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The CPU core configuration of this year's most powerful smartphone AP has been leaked

If you see us writing about MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 application processor (AP) more than a few times, it's because, with a reported 30 billion transistors in the SoC, this could very well be the most powerful smartphone chipset available this year . In comparison, the A17 Pro of the iPhone 15 Pro models has 19 billion transistors built into it. Apple has not yet revealed the transistor count for the A18 and A18 Pro, which power the iPhone 16 non-Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models, respectively.

Last year's Dimensity 9300 AP was a gamble because it used a configuration that did not contain low-power cores. Instead, the AP consisted of four Cortex-X4 high-performance CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 3.25 GHz and four Cortex-A720 performance-efficiency CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.0 GHz. Vivo used the SoC to power the X100 series and the Dimensity 9300 AP generated over $1 billion in revenue for MediaTek last year.

MediaTek is currently introducing the Dimensity 9400 and the leaker Digital Chat Station is publishing details about the chipset's CPU cores. The chipset features one Cortex-X925 super high-performance CPU core with a clock speed of up to 3.626 GHz, three Cortex-X4 high-performance CPU cores with up to 2.85 GHz and four Cortex-A725 performance efficiency cores ( (incorrectly entered as A720 by Digital Chat Station) clocked at up to 2 GHz.

The Dimensity 9400 will use two of these Arm CPU cores, the Cortex-A925 and the Cprtex-A725. | Photo credit arm

According to Arm, the Cortex-X925 delivers up to 46% more performance than the Cortex-X4. The Cortex-A725 achieved a 35% increase in power efficiency compared to the Cortex-A720, showing performance improvements for AI and gaming. The Dimensity 9400 will feature the Immortalis-G925 MC12 GPU clocked at 1,612 MHz.

The Dimensity 9400 AP will power the Vivo X200 series and the Oppo Find X8. Since the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 features custom Qualcomm cores for the first time, the Dimensity 9400 will have a huge price advantage over Qualcomm's upcoming flagship AP. Add to that yield issues at Samsung Foundry hampering production of the Exynos 2500 AP, and there is now speculation that Samsung could turn to the Dimensity 9400 to power the base Galaxy S25 model in most markets outside of the US, Canada and China.

TSMC will build the Dimensity 9400 using its second-generation 3nm node (N3E).

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