MediaTek has climbed the ladder to become the world's third largest mobile chipset manufacturer. The company aims to reach the top of the SoC food chain, with its first plan to be releasing its Helio lineup of SoCs, which will be taking on Samsung's Exynos 7420 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810. MediaTek's MT6797 (codenamed Helio X20) could possibly be running the world's first 10-core processor for smartphones and tablets. However, the company will also be catering to the mid-performing smartphone market with its MT6755, a chipset which features an octa-core processor.
While details of the upcoming 'system on a chip' are extremely scarce, EEtimes reports that MT6755 will feature an octa-core processor and will be behind MT6797 in terms of performance. While it has not been stated which lithographic process MT6755 will be manufactured on, MediaTek tapped TSMC to manufacture Helio X20 on the firm's 20 nm process. The manufacturing process is inferior to Samsung's and GlobalFoundaries' (thanks to partnering up with Samsung) 14 nm FinFET process, but there is a plus side to it; overall costs.
Since the 14 nm FinFET architecture is more costly to manufacture, MediaTek will be doing itself a favor. Lowered costs would result in the Taiwanese semi-conductor manufacturing company extending its partnership to Chinese smartphone manufactures such as Xiaomi and Vivo, since these firms aggressively price their devices to gain more market exposure.
According to the aforementioned website, MediaTek Chief Financial Officer David Ku has stated that:
"That's a new architecture. It's a three-cluster architecture. You can think about this like switching gears with a gearbox. We really do think that this architecture can provide a good balance both from the performance perspective and from the power consumption perspective."
The octa-core processor of MT6755 will be supplemented by a Category 6 LTE modem, which has a maximum theoretical download limit of 300 Mbps. The executive also pointed that that majority of affordable handsets being released in 2016 sporting MediaTek's SoCs will be equipped with powerful octa-core processors and Cat 6 LTE modems. With this approach, MediaTek will be able to attract a larger market.
