MediaTek Launches 10 Core Chipset Helio X20

The up-and-coming chipmaker just made the long-rumored mobile Helio X20 chipset official, in all of its ten-core glory.

Just as the leak suggested, the X20 arranges its 10 CPU cores into a Tri-cluster big.LITTLE setup. There are two heavy duty new Cortex-A72 cores clocked at 2.5GHz, accompanied by a medium performance quad-core Cortex-A53 group clocked at 2.0GHz, and a further power efficient quad-core A53 group clocked at just 1.4GHz.

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The company has developed its own MediaTek Coherent System Interconnect (MCSI), rather than making use of ARM's CCI-500 which allows for up to 4 clusters.

The system-on-a-chip (SoC) kit also includes MediaTek's integrated LTE Cat. 6 modem, which allows for up to 300Mbps download speeds, if your carrier can provide those, of course, and all main wireless radios, too. The graphics prowess has been relegated to the yet-announced ARM Mali-T800 GPU, which should be just a step below the scorching Mali-T880.

The tiny fly in the ointment is that Helio X20 supports "only" DDR3 RAM memory, but MediaTek argues that, since the SoC maxes out at Quad HD display support, DDR3 will be plenty.

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All that jazz is stuffed into the footprint of the current X10, as the X20 is done with the 20nm production process, and yet it offers 40% stronger performance than the X10, at the same time consuming 40% less power.

The deca-core Helio X20 will be sampling to customers in H2 2015, which likely means we will see the first handsets or tablets with it for the holidays at the earliest, and most likely in Q1 of next year.