Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

This new MediaTek chip is about to bring 5G to a lot more devices

Jesse Hollington
By
MediaTek M60 5G RedCap Modem.
MediaTek

One of the biggest promises of 5G technology isn’t merely faster performance but rather the ability to power a far more connected world — a global network where every device can get online from just about anywhere.

That’s the vision behind MediaTek’s new M60 5G modem and T300 chip, which aim to be small and efficient enough to bring 5G to wearables, internet-of-things (IoT) devices, and other electronics that benefit from reliable internet connectivity but don’t require the massive speed and bandwidth of modern laptops and smartphones.

Recommended Videos

Reduced capability for greater efficiency

MediaTek M60 5G RedCap Modem Infographic.
MediaTek

MediaTek’s new 5G modem uses the new 3GPP “RedCap” standard, an abbreviation for reduced capability. Also known as 5G NR-Light, RedCap chips are designed to provide the benefits of 5G, such as low latency and broad connectivity, without the power requirements of more traditional higher-bandwidth 5G chips.

Related

The tradeoff is that you don’t get the eye-watering 5G speeds delivered by ultrafast mmWave and aggregated sub-6 technologies. However, RedCap is designed to cater to a broad range of consumer and industrial devices that don’t need to send and receive the massive amounts of data that would require a high-speed 5G connection.

Instead, the MediaTek M60 is targeted at devices like smartwatches, lightweight augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets, IoT devices, and industrial sensors. These devices all benefit from ubiquitous connectivity, but they sip data compared to other connected devices like smartphones and tablets, and they don’t have nearly as much power to spare.

This is where MediaTek’s RedCap chips make a big difference. The M60 modem and MediaTek T300 chip make up the world’s first 6nm Radio Frequency System-On-Chip (RFSOC) single die RedCap chip, which allows for a smaller size and greater power efficiency.

Using a single-core Arm Cortex-A35 in a compact design, the chip can handle download speeds of up to 227Mbps and upload speeds reaching 122Mbps — and it does it while consuming 70% less power, thanks to MediaTek’s UltraSave 4.0 technology.

A Pixel Watch and TicWatch Pro 5 side-by-side on a person's wrist.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

More significantly, the new 5G RedCap chips are small and efficient enough that MediaTek hopes manufacturers will be encouraged to shift away from older 4G/LTE technologies and fully embrace 5G connectivity.

“Our RedCap solutions are a significant part of our mission to democratize 5G, providing our customers the ability to optimize components and deliver 5G-enabled devices from a range of applications and a range of price points,” JC Hsu, Corporate Senior Vice President at MediaTek said in a press release. “The migration to 5G RedCap will replace legacy 4G/LTE solutions, offering significantly better power efficiency and more reliable user experiences compared to leading edge 5G eMMB modem solutions and legacy 4G LTE Cat 4 and Cat 6 devices.”

MediaTek plans to send out its first T300 series devices to sample early next year, where they’ll hopefully find their way into the first commercial products by late 2024.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jesse Hollington
Jesse Hollington
Mobile Writer
Jesse has been a technology enthusiast for his entire life — he probably would have been born with an iPhone in his hand…
MediaTek just made Wi-Fi 7 a lot more exciting
MediaTek's FiLogic 860 and FiLogic 360 chips.

The next evolution of wireless technology, Wi-Fi 7, has been hitting its stride in recent months. Now, MediaTek is giving it a big boost with a duo of new Filogic chips that will power a whole new generation of Wi-Fi 7-capable devices, from enterprise access points and wireless mesh systems to smartphones and set-top boxes.

Unsurprisingly, MediaTek was one of the first chipmakers on board when Wi-Fi 7 made its debut at CES 2022, promising to deliver top speeds more than twice as fast as current Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies. While Wi-Fi 7 is still in its nascent stages — few consumer devices support it, and the spec has yet to receive its final ratification — MediaTek’s second-generation Filogic chips will ensure that smartphones, laptops, and routers are ready to deliver the best of what the new standard has to offer.

Read more
MediaTek’s new chip just raised the bar for Android phones
MediaTek Dimensity 9300 SoC inside Android phone.

MediaTek is ready to enter the flagship Android phone race and challenge Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with its latest processor. The Taiwanese company’s latest weapon is the MediaTek Dimensity 9300, which is based on the 4nm process and packs a cluster of four top-tier ARM cores, putting in a position to race ahead via brute performance.
Compared to its direct rival from Qualcomm (which only has one large prime core), the MediaTek chip goes with an even more ambitious core configuration. There are four ARM Cortex-X4 cores, one of which goes up to 3.25 GHz, while the other three are clocked at 2.85 GHz. For less demanding tasks, there’s a cluster of Arm Cortex-A710 cores.
That large core cluster flexes its might on synthetic benchmarks, with MediaTek claiming nearly double the performance on the Geekbench 6 test and an astounding tally of over 213,000 on the AnTuTu platform. On gaming-centric tests such as GFXBench, the company claims an even bigger lead.
The Dimensity 9300 can support screens maxing out at a 180Hz refresh rate, while 4K panels can refresh at up to the 120Hz mark. On the connectivity front, Wi-Fi 7 is part of the package. There’s also a dedicated security chip in place for securely booting the OS.

On the AI-specific innovation front, MediaTek’s latest flagship mobile processor comes with an AI engine that doubles the AI performance at certain metrics while also consuming 45% less energy. Dubbed APU 790, MediaTek claims it is eight times faster than its predecessor and can produce visual media in less than a second using Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image models.
The company has also tweaked the memory architecture and claims that it can run large language models with up to 13 billion parameters, “with scalability up to 33 billion.” For comparison, Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can only run AI models with up to 10 billion parameters.
Just like its Qualcomm counterpart, MediaTek’s offering also supports mainstream multimodal large language models such as Meta’s Llama 2 and Baidu LLM, among others. But the focus is once again clear. MediaTek is following Qualcomm straight into the race for generative AI tasks covering text, visual media, and audio generation. With another chip company doubling down on AI, this could be even worse news for Google's Pixel phones.
On the graphics front, the Dimensity 9300 relies on the new 12-core Immortalis-G720 GPU, which is said to be 46% faster and 40% more frugal at power consumption. MediaTek is also banking on gaming-centric perks like hardware-accelerated ray tracing that are touted to deliver a 60 frames-per-second (fps) gaming experience with console-grade lighting effects.

Read more
Have an Android phone? You can get unlimited 5G service for free
A person holding the Google Pixel 8 showing the screen.

One of the great things about eSIM technology is how easy it is to get a new line up and running on a compatible smartphone. Gone are the days when you needed to find a carrier store or wait for a new physical SIM card to arrive in the mail. Now, you can go through the entire process from the comfort of your own home and be up and running with a new phone plan in under five minutes.

This is especially great when dealing with prepaid carriers, and one such company that’s been leaning heavily into eSIM technology is Visible. It’s embraced eSIM not just to make it easy for folks to sign up, but also to let prospective customers take the service for a spin before committing to it.

Read more