MediaTek Beats Qualcomm to TSMC’s 2nm Chip Race With Its New Dimensity 9600 Pro Smartphone Processor

TAIPEI, Taiwan — MediaTek unveiled its new flagship smartphone processor Monday, the Dimensity 9600 Pro, becoming the first chipmaker to bring a mobile processor built on TSMC’s cutting-edge 2-nanometer manufacturing process to market, putting the Taiwanese company ahead of its main rival, Qualcomm, in the race to commercialize the next generation of chip fabrication technology.

The Dimensity 9600 Pro is built on TSMC’s N2P process, an enhanced version of the foundry’s 2-nanometer node. Qualcomm is expected to adopt the same TSMC process for the first time with its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, which is due to arrive next week, meaning MediaTek’s launch gives it a brief but notable head start in bringing 2-nanometer silicon to smartphones.

The new chip departs from conventional smartphone processor design by abandoning small, power-saving efficiency cores entirely in favor of an all-big-core layout. Its eight-core CPU is arranged in a 2+3+3 configuration: two C2-Ultra cores clocked up to 4.55 gigahertz with 2 megabytes of Level 2 cache each, three C2-Pro cores at 4.35 gigahertz with 1 megabyte of cache each, and three additional C2-Pro cores at 3.1 gigahertz with 512 kilobytes of cache each. Combined with 16 megabytes of Level 3 cache, the chip carries a total of 34.5 megabytes of cache, which MediaTek says represents a 21% increase over its previous-generation Dimensity 9500 and should help reduce memory access delays during heavy workloads. The processor packs more than 33 billion transistors in total.

MediaTek says the new design delivers a 17% improvement in single-core performance and a 15% improvement in multi-core performance compared with the Dimensity 9500, alongside a 61% reduction in multi-core power consumption. Independent benchmark testing appears to support those claims: the chip scored 4,276 points in Geekbench 6.4’s single-core test and 12,650 in the multi-core test, up from 3,666 and 11,014 for the Dimensity 9500. The Dimensity 9600 Pro is also the first mobile chip to support LPDDR6 memory, which MediaTek says delivers 33% higher performance than the previous LPDDR5X standard, along with UFS 5.0 storage, which doubles the sequential read and write speeds available through dual-channel UFS 4.0.

On the graphics side, the chip’s new G2-Ultra NX GPU offers 27% higher peak performance than its predecessor, along with an 18% improvement in ray-tracing performance and a 24% reduction in power consumption at peak output, according to the company. MediaTek said devices built around the chip will be able to sustain on-device gaming frame rates of up to 185 frames per second. For imaging, the chip supports 4K video capture at up to 120 frames per second, along with additional camera capabilities including high dynamic range recording and improved GPS accuracy.

Artificial intelligence capability features prominently in MediaTek’s pitch for the new chip. The Dimensity 9600 Pro combines a dedicated neural processing unit with the GPU in what the company calls a Native AI architecture, paired with a new Agentic AI Engine designed to power on-device AI assistants and automated tasks. MediaTek said the chip’s neural processing unit delivers 51% higher performance for the prefill stage of large language model processing compared with the previous generation, and that the chip can run generative AI models with as many as 30 billion parameters entirely on-device, without relying on cloud-based processing.

JC Hsu, corporate senior vice president at MediaTek and general manager of the company’s Wireless Communications Business Unit, framed the chip’s design around the growing role artificial intelligence now plays in everyday smartphone use. “The Dimensity 9600 Pro meets these demands with a Native AI architecture and dual improvement in performance and power efficiency to deliver new agentic AI experiences,” Hsu said, describing AI as central to how smartphones need to evolve to keep pace with user expectations for greater performance, efficiency and intelligence.

MediaTek’s adoption of TSMC’s 2-nanometer process follows an initial partnership announcement made in September 2025, when the company said it had completed a successful tape-out of a 2-nanometer system-on-chip and confirmed it was among the first companies working with TSMC on the enhanced N2P node, with volume production originally expected by late 2026. According to TSMC’s own figures cited at the time, the N2P process offers up to an 18% performance improvement at equivalent power levels, roughly a 36% reduction in power consumption at equivalent speeds, and a 1.2 times increase in logic density compared with the foundry’s current-generation N3E process, while also becoming the first TSMC node to adopt a nanosheet transistor structure.

The Dimensity 9600 Pro carries an estimated price of up to $220, positioning it below Qualcomm’s competing flagship chipsets, which typically range from $240 to $260. MediaTek, which describes itself as the world’s largest provider of mobile chipsets by volume and holds a larger market valuation than Qualcomm, said the chip will appear in devices from smartphone makers including Oppo, Xiaomi, Samsung, Motorola and Realme, among others. As of the chip’s launch, all confirmed device partners are based in China, with no Western smartphone maker having yet announced a device built around the new processor.

MediaTek’s rapid move to 2-nanometer manufacturing places it alongside other major chip designers making similar transitions. TSMC has said Intel and AMD are also adopting its most advanced process nodes, while Apple confirmed at its own recent product event that it is using TSMC’s 2-nanometer technology across its entire newly announced iPhone 18 lineup, underscoring how quickly the industry’s leading chip designers are moving to adopt the foundry’s latest manufacturing capabilities as competition over on-device AI performance intensifies across the smartphone market.