MediaTek is better known for value than for innovation, but that may be changing as the Taiwanese chipmaker prepares to launch an octa-core processor using eight ARM Cortex 7 cores. The news comes from a Chinese source, which claims that the MT 6592 will be built using a 28-nanometer process and will reach speeds of 1.7 – 2.0GHz.
Samsung launched the world’s first octa-core processor at Mobile World Congress, based on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. The Exynos 5 Octa uses four Cortex A15 cores for intensive tasks like processing video, and four Cortex A7 cores for the tasks like web browsing and email. But the A15 cores and the A7 cores do not run at the same time.
The MediaTek design, said to be slated for mass production in November, will reportedly enable true simultaneous processing by eight cores. These are the less powerful A7 cores, which drain a device’s battery more slowly than the A15 cores.
Octa-core processors are expected to offer improvements in battery life; ARM has said that its big.LITTLE architecture uses less battery power than quad-core solutions. The difference in performance is less clear, leading some in the industry to question the value of eight cores.
“Do you need eight CPUs in a mobile phone? Probably not,” said Mark Throndson, director of processor technology marketing at Imagination Technologies, which is set to be become a direct competitor to ARM when it launches mobile CPU cores based on the MIPS architecture later this year.
“The complexity of SoCs has gotten to the point where it’s less about adding new things and more about actually taking advantage of all the different types of processing horsepower that are available in the technology that’s being used today,” said Throndson. “Whether you need so many CPUs is debatable. One thing I think you can say and I think is a trend going forward is that … You need to be able to make better use of the resources across the SoC in the system.” (Watch the full RCR Wireless interview with Imagination Technologies here.)
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