MediaTek Dimensity 9400 Flexes Big Performance Uplifts And A Game-Changing AI Trick

It was just a few days ago when we reported on an impressive benchmark leak involving MediaTek's then-unreleased Dimensity 9400, which showed the flagship system-on-chip becoming the first-ever to achieve 3 million points in AnTuTu. A glimpse of things to become? We'll soon find out—MediaTek has officially launched the Dimensity 9400.

The Dimensity 9400, built on a TSMC's second-generation 3-nanometer manufacturing process, supplants MediaTek's 9300+ as its flagship SoC for mobile devices, and it comes with the promise of a "massive boost in performance" powered by a 'Big Core' designed built on Arm's v9.2 CPU architecture.

As was previously leaked, the new flagship sports a 1+3+4 configuration consisting of a single Cortex-X925 core clocked at up to 3.63GHz and 2MB of L2 cache, three Cortex-X4 cores with 1MB of L2 cache, and four Cortex-A720 cores with 512KB of L2 cache. As a whole, it also boasts 12MB of L3 cache and 10MB of SLC memory.

MediaTek hasn't yet mentioned what the clock speeds are on the Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 cores, though on the previous generation Dimensity 9300, they checked in at up 3.25GHz and 2GHz, respectively. What's also interesting is that MediaTek opted to stick with the Cortex-A720 despite Arm introducing an upgraded Cortex-A725 core.

As for the big gun (Cortex-X925), MediaTek is claiming up to 35% faster single-core performance and up to 28% faster multi-core performance, compared to the Dimensity 9300. MediaTek further claims that the Dimensity 9400 is up to 40% more power efficient than its predecessor.

What' also stands out are the new flagship's AI capabilities.

"The MediaTek Dimensity 9400 will continue furthering our mission to be the enablers of AI, supporting powerful applications that anticipate users’ needs and adapt to their preferences, while also fueling generative AI technology with on-device LoRA training and video generation," said Joe Chen, President at MediaTek. "As the fourth-generation flagship chipset, the Dimensity 9400 continues to build on our momentum of steady growth in market share, and MediaTek’s legacy of delivering flagship performance in the most efficient design for the best user experiences."

Armed with an 8th generation NPU, MediaTek says the Dimensity 9400 is the first SoC to offer on-device LoRA training, high-quality on-device video generation, and developer support for Agentic AI. That latter bit supposedly enables up to 80% faster large language model (LLMP) prompt performance while being up to 35% more power efficient than the 9300.

"The Dimensity 9400 also integrates MediaTek's new Dimensity Agentic AI Engine (DAE), which is designed to turn traditional AI applications into sophisticated agentic AI applications. MediaTek is working with developers to offer a unified interface between AI agents, third-party APKs, and models that efficiently runs both edge AI and cloud services. This streamlined approach allows models to work with many different third-party APKs, which reduces development time and will help usher in a new ecosystem of agentic AI applications," MediaTek says.

That's a possible game-changer as the promise of AI experiences start to come into view. It will be interesting to see how developers react, and if this moves the needle in a meaningful way.

On the graphics side, the Dimensity 9400 features a 12-core Immortalis-G925 GPU with up to 40% faster ray tracing performance, a 41% higher peak performance boost, and up to 44% power savings compared to the last-gen chip. In addition, it offers support for HyperEngine, which is a super resolution technology co-developed by MediaTek and Arm.

Other highlights include a new 4nm Wi-Fi + Bluetooth combo chip supporting a 7.3Gbps data rate at up to 50% lower power, tri-band Wi-Fi 7 support, a refreshed 5G modem offering up to 7Gbps of sub-6GHz performance, and support for tri-fold smartphones.

MediaTek says the first devices to rock its new Dimensity 9400 will arrive by the end of this year.