MediaTek Dimensity 9500 die shot showcases noticeably larger chip and incremental upgrades to CPU and NPU

Semiconductor teardown specialist Kurnalsalts over at X has posted a die shot of MediaTek's shiny new Dimensity 9500 SoC, a few days after the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 was laid bare. The Dimensity 9500 keeps the company's all-P-core design. Additionally, its Mali C1 Ultra GPU has far more cores/CUs than the Adreno 840.

KurnalSalts has also posted a die shot of the Dimensity 9400 alongside the Dimensity 9500, allowing us to easily pinpoint the upgrades. For starters, the CPU gets 16 MiB of L2 cache (vs 12 MB on the 9400). It keeps the same CPU layout, with the fastest P-core sitting at the bottom-right of the CPU cluster. The Dimensity 9500 further shrinks its 5G modem to make room for its ISP and video engine.

On the other corner, the NPU has also gotten substantially larger; not surprisingly, given the ever-increasing emphasis on on-device AI. Overall, the Dimensity 9500 sticks to a tried and tested design, and it probably won't deviate from it until next year's Dimensity 9600, which has already taped out on TSMC's 2 nm N2 node.

It is measurably larger (~140.79 mm2) than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (~126 mm2) and Dimensity 9400 (~126 mm2). The die area increase may have been necessitated by extra performance demands, which would not be possible with a node shift from N3E to N3P alone.