MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro Goes 2nm With 30B-Parameter AI, 185 FPS Gaming

MediaTek has unveiled its next-generation mobile silicon, leading the charge with its flagship Dimensity 9600 Pro alongside a secondary tier option, the Dimensity 9600M. The new chips arrive almost exactly a year after MediaTek announced a deal with TSMC to utilize the silicon fab's cutting-edge 2-nanometer manufacturing process, which is part of a broader $5 billion framework aimed at expanding its footprint in AI data center hardware.

The flagship SoC is being billed as a significant technological milestone. It also comes with some big claims, along a host of architectural and feature upgrades. MediaTek's new Dimensity 9600 Pro flexes a 2+3+3 All Big Core CPU design consisting of two C2 'Ultra' cores clocked at up to 5.44GHz, three C2 Pro 'Big' cores clocked at up to 4.35GHz, and three more C2 Pro 'Big' cores running at up to 3.1GHz.

According to MediaTek, users can expect up to 17% higher single-core performance and up to 15% higher multi-core performance compared to the previous generation. And for gamers, MediaTek kitted the Dimensity 9600 Pro with a 12-core Arm Mali-G2 Ultra NX GPU that the company says delivers a 27% increase in peak graphics performance alongside 18% faster hardware ray tracing.

Through MediaTek's Neural Graphics Architecture and HyperEngine gaming suite, the GPU also combines standard rasterization with AI-assisted frame generation and upscaling, for what MediaTek says is higher console-grade gaming performance supporting native 185+ frames per second gameplay.

The other big claim relates to artificial intelligence. Featuring a dual-NPU architecture with a primary NPU 1090 and secondary Super Efficient NPU, MediaTek says the Dimensity 9600 Pro can process complex on-device Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and large language models containing up to 30 billion parameters completely offline.

"AI Computing Fusion Architecture on the Dimensity 9600 Pro brings together the CPU and NPU to create a powerful foundation for AI computing, supported by a larger 34.5MB cache and, for the first time, LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage," MediaTek says. 

MediaTek also points to an upgraded Dimensity Scheduling Engine that coordinates hardware and software to dynamically balance compute, power, and memory demands. The idea is to keep heavy background multitasking snappy without tanking battery life.

Alongside the flagship Pro chip, MediaTek introduced the Dimensity 9600M to bring similar architectural gains to slightly lower price points. Also manufactured on the 2nm process node, the 9600M features a 1+3+4 core configuration with a single Arm C1 Ultra core clocked at up to 4.21GHz, along with three C1 Premium cores and four C1 Pro cores.

While it sticks with LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.1 storage interfaces, it retains key flagship capabilities, including a dual-NPU design and the same 185 FPS gaming claim.