Dimensity 9400: A New Wave of Android Performance Flagship, Powered by 3nm Technology

Dimensity 9400: A New Wave of Android Performance Flagship, Powered by 3nm TechnologyOn October 9th, MediaTek hosted a flagship product launch event and officially released the Dimensity 9400 chip. As the second-generation flagship chip with all-large cores after the Dimensity 9300 series, Dimensity 9400 brings comprehensive upgrades and innovative breakthroughs in CPU, GPU performance, energy efficiency, and NPU-side AI, becoming the first mobile chip in the Android camp to adopt a 3nm process

Dimensity 9400: A New Wave of Android Performance Flagship, Powered by 3nm Technology

On October 9th, MediaTek hosted a flagship product launch event and officially released the Dimensity 9400 chip. As the second-generation flagship chip with all-large cores after the Dimensity 9300 series, Dimensity 9400 brings comprehensive upgrades and innovative breakthroughs in CPU, GPU performance, energy efficiency, and NPU-side AI, becoming the first mobile chip in the Android camp to adopt a 3nm process. In a sense, the performance ceiling that Dimensity 9400 breaks through on CPU, GPU, and NPU complements the comprehensive development and application of end-side AI, building a high-barrier system-level core competitiveness. This not only propels the terminal device performance and user experience to leap forward but also will further lead the reshaping of the flagship smartphone AP market landscape.

The New "Black Hawk" Architecture Takes the Lead

As the demand for parallel processing of AI computing power and efficient loading of application software grows, the focus of CPU technology upgrades has shifted to seeking the best "balance point" between performance and energy efficiency. Through a series of architectural innovations and upgrades, Dimensity 9400 has successfully achieved this.

It is understood that the Dimensity 9400 is built with TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, becoming the first mobile chip in the Android camp to adopt a 3nm process. Compared to 5nm technology, TSMC's 3nm technology increases the logic density by about 60%, increases the speed by 18% under the same power consumption, and reduces power consumption by 32% under the same speed, bringing better performance and energy efficiency to the Dimensity 9400.

Targeting different application scenarios with different loads, the Dimensity 9400 continues the "1+3+4" design of all-large cores in CPU core configuration, consisting of 1 Cortex-X925 super-large core + 3 Cortex-X4 super-large cores + 4 Cortex-A720 large cores. This enables the Dimensity 9400 to achieve strong and efficient multi-threaded processing capabilities, reducing power consumption and extending battery life in both light and heavy load application scenarios, and "dimensionally crushing" products at the same level in terms of core performance.

It is important to note that the Cortex-X925 super-large core used by the Dimensity 9400 is the Armv9 "Black Hawk" architecture jointly developed by MediaTek and Arm, which has PC-level performance. With the support of Cortex-X925, the Dimensity 9400's single-core performance has increased by 35%, while its multi-core performance has increased by 28%.

As we all know, IPC is an important indicator of chip performance, directly determining the performance of the chip at the same frequency. High IPC value is a highlight of the Black Hawk architecture. Therefore, by adopting the Black Hawk architecture, the Dimensity 9400's IPC performance surpasses Apple's A17 Pro and Qualcomm's self-developed Nuvia architecture, promising to gain a favorable position in the next round of industry competition.

It is not difficult to see that the design concept of the Dimensity 9400 is to choose "large bottom," suitable frequency, and low-pressure methods to achieve extreme performance, power consumption, and energy efficiency. This also explains why MediaTek is not keen on pushing the frequency of the Dimensity 9400 to the max and why it did not use Arm's latest Cortex-A725 large core. Instead, it achieved performance improvement goals through different combinations of large cores and frequencies.

At the same time, to fully utilize the CPU's performance, the Dimensity 9400 is equipped with the world's fastest mobile memory, Samsung's 10.7Gbps LPDDR5X, a super-large cache with doubled performance, and the industry's first 4nm wireless WiFi chip. This enables the Dimensity 9400 to significantly improve data transfer speed and application loading time, making running large applications and games smoother.

