The Dimensity 9600 chip, which is MediaTek's next flagship offering, is not expected to see the light of day until the third quarter of 2026. Even so, given the chip's near-apex credentials that are capable of giving Qualcomm's top-of-the-line Snapdragon variant a run for its money, the Dimensity 9600 SoC continues to attract quite a bit of attention and interest from tech enthusiasts and prosumers alike.
Dimensity 9600 chip's architecture
TSMC's process node
Unlike Apple's A20 chip, which is expected to leverage TSMC's N2 process, MediaTek is likely to opt for the Taiwanese fab giant's relatively more costly N2P process node, which bestows a performance boost of between 5 percent and 10 percent relative to the N2 node.
The fact that MediaTek has largely given up on efficiency cores within its flagship chip architecture only increases our confidence in this prognosis, especially as the chip designer would want to extract every ounce of efficiency that TSMC's bleeding-edge nodes can offer.
CPU
The Dimensity 9600 chip is expected to emulate the 8-core CPU architecture of the Dimensity 9500 chip, consisting of:
- 1x ARM C2-Ultra core
- 3x ARM C2-Premium cores
- 4x ARM C2-Pro cores
Do note that ARM is expected to unveil its C2-branded CPU cores in September 2026.
Meanwhile, reports indicate that we are also likely to see a Dimensity 9600 Pro version, replete with 2x ARM C2-Ultra cores and 3x ARM C2-Pro cores, emulating the 2+3+3 CPU architecture of Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip. As such, the Pro version's CPU architecture is expected to look like:
- 2x ARM C2-Ultra core (clocked at around 5GHz)
- 3x ARM C2-Premium cores
- 3x ARM C2-Pro cores
GPU & NPU
The Dimensity 9600 chip is expected to adopt ARM's new flagship GPU, which is likely to be announced in September 2026 as the Mali-G2 Ultra, and would span over 10+ cores, with mandatory ray tracing.
Meanwhile, the Dimensity 9600 Pro chip is expected to sport an ARM Magni GPU, which is expected to bring support for the second-gen Scalable Matrix Extension instructions set, allowing for the acceleration of intensive tasks such as AI and multi-core workloads, and that too with better efficiency.
ARM's next flagship GPU is expected to leverage a bespoke Neural Shader Scheduler (NSS) to coordinate between the GPU and the NPU, dividing inference tasks such as motion estimation, upscaling, and frame reconstruction between the two, thereby reducing the total power draw while avoiding GPU stalls caused by unpredictable ML compute.
Other Specs
The Dimensity 9600 chip and its Pro variant are expected to leverage an LPDDR6 RAM vs the LPD5 12GB RAM expected in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which should give MediaTek's flagship chips a theoretical edge on memory bandwidth. The chips are also expected to adopt support for UFS 5.0 storage.
Of course, given the ongoing inflationary impulse within the memory sphere, we can't definitively lock an LPDDR6 RAM for the vanilla Dimensity 9600 chip, especially as MediaTek would want to position its flagship chip at a very attractive price point relative to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, which, unlike its Pro counterpart, will adopt LPDDR5.
Price, Availability & Adoption
MediaTek's Dimensity 9500 reportedly costs between $180 and $200 per unit. However, given the ongoing inflationary impulse in the memory sphere, the typical linear relationships between last-gen and next-gen SoCs no longer apply.
Even so, the Weibo-based tipster, Digital Chat Station, recently noted that the Dimensity 9600 would prove to be quite popular among Asian smartphone OEMs for their flagship offerings, owing to the AP's relative cost advantage vs. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro, which is expected to debut at a particularly sky-high price point. Of course, MediaTek is expected to price the Dimensity 9600 Pro at an equally sky-high price point.
Finally, do note that MediaTek is expected to unveil the Dimensity 9600 chip in the third quarter of 2026, with September offering the highest probability window.
