MediaTek Dimensity 9400 Chipset With Dedicated AI NPU to Launch in China on October 9

MediaTek will launch its flagship mobile chipset in China on October 9, the company confirmed on social media. While the chipmaker did not delve into the details of its upcoming smartphone processor, it is widely believed to be the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC that was recently claimed to be more powerful than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and even Apple's latest A18 Pro chipset when compared in terms of GPU benchmarks.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400 Chipset Launch Date

In a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, the official MediaTek handle revealed that “a new generation of MediaTek flagship chipset is coming soon”. It will debut on October 9 at 10:30 am local time. Although the company stopped short of revealing the chipset's details, it is confirmed to come with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) that enables artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

A recent report suggested that the purported MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC might perform better in certain aspects when compared to other flagship mobile processors, such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the new Apple A18 Pro. It reportedly scored 134fps in the GFX Aztec 1440p off-screen Vulcan benchmark — approximately 86 percent higher than the A18 Pro.

The score is also said to be 41 percent higher than Snapdragon's current generation flagship processor. The dedicated NPU on the Dimensity 9400 SoC might offer a 40 percent jump in performance over its predecessor.

In addition to the processing power, the efficiency of the purported MediaTek chipset has reportedly been improved. When compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the Dimensity 9400 is said to only require 30 percent of the power to complete similar tasks.

However, these upgrades could come at a price — smartphones featuring this chipset may be more expensive than their predecessors. The Oppo Find X8 series is speculated to be one of the first handsets to get the Dimensity 9400 chipset, while Vivo's purported X200 series may also have models running on MediaTek's upcoming mobile processor.