"OMM Chasing Light Engine" Rivals Top-Tier PC Ray Tracing

Against the backdrop of surging AI computing power demand and the continuous release of 3A mobile game masterpieces, the GPU's graphics processing capabilities have become a core competitive advantage for flagship mobile chips. In this regard, the Dimensity 9400 has also been striving to take the lead, deploying Arm's current most powerful and energy-efficient graphics processing unit, the Immortalis-G925 GPU, with a brand-new top-tier 12 cores.

Based on this, in 3DMark project actual measurements, the Dimensity 9400's GPU performance has improved by 41% compared to the previous generation, while its power consumption has been reduced by 44% under the same benchmark score. According to GFXBench testing, the Dimensity 9400 performs exceptionally well in 1440P off-screen Vulkan scenarios, reaching a score of 134 frames, surpassing major flagship competitors currently on the market.

Clearly, the performance improvement of the Dimensity 9400's GPU has greatly promoted the application and experience optimization upgrade of its generative AI. With the large model migrating from the cloud to the end-side, MediaTek is accelerating its layout of AI agents and end-side AI, comprehensively upgrading and integrating various AI functions of the Dimensity 9400, including the world's first end-side video generation, end-side LoRA training, end-side personal digital avatar, end-side generative AI photo editing, end-side long text capabilities reaching 32K, end-side multi-modal output speed reaching 50Tokens/S, support for the new DiT diffusion transformer model, and hardware operator acceleration.

Currently, generative AI has experienced rapid development and is entering a crucial turning point. Smartphones will further iterate into smart phones, with AI agents transforming the way users communicate and use them. The MediaTek Dimensity 9400 not only promotes AI technology innovation but also reflects the industry's tendency toward AI system integration, promising to drive the rapid development of AI agents and end-side AI.

Moreover, in terms of gaming experience, the Dimensity 9400 not only boasts significantly leading performance and energy efficiency but also debuts the "OMM Chasing Light Engine," a ray tracing technology comparable to top-tier PC ray tracing, premieres the Starshine Engine super-resolution technology, debuts the end-side AI voice coach, and upgrades the Starshine Engine MAGT 3.0, making the Dimensity 9400 a flagship gaming foundation that leads the industry.

Among them, OMM technology is often used to process transparent or semi-transparent materials in games, simulating complex surface details using tiny opacity textures, thereby reducing the number of polygons that need to be rendered and significantly improving rendering efficiency. This technology pursues local ray tracing characteristics in images, helping to achieve the immersive experience brought by global illumination and improve shadow edge effects, enabling the Dimensity 9400 to take a significant step forward in mobile ray tracing technology development and closing the gap between mobile and PC gaming experiences.

Localized Training "Understands" Users More and More

Before the rise of AIGC, MediaTek has been anchoring the development trend of AI technology and continuously upgrading and optimizing systems from AI hardware to software, from end to end. Today, to support various generative AI applications, MediaTek, with its deep accumulation and forward-looking layout, has significantly upgraded and innovated the AI performance of the Dimensity 9400 to create a brand-new and disruptive smartphone experience.

It is understood that in addition to building the Dimensity AI intelligent engine, MediaTek has also developed a brand-new eighth-generation NPU890, which is industry-leading in intelligence, performance, and privacy protection. According to tests, the MediaTek NPU890's AI benchmark score exceeds 6700 points, which can save an average of 35% of power consumption for various models. This performance improvement provides strong support for scenarios such as machine learning and deep learning, allowing users to feel faster and more accurate feedback when using smart devices.

Looking further, key AI technologies of the Dimensity 9400 mainly include AI image generation multi-modal input support, AI high-definition video generation scheme, AI intelligent engine (DAE), and AI end-side training.

Among them, for time domain acceleration in video generation that the industry is paying attention to, MediaTek mainly focuses on optimizing the instruction set for 4D and 5D Tensors, allowing the entire text-to-image generation process to use 5DTensors when performing time domain calculations, achieving the best performance in hardware.

In addition, to "understand" users more and more, MediaTek is orderly promoting localized training for the Dimensity 9400. For example, when users are resting at night, the phone is plugged in and uses the NPU for low-power training, and the phone will not have any feeling of warmth. As localized training progresses, it will help popularize AI drawing, writing