MediaTek looks ready to chase bragging rights rather than battery life.
The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn claiming that the upcoming Dimensity 9600 flagship chip will have two ultra-large Arm CPU cores, a first for the firm’s top-end mobile silicon.
The Dimensity 9600 is being tipped as a copycat of Qualcomm’s expected Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 layout, using a 2+3+3 CPU setup built around dual big cores.
A Weibo tipster, Digital Chat Station, said after posting a chicken and dragon emoji: “Currently, all phones using this model are TSMC N2P processors, featuring a 2+3+3 dual-core all-large-core architecture. The new phones will most likely debut in September.”
Later in the same post, “Let’s bet ahead of time: which one do you think will be stronger this generation?”
While the post does not spell out MediaTek by name, Chinese tech watchers often use the chicken head emoji as a nod to the company, punning on its Chinese name.
Digital Chat Station is pointing to TSMC’s N2P process for these devices, claiming it delivers a performance lift of between five and ten per cent versus the N2 node.
The bigger tell is the apparent retreat from efficiency cores in the flagship cluster, suggesting MediaTek wants every scrap of gain it can wring from bleeding-edge nodes.
If the leaks hold, the Dimensity 9600 will run a 2+3+3 CPU arrangement with two ultra Arm cores, mirroring the core mix rumoured for Qualcomm’s next flagship.
That would likely mean two Arm C2-Ultra cores, three Arm C2-Premium cores and three Arm C2-Pro cores, which is a lot of “large” for something meant to live in your pocket.
For comparison, MediaTek’s current Dimensity 9500 uses one Arm C1-Ultra core clocked at 4.21GHz with a 2MB L2 cache, plus three C1-Premium cores at 3.50GHz with 1MB L2.
It then fills out the cluster with four Arm C1-Pro cores clocked at 2.70 GHz, which looks almost restrained compared to the alleged all-big-core push.
There are also rumours that the Dimensity 9600 will take ARM’s next flagship GPU, expected to be unveiled in September 2026 as the Mali-G2 Ultra.
That GPU is tipped to run more than 10 cores with mandatory ray tracing, which will delight marketing departments and punish thermals if anyone gets cocky.
