MediaTek's latest chip promises 5G for the proles: Destined for those not-so-high end smartmobes Taiwanese fabless chipmaker MediaTek today introduced its latest 5G platform for mass-market (affordable) devices: the Dimensity 700. Built with a 7nm process, this octa-core chip uses two Arm Cortex-A76 cores clocked at up to 2.2GHz, with a further six low-power A55 cores in tow. This configuration betrays the low-end …
> with some estimates fingering the drain at 20 per cent higher than bog-standard LTE
I'm sure it's true that 5G drains more power than LTE, but I wish they'd cite it as "x% more per MHz of spectrum" or "x% more per Mbps" as you can't tell what they're comparing. LTE can go up to 20MHz per carrier, and you can do multiple carriers (up to 5) with carrier aggregation (CA), and different coding schemes. 5G dials that up a notch, allowing you to agregate up to 800MHz of spectrum for a single UE.
And since LTE-A offers the same number of bits per MHz as 5G, you can assume the power draw of LTE-A versus 5G is roughly the same per MHz per spatial stream.
Where 5G results in higher power is because 1) most people are using ordinary LTE rather than LTE-A which is a less complex modulation (fewer bits per MHz) 2) 5G as you say allows more spatial streams 3) 5G's higher spectrum (5 GHz and above) offers larger swathes of spectrum so can use more MHz.
Since the only real purpose of 5G is to get higher speeds, and that can only happen with more MHz or more spatial streams, it is pretty obvious when used as intended 5G will draw more power than LTE. If you are downloading a fixed amount of data you may use the same power when averaged over time, but obviously the goal of everyone involved with 5G is that you will eventually use a LOT more data than you did on LTE, just like with LTE everyone's data usage increased by an order of magnitude versus 3G.
This sounds very good. It would sound even better if MediaTek's support of their products, or more accurately, the chips they provide for other people products, was better - in particular, providing driver updates longer than 2-3 years. Although, since these 5G chips are probably going into Android devices, that probably already meets Google's "high" standards.
The article says these are smartphone SoCs so yes, they are going into Android devices. Many mobile network operators now push for far longer device support than Google require for OS updates and security updates as the consumer device refresh cycle is now so long, so there's no wriggling out of decent support in that sector.
What MediaTek devices don't get supported for long enough? Genuinely curious about this.
MediaTek silicon is in a large number of consumer level networking devices, including wireless network adapters, which is where I have run into issues with drivers. To be fair, these have mostly been lowering priced devices, and they aren't sold under MediaTek's name. But MediaTek doesn't require the manufacturer to offer new drivers even when MediaTek itself provides new drivers for the chips, and hunting around to find what chip is actually in the device and then having to search the MediaTek website for a driver is a pain. Even then, they only seem to provide a couple years of driver updates, and you lose any manufacturer customization/enhancements.
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