MediaTek has officially released the MT6592, the world’s first octa-core Cortex A7 application processor. The chip can hit 2GHz, bit it is unlikely that we will see plenty of 2GHz devices, as efficiency peaks between 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz. It features a quad-core Mali-450MP4 GPU, but although this is a relatively weak graphics processor, MediaTek insists its chip can handle H.264 content, at least on paper.

Although MediaTek is trying to talk up performance, this is a mid-range part with an emphasis on price/performance and efficiency. However, we’ll have to see it in action first. The Cortex A7 is ARM’s most efficient core, so it has potential – a 28nm A7 octa-core should end up smaller than a quad-A9, yet it might outperform it in certain apps that have the brains to put multicore SoCs to good use.

MediaTek already has a few interesting design wins and it probably would have them if the chip didn’t make sense. These include the Sony Tianchy phablet along with more than 20 phones from the likes of Huawei and Lenovo.

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ARM SoC evolution is about to get messy and interesting