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This year is very special. The competition between Qualcomm and MediaTek on the flagship processor this year can be described as back and forth. In the first half of the year, MediaTek took advantage of the better power consumption control of the Dimensity 9000 processor to hit the sore spot of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. In the second half of the year, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 competes on the same level as Dimensity 9000+ through TSMC’s N4 process technology.
The end of the year is approaching, and I did not expect a competition that originally belonged to next year to start ahead of schedule. MediaTek and Qualcomm have launched their next-generation flagship SoCs this November, bringing the new starting line forward. The former launched the Dimensity 9200 platform last week, and the latter officially released the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor.
CPU Comparison
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 continues to use TSMC’s 4nm (N4) process technology, but the CPU combination has been adjusted, from the previous “1+3+4” three-cluster architecture to the new “1+2+2+3” The four-cluster architecture, which is a combination of 1 3.19GHz X3 large core + 2 2.8GHz A715 medium and large cores + 2 2.8GHz A710 medium and large cores + 3 3.0GHz A510 energy-efficient small cores and SLC system level and L3.
The third-level cache is upgraded from 4MB SLC + 6MB L3 cache of Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 to 6MB SLC + 8MB L3 cache, which is basically the same as Dimensity 9000, Dimensity 9000+ and Dimensity 9200.
MediaTek Dimensity 9200, which uses the second-generation TSMC 4nm (N4P) process technology, continues the “1+3+4” architecture, using one 3.05GHz X3 large core + three 2.85GHz A715 medium and large cores + 4 1.8GHz A510 energy-efficient small cores and the cache continues the Dimensity 9000+ 6MB SLC + 8MB L3 combination.
From the parameters alone, the CPU frequency of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will indeed be higher, but the energy efficiency ratio of the Dimensity 9200 on the Zhongda core side will be higher in theory, but the A715 core has removed the support for 32-bit applications. Support, that is to say, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Dimensity 9200 will show two attitudes in the face of old 32-bit apps.
MediaTek Dimensity 9200 will be relatively radical, and 32-bit applications will only be handed over to the A510 energy efficiency core while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is relatively less radical. In addition to calling the A510’s energy-efficient core processing, the A710’s large core can also handle 32-bit applications, which can be regarded as room for some 32-bit applications that are still sustained. Take care of some more special Android application market.
GPU Comparison
On the graphics processor side, both camps have enabled support for ray tracing technology. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses its own Adreno 740 with a frequency of 680MHz. The official said that the performance is 35% higher than the previous generation, and the energy efficiency is also improved. In addition to the hardware-level light-chasing technology, will become the first adapted mobile game in the future. It also supports Unreal Engine 5, Metahuman framework, and Vulkan 1.3.
MediaTek’s progress here is not small. It uses ARM’s new Immortalis-G715, which has higher positioning and performance than the previous Mali series. It has an 11-core configuration and a frequency of 981MHz. The official said that the performance is improved compared to the previous generation Dimensity 9000. 32%, the power consumption is reduced by 41%, and the performance is even close to that of Apple’s A16. It also supports Vulkan 1.3 and hardware-level light-tracing technology, and its light-tracing was first implemented by Tencent’s “Dark Zone Breakout”.
As for ROM and RAM support, Dimensity 9200 supports up to LPDDR5X 8533MHz RAM and up to eight-channel UFS 4.0 ROM. While Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports up to 4200MHz LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4. 0 ROM.
The AI architecture of MediaTek and Qualcomm is different. This time, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor has upgraded the Hexagon DSP processor and supported INT4 for the first time, which can bring a 4.35 times performance improvement and a 60% energy efficiency improvement.
MediaTek’s APU (AI processing unit) has come to the sixth generation, using a hybrid computing, intelligent neural network architecture, performance and energy efficiency have been greatly improved, using ETHZ 5.0 test performance is 35 times higher than that of the previous generation Dimensity 9000 % growth, and the energy efficiency of the video super-resolution process can even increase by 45%.
ISP of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
Today’s SoC’s AI performance largely needs to serve image processing, so they are generally directly connected to the ISP image processing chip.
Qualcomm has evolved this set of “cognitive ISP” in Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 this time, supporting up to 3 18-bit data stream processing, and more importantly, it is directly connected to the Hexagon AI engine, and advances the semantic segmentation in computational photography to On the ISP side, for more timely processing, the speed of computational photography processing will become faster, and even what you see is what you get.
The biggest evolution of the ISP Imagiq 890 on the Dimensity 9200 is the native support and optimization of the RGBW sensor. Its intelligent image semantic segmentation technology can also call AI to mark different objects and areas and make adjustments.
Network Connection
The network connection of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses the X70 baseband. The most obvious improvement is that it finally supports the dual-card dual-pass function of the 5G network. FastConnect 7800 is responsible for the Wi-Fi 7 network and Bluetooth 5.3 network and supports LE Audio audio connection. The Dimensity 9200 will also have Wi-Fi 7 network support and LE Audio Bluetooth audio connection.
Conclusion
vivo X90 series that will be released next week will be the first launch of MediaTek’s 9200 and there may also be a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 model. As for whether it will be the first launch, it depends on the fortunes of other manufacturers.
vivo and other brands have officially announced that they will be the first brands equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. In addition, Red Magic, Honor, ZTE, Meizu (Star Age), Sony, Nubia, iQOO, OnePlus, ASUS and even BlackShark are all the models that will launch the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor
