Mediatek abolishes the mini efficiency cores in mid-range smartphones
The Dimensity 8400 mobile processor uses eight performance cores. Mediatek promises a major leap in performance.
Overview of the Dimensity 8400.
(Image: Mediatek)
The high-end Dimensity 9300 and 9400 processors have shown the way, now it's the turn of the mid-range: processor designer Mediatek is increasingly abandoning ARM's classic efficiency cores from the Cortex A500 series. Instead, the mid-range Dimensity 8400 now also features low clocked cores from the A700 series.
Mediatek wants to significantly increase performance and efficiency with this. The math is simple: Although ARM markets the small Cortex, such as the Cortex-A510 most recently, as efficiency cores, their main advantage is their small size. This saves chip space and therefore production costs. However, the large 700-series Cortex compute faster with the same energy requirement. Among other things, they use an out-of-order design (OoO) so that the scheduler can prioritize tasks. The 500 cores can only process such tasks chronologically (in-order).
Eight-core with new GPU
The Dimensity 8400 has a total of eight Cortex-A715 cores, one of which has a particularly high clock speed of 3.25 GHz and the largest level 2 cache of one megabyte. The L2 cache is reduced to 512 KByte on three others and to 256 KByte on four others to save space. Mediatek does not specify the clock frequencies of the latter seven cores – According to media reports, they are three times 3.0 and four times 2.1 GHz. Meanwhile, the shared level 3 cache increases to 6 MByte and the separate system level cache for all logic blocks to 5 MByte.
Specifically, the Dimensity 8400 is said to calculate 41 percent faster than its predecessor, the Dimensity 8300, in applications optimized for multiple cores. The company also claims a reduction in electrical power consumption of up to 44 percent, but does not provide any details. It is possible that this applies to the power consumption with identical performance between the 8400 and 8300.
The GPU also gets an upgrade to ARM's Mali-G720 with seven shader clusters (MC7). Peak performance is set to increase by 24 percent; efficiency by up to 42 percent.
An improved AI accelerator, a modern image processor, an integrated 5G modem and decoders for all modern video codecs including AV1 round off the Dimensity 8400. The processor supports displays with WQHD+ resolution (typically up to 2960Â Ă—Â 1440 pixels) and 144 Hertz.
Smartphones coming soon
The first manufacturers are expected to launch smartphones with the Dimensity 8400 in the near future. So far, mainly Chinese manufacturers have models with Mediatek processors in their range. Smartphones with the previous Dimensity 8300 cost between 260 and 500 euros in this country.
Qualcomm – Mediatek's biggest competitor – currently has the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 with four Cortex-A715 and four Cortex-A510 processors in its range in the 300 euro class.
(mma)
