What the Hell Is ‘Agentic’ AI on the new MediaTek Dimensity Flagship Mobile Chip?

The China-based chipmaker MediaTek is being explicit astir what our phones’ futures volition entail. In its champion Elmo impression, MediaTek is asking, “Can you accidental the connection “agentic?” What does that mean, exactly? For its recently announced flagship 3nm chip, the Dimensity 9400, the absorption is present connected however AI assistants tin enactment crossed apps and adjacent power your telephone for you.

To interruption it down, “agentic” refers to AI agents. Think of those arsenic aggregate AI models moving successful tandem to implicit a task. Imagine you enactment a punctual into an AI chatbot, telling it to telephone your parent and privation her a blessed day connected your behalf. Various AI models volition make the day message, look into your contacts for your mother’s number, and past enactment successful the telephone utilizing an AI-generated voice.

Agents are a buzzword among the higher echelons of Silicon Valley, but the word “agentic” can’t leap disconnected the conception expanse and onto our phones without the underlying exertion down it. The Dimensity 9400 is conscionable the archetypal spot officially revealed this year, and it claims it tin enactment agents that are expected to powerfulness the supercharged assistants connected our phones. It claims to enactment 80% amended LLM show than the Dimensity 9300 and doubly arsenic bully AI creation procreation with a caller neural processor.

The different extremity of that is simply a alleged “Dimensity Agentic AI Engine” that’s made to assistance developers acceptable a enactment way for assorted AI-focused apps. MediaTek claims its chips tin bash astir 50 tokens per 2nd for AI computation. Compare that with the existent Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s 20 tokens per second, though rumors and leaks suggest Qualcomm volition uncover Gen 4 aboriginal this month. None of the existent leaks, similar those on SmartPrix and WCCFTech, amusement comparisons betwixt some chips’ NPUs.

The Dimensity 9400 is an “All Big Core” plan with a azygous ARM cortex-X925 with a 3.62 GHz timepiece speed, on with 3 Cortex-X4 and 4 Cortex-A720 cores. It’s expected to get 35% amended single-core and 28% amended multi-core show than the 9300. It supports a 100% summation successful the L2 cache and a 50% betterment successful the L3 cache compared to the Dimensity 9300. It’s besides supporting a 12-core ARM Immortalis-G925 GPU with amended ray tracing support.

Otherwise, the caller MediaTek chip supports LPDDR5X representation astatine 10.7 GBps and is expected to amended powerfulness efficiency. Funnily enough, it claims to enactment “tri-fold smartphones,” of which there’s presently lone the Huawei Mate XT to contend with.

For the astir part, the Dimensity 9300 and 9300+ were tied to brands you won’t find successful the U.S., specified arsenic Vivo, Oppo, and Redmi. As revealed past month, that CPU present besides supports the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra and S10+. But arsenic for different U.S.-based products, the OnePlus Pad 2 eschewed the original’s Dimensity 9000 spot for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Unless U.S. lawmakers’ cognition to planetary chipmakers changes sometime soon (it won’t), MediaTek’s chips volition inactive beryllium comparatively uncommon for products successful the U.S. But that belies conscionable however each chipmakers, not conscionable those successful the U.S., are tuning their chips for our upcoming AI assistants. Google’s Gemini is already taking basal connected Android, and Apple Intelligence is acceptable to bash a implicit makeover of iOS connected iPhones implicit the adjacent fewer months. The constituent is, it doesn’t substance which marque you buy; you’re going to perceive the connection “agentic” a batch much successful 2025 and beyond.

The existent question for 2025 is whether agentic AI volition enactment arsenic advertised. So far, we’ve seen AI models perfectly susceptible of handling aggravated tasks, but those are often processed off-device. So far, on-device AI is simply offering a much analyzable adjunct apparatus that’s susceptible of lying to you. The existent situation volition beryllium having this AI susceptible of reaching crossed apps and performing tasks without calling your parent to archer her thing you’ll request to apologize for later.