MediaTek has announced a new Helio X20 chip aimed at high-powered smartphones and tablets. The X20 chip is the second in the flagship X series and MediaTek’s first 10-core mobile solution.
The new 10-core MediaTek Helio X20 MT6797 processor is made in a 3-cluster design, which is quite unusual against the widespread 2-cluster heterogeneous architecture format big.LITTLE high-powered cores for heavy workload plus standard cores for power-saving mode . The new 3-component Helio X20 chip structure consists of an economical 1.4GHz 4-core ARM A53 chip, a power and performance balanced 2.0GHz 4-core A53 chip, and a 2.5GHz 2-core A72 chip for extreme. To realize a 3-cluster design with high performance, MediaTek had to resort to a proprietary interconnect bus called MediaTek Coherent System Interconnect MCSI .
The MediaTek Helio X20 chip has an integrated radio frequency modem that supports LTE Release 11 Category 6 standard with the ability to aggregate 20+20 MHz channels to achieve download speeds of 300 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Along with this, the CDMA2000 standard and 802 Wi-Fi standard is supported.11ac with up to 280 Mbps theoretical data rate over a single radio link.
| MediaTek Helio X20 mobile processor and its main rivals | ||||
| Chip | MediaTek Helio X20 MT6797 | MediaTek Helio X10 MT6795 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 MSM8992 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 620 MSM8976 |
| Cores | 4x Cortex A53 @1.4GHz
4x Cortex A53 @2GHz 2x Cortex A72 @2.5GHz | 4x Cortex A53 @2.2GHz 4x Cortex A53 @2.2GHz | 4x Cortex A53 @1.44GHz 2x Cortex A57 @1.82GHz | 4x Cortex A53 @1.2GHz 4x Cortex A72 @1.8GHz |
| Memory controller | 2x 32-bit @ 933 MHz LPDDR3 | 2x 32-bit @ 933 MHz LPDDR3 | 2x 32-bit @ 933 MHz LPDDR3 | 2x 32bit @ 933MHz LPDDR3 |
| Graphics Core | Mali T800 T880? @700 MHz | PowerVR G6200 @700 MHz | Adreno 418 @600 MHz | “New” Adreno |
| Hardware encoding decoding | 2160p30 HEVC with HDR 2160p30 10bit, H.264/HEVC/VP9 | 2160p30 HEVC 2160p30 10bit H.264/HEVC/VP9 | 2160p30, 1080p120 H.264 2160p30, 1080p120 H.264 and HEVC | 2160p30, 1080p120 H.264 & HEVC |
| Camera | Dual cameras, 32MP @ 24 fps | 13MP | Two cameras, 21MP | Two cameras, 21MP |
| Built-in modem | LTE Cat. 6,300 Mbps 50 Mbps | LTE Cat. 4,150 Mbps 50 Mbps | “X10 LTE Cat. 9 450 Mbps 50 Mbps | “X8 LTE Cat. 7,300 Mbps 100 Mbps |
According to the official MediaTek information, the video encoding and decoding speeds of the new Helio X20 chip exceeds the previous flagship X10 MT6795 by about 30% and 40% respectively. The X20 chip is likely to be the first on the market to support the recently introduced next-generation Mali T800 graphics core. In terms of RAM support, the situation is comparable to the previous flagship: the same interface with support for 2-channel 32-bit LPDDR3 memory clocked at 933 MHz.
According to official data, shipments of the first batches of X20 chips will begin in the second half of 2015, and the first mobile devices based on it are expected no later than the first quarter of 2016. In all likelihood, the MediaTek X20 chip will be a major contender to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 620 in the mobile processor segment for so-called “top-of-the-line” mass-market smartphones and tablets.
Which brand or manufacturer offers smartphones and tablets with the MediaTek Helio X20 chip that boasts 10 cores?