MediaTek plans to increase research into 5G and artificial intelligence.
Fabless semiconductor company MediaTek Chairman and CEO Ming-Kai Tsai said MediaTek would be investing more money in research and development of 5G and artificial intelligence technologies, according to an article in DigiTimes. The remarks were made at a June 15th shareholders’ meeting.
This would be on top of the $6.64 billion that MediaTek pledged to invest two years ago. R&D will mostly take place in Taiwan, although Tsai said the company would do more research worldwide, including in the U.S.
MediaTek will commercially deploy its first 5G modem, the Helio M70, in 2019, but recently launched its Helio P22 chip with some AI capabilities for small devices. P22 focuses on LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and BT5.0 and will be in devices by the end of the second quarter 2018.
MediaTek, founded in 1997 in Taiwan, is the seventh largest R&D spender among the semiconductor firms, according to IC Insights. The company claims that 1 in every 3 cell phones has a MediaTek chip in it.
