 3 cache, which Mediatek had increased from 8 to 12 MByte with the Dimensity 9400, is also in the 9400+. The system-level cache is still 10 MByte.

Other improvements that Mediatek promises with the Dimensity 9400+ include support for additional AI models, including Deepseek-R1-Distill on-device. Mediatek promises a 20 percent increase in Agentic AI performance with Speculative Decoding (SpD+).

More range for Bluetooth and WLAN

Mediatek has also improved the SoC's wireless module. With a direct Bluetooth connection between two smartphones, a range of up to ten kilometers should now be possible, more than six times that of the Dimensity 9400. Mediatek now wants to achieve the first GPS fix 33 percent faster, and smartphones with the 9400+ can now also contact Beidou satellites. The Wi-Fi 7-capable modem should also be able to achieve 30 meters more Wi-Fi range.

The first smartphones with the Dimensity 9400+ are expected in the second half of the year. This could include the Xiaomi 15T. In recent years, the Chinese manufacturer has often equipped its T series with Mediatek processors, while other models are equipped with the latest Snapdragon from competitor Qualcomm. It remains to be seen whether the Dimensity 9400+ will also power device classes apart from smartphones and tablets.

(sht)