What you need to know
- MediaTek has confirmed that its upcoming Dimensity platform will be based on TSMC's 3nm node.
- The Taiwanese chip manufacturer says volume production of the 3nm design will start early next year.
- The 3nm node comes with an 18% uptick in speed while utilizing the same power as 5nm platforms.
MediaTek has announced that it built its first chipset using TSMC's 3nm technology. Most of the Taiwanese manufacturer's Dimensity platforms over the last two years were based on TSMC's 4nm manufacturing node, so the shift to 3nm will come with noticeable gains in performance figures — similar to what we got when switching from 5nm to 4nm.
MediaTek notes that moving to 3nm should lead to an 18% increase in performance while utilizing the same amount of power as a similar design based on 5nm, and while that's exciting in and of itself, what will make a bigger difference is the efficiency figures. The 3nm node delivers a full 32% increase in efficiency for the same workloads over its 5nm counterpart, and that bodes well for the best Android phones of 2024.
Qualcomm is slated to make the switch to 3nm in a few years time with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, but as of now, we don't have much in the way of details about what that particular platform will offer. As for MediaTek, the brand notes that its Dimensity platform based on the 3nm node will debut in the latter half of 2024. While that's still a year away, it should be earlier than Qualcomm — a big win for MediaTek.
Although MediaTek is the first to announce that it built a chip on the 3nm node, the first consumer-facing products to utilize the cutting-edge manufacturing technology will come from Apple. The upcoming iPhone 15 models — slated to launch September 12 — will utilize the 3nm node, and should deliver meaningful upgrades over the A16 Bionic that's featured in the iPhone 14 Pro.
