Technologies

MediaTek’s Next Chip Will Boost Low-Power AI in Next Year’s Top Android Phones

The Dimensity 9500 ramps up competition for Android phone chips.

MediaTek has unveiled its next big chip for premium Android phones, promising improvements for performance and AI operations.

MediaTek’s chip, the Dimensity 9500, debuts at a seemingly deliberate moment just days before Qualcomm is set to reveal its own silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. While we don’t know the latter’s performance metrics, it will almost certainly compete with the Dimensity 9500 to run the most powerful Android smartphones. The first phones running MediaTek’s new chip will be Vivo and Oppo handsets launching in October for release in Europe, South America and Asia, but not the US yet.

MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500 has a mix of improvements over its predecessor, last year’s Dimensity 9400. Its CPU cluster has 29% higher single-core and 16% higher multi-core performance, while also drawing 37% less power. Moving to Universal Flash Storage 4.1 (from UFS 4.0) enables memory, like in RAM, to read and write twice as fast. This also leads to 40% faster loading for large AI models, MediaTek said.

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The Dimensity 9500 roughly follows the design of MediaTek’s last few high-end chips. Its CPU cluster features an array of Arm’s newly-renamed C1-series silicon: one Arm C1-Ultra at 4.21 GHz, three Arm C1-Premium at 3.5GHz and four Arm C1-Pro at 2.7GHz.

For gaming, the Dimensity 9500’s graphics processing unit has 33% improved performance and is 42% more energy efficient, meaning longer play sessions on a device before needing to recharge it. The chip also doubles the performance of ray tracing, a technology enabling realistic shadows and reflections in mirrors and water surfaces that often pushes GPUs to their limits. The chip can render graphics at up to 120 frames per second with ray tracing turned on, and also supports graphics engines like Vulkan 1.4 and Unreal Engine 5.6.

Given the aggressive adoption of AI on mobile, it’s unsurprising that MediaTek also boosted artificial intelligence on its new chip. The Dimensity 9500’s NPU 990 has a smattering of upgrades over its predecessor, with 100% faster processing for the smaller 3 billion parameter models often used on smartphones (which typically top out at 7 billion parameters). The NPU (neural processing unit) is also 42% more power efficient when running small AI models. Finally, the mobile chip is the first in the industry to generate 4K images with AI, MediaTek said.

For large language models, the Dimensity 9500 is the first mobile chip to support BitNet 1-bit, which leads to 50% lower power consumption of LLMs.

The chip’s upgrades to camera processing include support for 4K portrait videos at 60 frames per second, as well as slow-motion 4K video at 120 FPS with Dolby Vision video that’s optically stabilized. The Dimensity 9500 carries on its predecessor’s support for up to 200-megapixel cameras.

The Dimensity 9500 also claims connectivity boosts over its predecessor, including 5CC carrier aggregation that increases bandwidth by 15%.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 16, #889

Here are some hints — and the answers — for the NYT Connections puzzle for Nov. 16, #889.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is a fun one. As a pop-culture junkie and game lover, I enjoyed the purple category. If you need help sorting the answers into groups, you’re in the right place. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Different strokes for different folks.

Green group hint: Ho-hum.

Blue group hint: Flags often qualify.

Purple group hint: Do not pass Go.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Technique.

Green group: Run-of-the-mill.

Blue group: Stripy things.

Purple group: Words on Monopoly squares.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is technique. The four answers are approach, method, philosophy and school.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is run-of-the-mill. The four answers are banal, everday, humdrum and pedestrian.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is stripy things.The four answers are barcode, IBM logo, rugby shirt and zebra.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is words on Monopoly squares. The four answers are avenue, parking, railroad and tax.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 16 #623

Here are hints — and answers — for the NYT Strands puzzle for Nov. 16, No. 623.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is tough. It’s a weird theme, and some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Around it goes.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: They’re often on a roll.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CARE, SCARE, CRASS, SWAT, PELL, HELL, SCAR, HALT, STENT, HALTS, TENT, POLL, LOTS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

FOIL, SCARF, SHAWL, STOLE, FLATBREAD, CELLOPHANE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is THATSAWRAP. To find it, start with the T that’s three letters up from the bottom of the far-left row, and wind down, over and then up.