The CPU core configuration of this year’s most powerful smartphone AP leaks
If you’ve seen us write about MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 application processor (AP) more than a few times, it’s because this could very well be the most powerful smartphone chipset available this year with a rumored 30 billion transistors inside the SoC. That compares to the 19 billion transistors that are shoehorned into the A17 Pro used on the iPhone 15 Pro models. Apple has yet to reveal the transistor count for the A18 and A18 Pro powering the iPhone 16 non-Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models respectively.
Last year’s Dimensity 9300 AP was a gamble since it used a configuration that did not include any low-power efficiency cores. Instead, the AP was made up of four Cortex-X4 high-performance CPU cores clocked up to 3.25 GHz, and four Cortex-A720 performance-efficiency CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.0 GHz. Vivo used the SoC to power the X100 line and the Dimensity 9300 AP generated over $1 billion in revenue for MediaTek last year.
MediaTek is about to unveil the Dimensity 9400 and leaker Digital Chat Station is posting details about the chipset’s CPU cores. The chipset will feature one Cortex-X925 super high-performance CPU core running at a clock speed as fast as 3.626 GHz, three Cortex-X4 high performance CPU cores running as fast as 2.85 GHz, and four Cortex-A725 performance-efficiency cores (mistakenly typed as A720 by Digital Chat Station) clocked up to 2 GHz.
The Dimensity 9400 will use two of these Arm CPU cores, the Cortex-A925 and the Cprtex-A725. | Image credit-Arm
Arm says that the Cortex-X925 delivers up to 46% more performance than the Cortex-X4. The Cortex-A725 scored a 35% hike in performance efficiency over the Cortex-A720 and shows performance boosts for AI and gaming. The Dimensity 9400 will feature the Immortalis-G925 MC12 GPU clocked at 1,612 MHz.
The Dimensity 9400 AP will power the Vivo X200 line and the Oppo Find X8. With custom Qualcomm cores being used for the first time on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, the Dimensity 9400 will have a huge pricing advantage over Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship AP. Add to that Samsung Foundry’s yield issues hindering production of the Exynos 2500 AP, and there is now speculation that Samsung might turn to the Dimensity 9400 to power the Galaxy S25 base model in most markets outside of the U.S., Canada, and China.
TSMC will build the Dimensity 9400 using its second-generation 3nm node (N3E).