MediaTek's Apple M3 and Qualcomm Oryon competitor spotted by Weibo leaker
A leak from yesterday (14/05/2023) opined the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 would pack six high-performance cores (2x Cortex-X4 plus 4x Cortex-A720) similar to what Qualcomm has planned for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Now, prolific Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station says MediaTek has yet another MediaTek chip in the pipeline with even more firepower.
A yet-to-be-named engineering sample from the Taiwanese chipmaker supposedly packs four Hunter ELP (Cortex-X4) and four Hunter (Cortex-A720) with no efficiency cores in the mix. While some users speculate this could be an alternate Dimensity 9300 configuration, the chip is likely earmarked for laptops due to its high power draw.
The silicon mentioned above could be the next iteration of the Kompanio SKU MediaTek has planned for Windows laptops. It could even come with a raytracing-enabled GPU. Until now, Kompanio chips have been earmarked for low-power devices such as Chromebooks and tablets.
However, Microsoft has an exclusivity agreement with Qualcomm (h/t XDA Developers). Then again, the contract might be temporary and could expire soon, explaining why MediaTek is foraying into the laptop space. Samsung could get in on the fun, too, with an Exynos-branded offering, but no information about it has emerged yet.
Whether or not MediaTek's offering will be able to hold up against next-gen behemoths such as the Apple M3 series and Qualcomm's Nuvia-branded Oryon chip remains to be seen because the former has a significant node advantage (N3E vs N4P) and the latter uses new CPU cores designed from the ground up.
