MediaTek’s next deca-core Helio X30 is 10nm format

MediaTek has launched new deca-core (10 cores) Helio X30 – a successor to Helio X20 and X25 chipsets. The newly announced Helio X30 is Taiwanese chip maker’s focus on the flagship chip market which is currently dominated by Qualcomm.

Succeeding from Helio X20 and its tuned version Helio X25 which employed 20nm manufacturing process, the new Helio X30 will be built on company’s 10nm process format. That’s what Apple’s A10 chip for iPhone 7 is speculated to be built on. Mind it that Samsung’s flagship Exynos 8890 running inside Galaxy S7 and Note 7 features the 14nm manufacturing process and so does the Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820.

While Helio X30 still has the tri-cluster design but in addition gets two Cortex-A35 cores clocked at 2GHz for low battery consumption and low-intensity tasks. Instead of Cortex-A72 cores in predecessors, Helio X30 features four Cortex-A73 cores which are 30% more powerful and are clocked at whopping 2.8GHz. Other four cores are Cortex-A53 which are clocked at 2.2GHz. That’s really a powerful bandwagon of cores in numbers.

More importantly MediaTek has decided to move from ARM’s Mali GPU and instead used PowerVR 7XT quad-core GPU in the Helio X30. The new chipset will also have support up to 8GB LPDDR4 RAM and UFS 2.1 storage standard. Added support of dual camera configuration with up to 26 megapixels image sensors. Helio X20 will support Cat.12 modem with three carrier aggression.

While not officially revealed, MediaTek Helio X30 is reportedly being fabricated by semiconductor manufacturing company TSMC. The company which also makes Apple’s Ax chipsets as well as Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin SoC. MediaTek’s Helio X30 processor is expected to debut next year.