MediaTek bets on mobile chips that support generative AI

MediaTek said it will incorporate generative AI technology into its latest processor chip for smartphones, in the context of the artificial intelligence race initiated by ChatGPT exploding globally.

On November 6, MediaTek, Qualcomm’s biggest competitor in providing chips for Android phones, announced the Dimensity 9300 5G, manufactured on TSMC’s 4 nm process, similar to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and A16. Apple’s Bionic.

The chip model comes with an AI processing unit (APU), developed to perform the necessary calculations for generative AI tasks, such as responding with text, creating images from user commands without requiring network connections. MediaTek affirms that its APU can also produce creative works such as stories and poems.

Joe Chen, President of MediaTek, said the company wants to promote widespread adoption of generative AI, benefiting a broader group of users, and hopes the applications will expand to many different industries.

Dimensity 9300 5G can handle large language models with 33 billion parameters right on smartphones. Meanwhile, according to JC Hsu, Vice President of MediaTek, some of the first generative AI-powered phones launched this year can only handle large language models with about 7 billion parameters.

MediaTek said it has worked with major language models of Meta, Baidu, Baichuan and Stable Diffusion. The company also cooperates with Chinese phone manufacturers to launch smartphones with smart virtual assistants that support photo and video editing.

In addition, the company also redesigned the computing core structure for the new chipset to increase computing performance and reduce power consumption compared to the previous generation. These improvements help solve the performance problem for folding smartphones and many important MediaTek customers such as Oppo and Vivo are betting on folding phones in the hope of creating a breakthrough in the smartphone market.

Equipping AI-enabled chips generated right on the device is becoming a new trend in the phone industry, helping to personalize, increase privacy protection, and also help save costs and time compared to other devices. Using cloud-based generative AI.

Currently, Qualcomm dominates the chip segment for high-end Android smartphones, while MediaTek is the company with the largest market share in the world based on the number of shipments because it focuses on developing strongly in the mid-range segment and is also aiming at the high-end segment. grant.

Huy Duc