MediaTek announces first true octa-core processor

Earlier this month, there was talk about a new octa-core chip coming from MediaTek. On Saturday morning, the company announced the world's first true octa-core processor. Now you might be wondering about the Samsung Exynos 5 octa-core processor. But as you might recall, with that chip, only one group of four cores is active at a time. With the new processor introduced by MediaTek, all eight cores are active at the same time, leading to smoother game playing, web browsing, improved video playback, and improved battery consumption. MediaTek says that all 8 cores can be used without overheating. We told you earlier this month that the chip scored around 30,000 on AnTuTu which is what top-shelf models are tallying on the benchmark site these days. Clock speed ranges from 1.7GHz to 2GHz with videodecoding of 1080p at 30fps.

Let's face it, if Samsung had its name on the silicon instead of MediaTek, even the Vatican would be placing a call to Korea, congratulating Samsung for the achievement. As it is, MediaTek is becoming known, but for selling low priced chips to phone manufacturers trying to compete in emerging markets. By purchasing chips from MediaTek instead of Qualcomm, handset makers are saving big money. The reason why MediaTek can sell chips for such a low price is because it does not own a fab that needs to be maintained. The company already has a better than 50% market share for low and mid-range chips for mobile phones and with the octa-core MT6592 leading the way, the company could soon overtake Qualcomm to become the largest handset chip maker.

The big thing for MediaTek is to get some major OEMs, the ones that normally wouldn't touch a MediaTek chip for a top-shelf model, to give the MT6592 a shot before other chipmakers start offering a true octa-core processor of their own. The MediaTek chip is being sent out to potential customers now for them to sample, with mass production scheduled in November.