Thanks to the boom in mobile phone shipments over the last couple of years, Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek has seen exponential growth. From selling just 10 million chipsets in 2011, to estimated sales of over 350 million chipsets this year, MediaTek has indeed come a long way. Its market value has risen by 125 per cent to $24 billion in three years.
One of the main drivers has been the entry level to mid-range phones which sport MediaTek chipsets. Recently, MediaTek announced its partnership with Google to supply chipsets for over 2 million Android One handsets. Not sticking only to the entry level segment, MediaTek has announced the MT6595 4G LTE chipset this year as well, which will be seen on higher end smartphones.
We conducted an email interview with Dr Finbarr Moynihan, General Manager (Corporate Sales International) MediaTek Inc., about MediaTek’s India plans, its upcoming high-end chipsets, expanding into the wearables market and more.
(Please note, the interview questions for the email interview, were sent on October 27th. Some products such as the Lenovo Vibe X2, were launched after the date)
Dr Finbarr Moynihan, General Manager – Corporate Sales International, MediaTek Inc.
MediaTek has consistently partnered with mid-range and entry-level handset makers such as Xolo, Micromax, Karbonn, Lava and so on. Offlate there have been collaborations with Sony, LG and so on for the mid-range devices. Will you continue only with these makers or is MediaTek open to bigger brands as well?
MediaTek has been more popularly known to collaborate with local giants like Xolo, Micromax, Karbonn and Lava but we have been working with leading global brands for quite a while now. Lenovo, Alcatel, Huawei, Sony, LG and HTC are already an integral part of MediaTek clientele. We believe in providing a range of solutions which cater to products at all price points, from entry level, mid level to high end segments. Our initial focus had been entry smartphones for the emerging markets. We tried to bring a richer user experience into that price point. At the same time, we also have a range of premium offerings which is a step towards starting to push more into high-end segments. The MT6595 also belongs to the premium segment of our offerings and already we see some of the leading brands, like Lenovo in India, start to offer products powered by this exceptionally performing chipset. Indeed, a recent report by AnTuTu ranking the best performing smartphones for Q3’14 ranking the Meizu M4 smartphone, based on the MT6595, as the best performing device:
So far we have seen MediaTek on Android phones. Do you plan to get on to other platforms such as Windows Phone OS, Firefox OS, Tizen and so on?
We are always on the lookout for new ventures and partnerships. The OS domain is currently reshaping, with possibility of new opportunities with so many fresh offerings. But, with global shipments of Android-based smartphones having reached 268 million in third quarter 2014, helping the OS win a market share of 84%, according to recent Strategy Analytics data, we continue to focus on the dominant platform, for now. At the same time, we continue to monitor the progress of Windows and other Linux-based OS, such as Firefox OS, Ubuntu, Tizen – and are open to working on them in future, as customer and market needs dictate.
MediaTek has two R&D centers in India – Bangalore and Noida. Do these research centres work only on smartphone/tablet SoCs or is there work happening across your product portfolio.
Noida center was set up 10 years ago, in 2004 and we recently announced our R&D center for excellence in Bengaluru. Our business has been centered on the mobile phone segment so far. However, given that we have available vast talent pool in the country and basis our business requirements, we have now expanded and introduced our teams to working on connectivity and home entertainment segments as well. The focus however, remains wireless communications, smartphones and tablets. Both the sites have specific charters but there are some synergies and complementary work.
You have announced the true octa-core MediaTek MT6795 which uses 8-cores running at the same speeds and on the other hand you have the MediaTek MT8135 which employs the big.LITTLE configuration. Please elaborate on them and will they be on smartphones and tablets both? When can we see devices with the MT6795 selling in India?
MediaTek MT6795 is a 64-bit LTE True Octa-core high-performance SoC for smartphones with premium multimedia features (4K video, HEVC, 2K display and 20MP camera). It embeds MediaTek CorePilot multiprocessing technology which unlocks the power of all eight cores for outstanding performance with ultra-low power consumption and thermal control and comes with our 4G/LTE modem included, so targets devices with cellular connectivity. The MT6795 is very much targeted at Smartphones, but we will also offer variants of this platform for premium LTE-connected tablets in 2015 also. On the other hand, MediaTek’s MT8135 unlocks the power of quad-core processors and the ARM big.LITTLE configuration for tablets with sophisticated heterogeneous multi‐processing – also based on our CorePilot technology. Capable of being used in any combination, the MT8135 gives seamless performance and outstanding battery life, even with the most processor-intensive apps. The MT8135 has most recently been adoted by Amazon for their new Fire HD Tablet products.
MediaTek has a whole range of LTE solutions to offer. LTE in India is still in developing stage, like 3G it’s going to adopt at different rates in different countries. Currently, we have announced the premium MT6595, MediaTek’s True Octa-core 4G LTE SoC, as our first of many LTE offerings in India and already we have seen one big announcement around the platform – Lenovo’s Vibe X2. We are hopeful the market should see some more exciting products powered by the MT6595 by end of this year or early next year.
