The market in China and India has changed a lot as the customers want better performance that Cortex A53 eight cores simply cannot deliver anymore. One can say that on top of the mainstream, there is a performance mainstream market where Helio P60 fits like a glove. There is a big noise about artificial intelligence and by choosing four Cortex A73 chips to do your AI /ML related tasks, you can claim 70 percent CPU performance boost over the Helio P23 and Helio P30, in addition to a 70 percent GPU performance enhancement. Of course, the choice of the new CPU and GPU architecture contributes a lot to the cause.
MediaTek left the announcement of the faster version of the SoC called Helio P70 for some other day, but it did announce the specifications for its latest Helio P60.
The SoC is manufactured at TSMC 12 nm, which barely comes as a surprise considering that both MediaTek and one of the TSMC fabs are just across the street. The Helio P60 is an octa-core with four ARM Cortex-A73 clocked up 2.0 GHz and four ARM Cortex-A53 up to 2.0GHz. It is interesting that MediaTek still uses big.LITTLE configuration to describe its SoC, especially since it uses its own CorePilot technology that can have all the cores run at the same time.
MediaTek chose ARM’s own Mali G72 GPU MP3 which will clock up to 800 MHz and it support up to 8GB, dual-channel LPDDR4x @ 1800 MHz as well as eMMC 5.1 / UFS 2.1 storage.
There is support for 16+20MP or 32MP camera and full HD + display and 20:9. When it comes to connectivity, MediaTek supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 and FM radio. The SoC supports Cat-7 (DL) / Cat-13 (UL); Dual 4G VoLTE; TAS 2.0; Global IMS for cellular connectivity. This is not top of the hill, but Cat 7 will enable speeds up to 300 Mbps download and 150 Mbps download, of course in the peak best case scenario.
The SoC supports Multi-GNSS: GPS/GLONASS/Beidou or GPS/GLONASS/Galileo co-receive.
The chip supports its CorePilot 4.0 energy aware scheduling thermal management and UX monitoring.
TL Lee, General Manager of MediaTek’s Wireless Communication business unit, said:
“Building on our legacy of innovative technology, the new MediaTek Helio P60 changes everything about what consumers can expect in a smartphone. Packing big core power and performance with a processing unit purpose-built for AI applications, the MediaTek Helio P60 chipset brings consumers flagship features like deep-learning facial detection, object and scene identification, fluid gaming experiences, and smarter camera functions. This new chipset gives everyone access to incredible devices without the premium price tag.”
Smartphones powered by the MediaTek Helio P60 chipset will be available globally starting in early Q2 2018, so very soon.
