MediaTek "Overtaking" Qualcomm: 3nm Chip War, Who Will Dominate the Future?

MediaTek "Overtaking" Qualcomm: 3nm Chip War, Who Will Dominate the Future?For a long time, Qualcomm and MediaTek have been "distinct" in the domestic smartphone market: Qualcomm held the high-end Android market, while MediaTek occupied the vast majority of the mid-to-low-end market. However, in 2024, MediaTek began to comprehensively "overtake" Qualcomm's established territory

MediaTek "Overtaking" Qualcomm: 3nm Chip War, Who Will Dominate the Future?

For a long time, Qualcomm and MediaTek have been "distinct" in the domestic smartphone market: Qualcomm held the high-end Android market, while MediaTek occupied the vast majority of the mid-to-low-end market. However, in 2024, MediaTek began to comprehensively "overtake" Qualcomm's established territory.

On October 10th, MediaTek released its flagship high-end chip, the Dimensity 9400; on October 14th, the Vivo X200 series powered by the Dimensity 9400 was released; on October 24th, the OPPO Find X8 series is about to be released, and it has already announced that it will be equipped with the Dimensity 9400. This is the first time that two domestic flagship phones have both adopted MediaTek's high-end chips for their launch models for two consecutive years. Previously, Qualcomm was almost always the first choice for Android high-end phones, whether it was Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, or Honor.

Sandwiched between the new OPPO and Vivo phones, Qualcomm announced its new flagship mobile platform, Snapdragon 8 Elite, on October 22nd. While Qualcomm stated that smartphone manufacturers like Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and Honor would be releasing devices with the Snapdragon 8 Elite platform in the coming weeks, the "defection" by Vivo and OPPO signifies a new challenge for Qualcomm MediaTek, previously confined to the mid-to-low-end market, is finally threatening Qualcomm's comfort zone.

Snapdragon 8 Elite, Squeezing Out the Toothpaste?

The Chinese name for Snapdragon 8 Elite is "Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition," clearly inspired by Xiaomi, which previously launched the Xiaomi 10 Supreme Edition and the Xiaomi 11 Supreme Edition. With a name like "Supreme," does its performance live up to the name?

First, in terms of manufacturing process, the Snapdragon 8 Elite adopts the same TSMC N3E (second-generation 3nm process) as Apple's A18 Pro and MediaTek's Dimensity 9400. With this, Android phones have officially entered the 3nm era.

In terms of CPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite uses a new Qualcomm-developed Oryon architecture CPU, including two Phoenix L super-large cores with a maximum clock speed of 4.32GHz and six Phoenix M large cores with a maximum clock speed of 3.53GHz. These cores have a total of 24MB of L2 cache but no L3 cache. Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 8 Elite's CPU single-core performance is 45% better than the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, with a 45% improvement in multi-core performance as well.

For the GPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite comes with the Adreno GPU, supporting hardware-accelerated H.265, VP9, and AV1 decoding, as well as Unreal Engine 5.3 and Unreal Chaos Physics Engine. The GPU performance is 40% better than the previous generation, and efficiency is also increased by 40%.

In terms of CPU and GPU, if the mass-produced version can achieve the performance level Qualcomm claims, the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be a generation of "squeezing out the toothpaste."

AI Performance Upgraded, But Cost is Key

If CPU and GPU are the two most crucial traditional indicators of a mobile SoC (System on Chip), AI performance is undoubtedly the hottest new indicator in recent years. Apple, MediaTek, and Qualcomm have all chosen to focus heavily on AI.

Specifically, the Snapdragon 8 Elite integrates an enhanced Qualcomm Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), supporting large models and multi-modal AI. Qualcomm claims that its performance is 12 times that of the previous generation, with a 45% improvement in efficiency. This allows the Snapdragon 8 Elite to support multi-modal generative AI and longer token inputs, processing more data. In AI applications, this translates to providing more in-depth and accurate feedback and responses.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite can run personalized, multi-modal AI assistants entirely offline on the terminal side. Thanks to its support for multi-modal AI, the Snapdragon 8 Elite's AI assistant can see what the user sees through the camera and enable real-time interaction.

Qualcomm states that in AI testing using MLPerf Benchmarks, the Snapdragon 8 Elite achieves a performance improvement of up to 104% (EDSR super-resolution) compared to the third-generation Snapdragon 8.

In terms of other AI capabilities, the Snapdragon 8 Elite also supports real-time semantic segmentation, ultra-low-light photo and video capture, 320 million pixel photo capture, AI/5G-A fusion, AI multi-antenna management, etc.

Overall, the Snapdragon 8 Elite's parameters seem to be a massive effort, with both standard CPU and GPU performance improvements and a surge in AI performance. It can be seen as one of Qualcomm's most outstanding flagship chips in recent years.

However, as mentioned earlier, the Snapdragon 8 Elite still needs to prove that it's stronger than MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 and persuade smartphone manufacturers to pay for it. The key lies in the cost.

Similar Performance, Lower Cost is More Advantageous

According to test data from the digital blogger "Geekerwan," the Snapdragon 8 Elite's CPU performance is higher than the mass-produced Dimensity 9400, but the latter's GPU efficiency is slightly higher than the Snapdragon 8 Elite, making them neck and neck in terms of performance.

With the performance not being a significant differentiator, price becomes a crucial factor for smartphone manufacturers. After all, with similar performance, who would want to spend more?

Previously, industry insiders revealed that the procurement cost of new-generation flagship mobile chips produced using TSMC's N3E process, including MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 and Qualcomm