The Latest from the 2021 MediaTek Summit: Dimensity 9000 is LPDDR5X Validated, and Pentonic 2000 Will Deliver Flagship Smart TV Experiences

I’m in Laguna Beach attending the second day of the 2021 MediaTek Summit, and there have been several announcements revolving around their latest chipsets, including cameos from partnering companies. While I’m always fascinated to hear the features of upcoming processors, there’s also always a feeling of delayed gratification. We get information ahead of time on the latest, greatest, fastest, and most powerful upcoming features these new processors will offer … and then we have to wait for the first devices that will include them. Even so, there are a lot of new features coming that will make the technology inside our devices even better.

Micron LPDDR5x and the MediaTek Dimensity 9000

MediaTek Dimensity 9000

Yesterday, Zek wrote about the flagship Dimensity 9000 chip announcement, and today we’ve received some news that makes this SoC more intriguing. Even if you don’t usually spend a lot of time thinking about the type of RAM in your smartphone beyond how much RAM is actually in your smartphone, it matters.

RAM works in tandem with your smartphone’s processor to improve overall performance, handle data-intensive applications powered by artificial intelligence, and let you take advantage of 5G experiences and innovations as they become available, including contextual experiences.

2021 MediaTek Summit

This brings us to Micron. Micron is the 4th largest semiconductor company in the world; as a leader in mobile RAM, they are now the first to launch and deliver LPDDR5X mobile memory, which is a leap forward from the LPDDR4 we see in most smartphones and LPDDR5, which we see in many of today’s flagship smartphones.

2021 MediaTek Summit

Of all of the “emerging use cases driving the need for more powerful memory solutions” on our mobile devices listed on the screen behind Chris Moore, Micron’s VP of Marketing, it resonated with me was when he explained how LPDDR5X memory could improve our mobile photography experience.

Think about this: Many times, especially when taking a photo at night, you’ll have to hold your phone still for three to five seconds to give enough time for the photo to be focussed correctly and then processed. I guess I never really thought about it, but it can take so long bewteen the time we press the camera’s shutter button and the time the photo appears ready for inspection because a very memory-intensive process is occurring! With LPDDR5X, Micron says that we can expect up to a 50% increase in photo resolution and up to 35% faster shoot time.

2021 MediaTek Summit

LPDDR5X is up to 33% faster and more power-efficient than its predecessors, and now the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 is the world’s first chipset to be certified to work with the LPDDR5X standard.

2021 MediaTek Summit

We should start hearing about the flagship phones that will sport the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chip and LPDDR5X RAM in 2022.

MediaTek Pentonic 2000:

In case you weren’t aware, MediaTek powers more than two billion television in the global market. One of the last things we heard about today was the introduction of the MediaTek Pentonic 2000, a system-on-chip for the next generation of flagship televisions. The Pentonic 2000 can handle up to 8K resolutions at 120hz refresh rates, and 144Hz for gaming PC hardware and the 9th generation of consoles.

The Pentonic 2000 includes MediaTek’s new 8K AI-Super Resolution technology that “intelligently upscales lower-resolution content to the display’s native resolution, while also performing real-time image quality enhancements.”

2021 MediaTek Summit

If you have a large 8K television, Pentonic 2000 will allow you to showcase a display wall of different media sources; using picture-in-picture or picture-by-picture, you’ll be able to see multiple views on one screen, with multiple apps open and streaming from various sources, all at the same time, via Wi-Fi 6 and even 5G.

2021 MediaTek Summit

MediaTek Intelligent View will make sure that the video in each window continues to display seamlessly — even when the window size or display layout changes — with the same level of picture quality in each window so that you’ll have the best viewing experience.

2021 MediaTek Summit

It looks like we have a lot more to look forward to in 2022 than just more powerful flagship phones. If you’re in the market for a high-end 8K television, you’ll want to wait to find out which ones will have the MediaTek Pentonic 2000 inside!

You can learn more about MediaTek and the devices it powers — many of which you likely already own — here.

Disclosure: I am at the 2021 MediaTek Summit as MediaTek’s guest; they paid for my travel, room, and meals, but there were no conditions or expectations made regarding what I chose to write about regarding my experience.

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About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She started in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie is best known for her device-agnostic approach, deep-dive reviews, and enjoyment of exploring the latest tech, gadgets, and gear.