MediaTek to Use Arm’s Latest Mobile Chip Technology for Next-Generation Smartphones

• Arm’s new technology for mobile devices will be used by Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek to boost the performance of next-generation smartphones.
• MediaTek has been pushing into the market to supply integrated circuits for premium smartphones, a market once dominated by rival Qualcomm.

SoftBank Group Corp-owned Arm, the British semiconductor tech company, on Monday rolled out new technology for mobile devices, which Taiwanese smartphone chip designer MediaTek said it will be using for its next-generation product.

MediaTek, a long-time supplier of low- and mid-tier smartphone processors, has been pushing into the market to supply integrated circuits (ICs) for premium smartphones, once dominated by rival Qualcomm, which has been in a legal battle with Arm since last year over chip licensing agreements.

In Arm’s blog announcing the new products, MediaTek said the innovation will help improve the performance for next-generation smartphones. Shares in SoftBank, whose chief executive Masayoshi Son is focused on listing Arm, closed up 8.2 per cent in Tokyo in the biggest jump in more than a year. MediaTek shares were up 1.1 per cent.

“Investors have become extremely sensitive to any news about AI [artificial intelligence] or chip technology, and jumped on this Arm news,” said Masahiro Ichikawa, chief market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management.

Arm sells blueprints that chip designers use to build their own hardware. It is launching Immortalis-G720, a chip for video image processing and AI applications, and the Cortex-X4, a processor that would be the brains of the mobile device at Taiwan’s Computex conference and exhibition.

Arm said both new chips have 15 per cent better performance than their previous iterations, and the Cortex-X4 uses 40 per cent less power, which is key for smartphones that need to keep battery use time long.

Arm also said it has “taped out” the Cortex-X4 at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), which means it had a chip manufactured at the factory, an expensive process usually done by IC designers that sell the final chip.

Asked by Reuters during a briefing if the tape out meant Arm was making a chip to sell instead of its long-time business model of providing the blueprint to chip makers, Chris Bergey, the general manager of Arm’s client line of business, said this was a step it sometimes takes to help test out new manufacturing technology for customers.

“Arm is not in the business of selling chips. That’s not what we do,” he said.

Last month, the Financial Times reported that Arm was developing its own chip to showcase the capabilities of its designs. Arm said the Cortex-X4 was taped out on TSMC’s N3E process and said it was an industry first.

May 29, 2023