Taiwan’s MediaTek has launched the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first flagship smartphone processor manufactured on a 2 nanometre process, positioning the chip for the next generation of premium Android devices and on-device AI applications.
The system-on-chip uses MediaTek’s fourth-generation all-big-core CPU architecture in a 2+3+3 configuration. It combines two Arm C2-Ultra cores running at up to 4.55 GHz, three C2-Pro cores at up to 4.35 GHz and three additional C2-Pro cores at 3.1 GHz. MediaTek claims a 17% improvement in single-core performance and a 15% improvement in multi-core performance over the previous generation, alongside power-consumption reductions of 37% and 61%, respectively. These figures are based on the company’s internal measurements and remain subject to independent testing in commercial devices.
AI processing is divided between the high-performance NPU 1090 and a lower-power Super Efficient NPU 2.0 for persistent background workloads. MediaTek says the NPU 1090 provides twice the INT4 computing capacity, 55% more token generation per watt and 51% faster large-language-model prefill performance than its predecessor.
The architecture supports mixture-of-experts inference, KV-cache compression and limited edge training. MediaTek’s Agentic AI Engine is designed to coordinate work across the CPU, GPU, image-signal processor and neural processors, allowing AI software to maintain context and conduct tasks across applications while keeping more computation on the device.
The platform introduces early support for LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage. MediaTek says UFS 5.0 can double read and write performance over the previous generation, while LPDDR6 increases effective memory bandwidth by 33% at a comparable frequency. These improvements are intended to support larger local AI models and data-intensive imaging and gaming workloads.
The integrated graphics architecture connects the GPU and NPU for neural rendering and provides claimed improvements of 27% in peak performance, 24% in peak power efficiency and 18% in ray-tracing performance. The Imagiq 1290 image processor supports computational photography features including continuous 60-frame-per-second subject tracking, 4K video at 240 frames per second and semantic processing for 4K60 capture.
Connectivity includes a 5G-Advanced modem supporting five-component-carrier aggregation across as much as 350 MHz of spectrum and theoretical downlink speeds above 7.4 Gbps. The chip also supports Bluetooth 6.2, AI-assisted Wi-Fi roaming, a hardware root of trust, hypervisor-based isolation for AI workloads and post-quantum cryptographic protections.
MediaTek also introduced the Dimensity 9600M for a broader segment of flagship devices. The company has not announced an Indian commercial-device launch date for either processor, and initial handset availability will depend on individual manufacturers. The platform is nevertheless directly relevant to India’s premium Android market, where MediaTek-powered devices from Chinese and other Asian handset brands compete with Qualcomm-based models.
