MediaTek's new Dimensity 9300 Plus chip brings higher clock speeds and better AI processing

What you need to know

• MediaTek's new flagship chipset, the Dimensity 9300 Plus, is here to build upon the Dimensity 9300 SoC released last November.

• The Dimensity 9300 Plus has an improved APU for AI-based tasks, like running Meta's Llama 2 and Llama 3 large language models (LLMs).

• There are a lot of similarities to the regular Dimensity 9300, such as the All-Big-Core structure with Arm Immortalis-G720 graphics.

MediaTek just revealed the Dimensity 9300 Plus system-on-a-chip, which is the mid-cycle refresh of the company's flagship processor. Compared to the regular MediaTek Dimensity 9300 that debuted last November, this new chip features a higher clock speed and an improved APU. That last point is how MediaTek is positioning the Dimensity 9300 Plus as a processor that can handle mobile AI features.

The Dimensity 9300 Plus features a four-core APU that is said to provide 10% better performance in AI-related tasks. This is partly due to support for MediaTek's NeuroPilot Speculative Decode Acceleration, which enables this SoC to run large language models (LLMs) with seven billion parameters at 22 tokens per second. According to the company, that's double the current capabilities of comparable chipsets.

MediaTek is still using the All-Big-Core design to maximize performance in the Dimensity 9300 Plus processor. The top Arm Cortex-X4 core is now clocked at 3.4GHz, which is ticked up slightly from that core's 3.25GHz speed on the Dimensity 9300. The other three Cortex-X4 cores (non-prime) run at 2.85GHz, unchanged from last year's flagship chip.

The chip's graphics, powered by the Arm Immortalis-G720, is also the exact same as the Dimensity 9300. The 12-core GPU includes support for ray-tracing, too.

Every chipmaker is targeting on-device processing for AI, and it's unsurprising that this is a focus for MediaTek with the Dimensity 9300 Plus. The APU translates to real usage with six supported LLMs, including Google's Gemini Nano and Meta's Llama 2 and Llama 3.

We'll likely start seeing the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 Plus chipset on smartphones sometime this month, first on phones from Vivo and iQOO.

MediaTek announced at an industry event earlier this year that one of its processors would power a U.S. phone in the premium segment later this year, which would be a first. Whether the Dimensity 9300 Plus powers this "mystery phone" depends entirely on when it will be released. If the phone is set for release in late fall or early winter, it may be equipped with the Dimensity 9400 instead of the Dimensity 9300 Plus. Still, this seems to be a good step in the right direction as MediaTek aims to challenge Qualcomm in the premium North American market.