MediaTek Announces 7nm 5G With Cortex-A77 CPU, Mali-G77 GPU Coming
by Andrei Frumusanu on May 29, 2019 1:30 AM ESTToday MedaTek is making quite an unusual announcement: The company is the first to announce a SoC with an integrated 5G modem. Even more interesting is the fact that the new silicon is the first announced design to employ Arm’s brand-new Cortex-A77 cores and new Mali-G77 GPU that were both announced only two days ago.
The odd thing about today’s announcement is that this seems like a relatively early pre-announcement. MediaTek doesn’t divulge the actual product name of the new SoC nor does it go into detail of the specifications. What is divulged however is that the chipset is built on TSMC’s new 7nm process-node, and integrates MediaTek’s own Helio M70 modem IP.
The M70 modem supports 5G NR in the sub-6GHz spectrum with up to 2x carrier aggregation. The modem supports both standalone as well as non-standalone 5G network architectures. It’s to be noted that we won’t be seeing mmWave from MediaTek this early: In the markets that the company sees the SoC we won’t be seeing mmWave networks deployed for several more years, and in general the US is the odd one out with early mmWave deployments while the rest of the world focuses on sub-6GHz coverage.
The use of Arm’s new Cortex-A77 and Mali-G77 GPU means that the SoC will have the most up-to-date IP at release, something that MediaTek hasn’t been able to achieve in a few generations. Alongside the CPU and GPU, MediaTek will employ its third generation APU design, which uses the company own in-house IP.
Finally, the imaging capabilities of the SoC are said to have been greatly enhanced and now supports 4K60 decode and encode along with 80MP ISP capability.
We don’t know a lot more about the SoC, and exactly what product category its targeting, but we expect MediaTek to still largely target the mid-range. We should be seeing devices with the new SoC released in 2020.
Related Reading
- Arm's New Cortex-A77 CPU Micro-architecture: Evolving Performance
- Arm's New Mali-G77 & Valhall GPU Architecture: A Major Leap
- Sizing Up The 5G Modem Market: Qualcomm, Intel, Huawei, Samsung, UniSOC, and Mediatek
- MediaTek Announces New Premium Helio P90 SoC
- MediaTek Launches Helio A Series SoCs, Starting With Helio A22
- MediaTek Announces New Premium Helio P60 SoC
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ZolaIII - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
During the cold War there ware communist firm's that made a big part of US electricity grid (Energoinvest), their commercials went in prime US elections central time's. The same company also bought the biggest part of US Honeywell. All that in horrible times of cold war. Now take a look how much freedom degraded in the mean time all under the cover of democracy.SmokeandMirrors - Monday, June 3, 2019 - link
Nice try comrade, but all your claims are 100% false. Energoinvest has never had any significant business in the US, did not build a big part of the US electricity grid, and never at any time did they ever own any significant part of Honeywell. Nothing happens in the US under the cover of democracy, because we are a republic, not a democracy. It is also rich to hear a communist lecturing people on freedom. Thanks for the entertainment.PeterSun - Friday, May 31, 2019 - link
MediaTek is a "Taiwanese" company, not "Chinese" company. MediaTek is a competitor of Qualcomm and HiSilicon, the latter is chip design company of Huawei. The US Department of Commerce’s sanctions are beneficial to MediaTek, and MediaTek(and most Taiwanese company) will not want to lift the sanctions!halcyon - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
Shipping to Mediatek customersnin Q3 2019 and available for volume product shipmentnin Q1 2020.BensonPan - Saturday, June 1, 2019 - link
Actually they offered a clear timetable - 1) sampled to clients in 3Q19, 2) first end device would be seen in 1Q20. Let's see.adamo1139 - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
https//i.mediatek.com/5GSoC gives me 404. https://i.mediatek.com/mediatek-5g seems to be the correct link as of now.Santoval - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
"It’s to be noted that we won’t be seeing mmWave from MediaTek this early.."Does this mean that this modem will not support mmWave frequencies? If so then it's not a full 5G modem. The <6GHz frequencies of 5G are basically a (barely faster) superset of 4G.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
mmWave is irrelevant in most of the world.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbNt1zybAUA
Sub-6 countries with the correct spectrum (i.e. not the US) is just as fast as what's currently available in the US with mmWave.
LiviuTM - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
RF it's hard.. And Qualcomm is ahead others.levizx - Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - link
Yeah, they probably would pair 2*A77 with 6*A55. I simply don't understand why do all of them insist on using 4*A55 or more, it's worthless beyond basic background and standby tasks.2*A77@2.5+GHz 2*A75@2GHz 2*A65or55@1.5GHz would have been a much more balanced setup with minimal area increase.