Generative AI on affordable phones with MediaTek’s Dimensity 8300 Chip

MediaTek, a leading chipmaker, has introduced its new Dimensity 8300 mobile silicon that will enable generative AI on more affordable Android phones. This comes after the company launched its premium Dimensity 9300 chip weeks ago that offers the same feature for top-end phones.

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content or data from existing ones, such as images, text, audio, or video. It is one of the hottest trends in the tech industry, and mobile companies are eager to leverage it to enhance the user experience.

MediaTek’s new chip follows Qualcomm’s announcement last week of its Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip, which also brings generative AI to phones under the most expensive premium tier. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is the successor of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, which was unveiled earlier this year as the first mobile platform to support generative AI.

What can generative AI do on phones?

MediaTek did not disclose the specific applications of generative AI that phones using its Dimensity 8300 chip will support. However, the company hinted that it will enable more personalized and immersive experiences for users.

Qualcomm, on the other hand, was more explicit about the capabilities of generative AI on its chips. At its recent Snapdragon Summit, the company demonstrated how phones using its chips can use generative AI to provide smarter assistant suggestions, perform video editing tricks, and expand photos beyond their original boundaries.

Both MediaTek and Qualcomm claimed that generative AI on their chips is better than cloud-based solutions. This is because the computation is done on the device itself, rather than sending data to a remote server. This means faster responses, more privacy, and more reliability, especially when the network coverage is poor.

How powerful is generative AI on phones?

MediaTek did not share the performance metrics of generative AI on its Dimensity 8300 chip, but it said that it will be lower than on its Dimensity 9300 chip. The Dimensity 9300 chip can generate an image using a technique called Stable Diffusion in less than a second and can run AI models with 7 billion parameters per second at 20 tokens per second. The Dimensity 8300 chip can support large language models with up to 10 billion parameters.

Qualcomm also said that its Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip has lower generative AI performance than its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. However, the company did not reveal the exact numbers for either of its chips.

What else is new on MediaTek’s chip?

MediaTek said that its Dimensity 8300 chip has other improvements over its previous chip, the Dimensity 8200. The new chip has a 20% faster and 30% more power-efficient CPU, and a 60% more powerful and 55% more power-efficient GPU. The AI Processing Unit is the same as on the Dimensity 9300 chip, resulting in better performance for more conventional AI tasks like enhancing photos.

The new chip also has features that will extend the battery life of phones and improve their connectivity with accessories like earbuds and gamepads.

MediaTek did not reveal which phone brands will use its Dimensity 8300 chip in their devices. The Dimensity 8200 chip is used in some phones from Vivo, such as the Vivo V29 Pro and the Vivo V27 Pro, but they are not widely available in the US.

How does MediaTek’s Dimensity 8300 compare to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 3?

The Dimensity 8300 from MediaTek and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 from Qualcomm are both new chips that aim to bring generative AI to more affordable phones.

• Both chips are built on the 4 nm process, which makes them more power-efficient and compact than previous generations.
• The maximum frequency of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is 2.63 GHz, while the Dimensity 8300’s performance cores clocked at up to 3.35GHz.
• Both chips support large language models with up to ten billion parameters, allowing them to perform advanced generative AI tasks such as text generation and translation.
• The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 has a newer Adreno 720 GPU, whereas the Dimensity 8300 has an Arm Mali-G615 MC6.

In conclusion, both the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 and the Dimensity 8300 are capable of generative AI on lower-cost phones. The actual performance of the chips will differ depending on the phone models and applications that use them.