MediaTek launches Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first 2 nm phone chip, with a dual NPU for on-device models of up to 30B parameters
Confirmed
The takeaway
On Sept 15, 2026 MediaTek announced the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first smartphone chip on a 2 nm process.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 2 of 5
- Last verified
- 12 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra138 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.577 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash168 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7107 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 77 days before it.
Key facts
- Announced Sept 15, 2026 in Hsinchu; 2 nm process (TSMC, per Investing.com); companion chip Dimensity 9600M
- CPU: 2+3+3 all-big-core design, two C2-Ultra cores up to 4.55 GHz; up to 17% higher single-core and 15% higher multi-core performance, 61% lower multi-core power than the previous generation (MediaTek figures)
- NPU 1090: 51% higher LLM prefill performance, 55% more tokens generated per watt, models up to 30B parameters (MediaTek figures, vs Dimensity 9500)
- Second-generation Super Efficient NPU: 40% lower power for always-on AI; an ‘Agentic AI Engine’ for proactive, personalised assistance
- First phones ‘expected to launch this quarter’; press reports name the vivo X500 Pro and OPPO Find X10 Pro Max
- ChannelNews (Oct 12) says the chip supports Google’s Gemini Nano; MediaTek’s press release does not mention it
What happened
MediaTek’s 2026 flagship phone chip is built around running large language models on the phone. All performance numbers are MediaTek’s own, compared with its Dimensity 9500.
Why it matters
With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, it sets 30B-parameter local models as the 2026 flagship-phone target, the hardware base for on-device agents.
Sources
3 sources from 3 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
3 sources: 1 primary, 2 press
Primary
- MediaTek: Dimensity 9600 Pro sets new standard for flagship smartphone chipsmediatek.com, official
Press
- ChannelNews: MediaTek brings Gemini Nano to smartphones with new Dimensity 9600 Pro chipsetchannelnews.com.au, press
- Let’s Data Science: MediaTek launches Dimensity 9600 Pro on TSMC 2nmletsdatascience.com, press
Changes
- Filed as a review