The MT6795, on the other hand, is a 64-bit LTE SoC, which has not been announced in India yet, so it would be a bit early for us to comment on availability timeline of products based on this platform.
In the case of a true octa core SoC, how do you manage to optimise the power draw as all 8-cores are rated to run up to 2.2GHz. Could you elaborate on the CorePilot technology – will it allow the SoC to dynamically control the number of cores needed to perform certain tasks?
MediaTek has been delivering advanced SoC for smartphones and tablets that combine multiple cores for many years – starting with our innovative quad-core 3G SoC (MT6589) in late 2012, and then taking the architecture to the next level with the MT6592 Octa-core in late 2013. The latest and highest performing platform to be announced is the coming MT6795 that will offer 8-core ARM v8 (64-bit) performance with each core capable of running at up to 2.2GHz and managed by our proprietary CorePilot technology. MediaTek’s CorePilot technology is one of a kind. To give you the best battery life and performance possible, modern smartphone processors feature multiple processor cores suited to different tasks. In addition to high performance cores that speed up heavy duty activities like playing games, power efficient everyday cores are also included for things like checking emails or audio playback.
CorePilot is MediaTek’s technology to control which tasks are assigned to which processor core, delivering the best performance and power consumption possible across all 8 available cores. CorePilot can be applied to systems based on heterogeneous (e.g. big.LITTLE) or homogeneous (all cores the same). CorePilot’s adaptive thermo management closely monitors the device temperature and dynamically adjusts performance to keep it within a specified temperature range. This approach not only minimizes the effect on performance but also increases power efficiency compared to traditional dynamic thermo management systems that simply throttle performance at fixed temperature points. CorePilot increases performance up to 20% and reduces power consumption up to 20% meaning your phone can do more and still have more battery life left at the end of the day.
How does the shrinking of the die from 28nm to 22nm (or 14/16nm in the future) affect the features such as true octa-core and what are other technical hurdles you have to face?
As mobile SoCs become more and more powerful – in order to drive the mobile computing, multimedia and communications challenges that consumers are looking for in their devices, the higher-performance devices will always be looking to move to the most advanced process technology for optimal performance. The use of advanced technologies like 28nm, 20nm and other advanced processes, will likely be driven by platforms that require high-end mobile computing (Multi-core, 4- or 8-core, ARM v8, 64-bit CPUs), high-end multimedia and graphics and advanced connectivity options. Migrating to the advanced processes should allow for similar multi-core architectures to achieve higher computing performance at similar or lower power consumptions than today’s offerings. As such, the use of these advanced processes should allow for longer sustained use of the high-performance CPUs before thermal throttling becomes necessary – overall this should enhance the user experience & allow for more complex use cases.
Q) Apart from Smartphones and tablets, which are the other category of products that MediaTek is focussing as far as the Indian market goes?
In terms of R&D, we have started working on a few new categories including Home Entertainment and Connectivity. We are also looking at building a presence in the IoT domain with M2M solutions for the India market. But, we still continue to focus largely on wireless communications.
MediaTek announced the LinkIt platform for wearables at this year’s Computex
Q) MediaTek announced the LinkIt platform for wearables at Computex. Could you tell us something on that front and by when we shall be seeing a MediaTek powered wearable device in India?
Wearables is one of the focus areas for us and we are already providing some solutions in this space. We are even working hard to bring the Internet of Things to life, where everything and everyone can talk to each other using the internet. We recently launched LinkIt, a development platform built to accelerate the Wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) markets. LinkIt integrates the MediaTek’s Aster System on Chip (SoC), the smallest wearable SoC currently on the market. The MediaTek Aster SoC is designed to enable the developer community to create a broad range of affordable wearable and IoT products and solutions, for the billions of consumers in the rising Super-mid market to realize their potential as what we call an ‘Everyday Genius’.
Our M2M products are being used in smart meters and locations trackers by various manufacturers across globe. We also recently announced the MediaTek Labs as a developer ecosystem to support wearables and IoT.
Q) So far Qualcomm has been your major competitor, but off late Intel too has had many design wins. Its latest Core m platform will be seen on tablets and fanless 2-in-1s. Intel Atom SoCs are being seen on more smartphones than ever before. Do you think in such a scenario, we will see MediaTek expanding into more product categories or will it stick to its known turf? Do you see more potential competitors cropping up in the coming years?
In the large consumer-focused markets, there will always be competition & we believe this is what enables the best solutions for customers and consumers.
Q) What according to you is the next best platform, now that smartphones and tablets have become mainstream? What is MediaTek’s take on smartwatches? Qualcomm had already announced its reference design called Toq, Does Mediatek have something similar?
MediaTek already has customers in production with our LinkIt platform for wearable devices. Additionally, customers like Omate have launched smart watches based on our LinkIt and Android platforms.
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