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MediaTek Helio X30 to come H2 2016: Report

Yash GargOctober 30, 2015

After the kind of success MediaTek tasted with the Helio X10, it is natural that the company is impatient bringing newer versions of its SoCs to the market.

While the X20 is yet to make a proper appearance on a device yet, MediaTek is very well in the process of giving the Helio X30 — the most powerful MediaTek we’ve heard of yet — some sheen.

However, MediaTek — and consumers — have quite a bit of waiting to do before getting to see some Helio X30 powered phones. According to Chinese analyst Pan Jiutang, the MediaTek Helio X30 will come only in the second half of next year, i.e., H2 2016.

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As for the configuration of the Helio X30 SoC, it is purported to be a four-cluster architecture with 4x 2.5GHz Cortex A72 cores, 2x 2GHz Cortex A72 cores, 2x 1.5GHz Cortex A53 cores and 2x 1.0GHz Cortex A53 cores.

The report goes on to add that Jiutang feels that the Helio X30 will be more of a match to the Snapdragon 820, more so than the Helio X20 which is expected in the coming months.

Either way, MediaTek SoCs are generally a lot more affordable for OEMs than Snapdragon counterparts, and with MediaTek chips starting to be more powerful, even cheaper flagships (for consumers) aren’t too far away.

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About the author
Yash Garg
Yash is a blogger by profession, builder of things by passion and foodie by birth. You'll usually find him talking about technology, music, travel and the game of cricket on the streets of Pune when not busy writing or speeding his way through the country! Read more on retro handheld gaming on RETRO91

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Rob
October 30, 2015
Just release the helio x20 already, annoys me when they start touting release dates of upcoming cpus when they still haven’t released its predecessor!
- Nicola Pellegrin
  October 30, 2015
  Absolutely right !
- MattD
  October 30, 2015
  It’s not mediatek’s fault: arm is going to finish A72 cores’ projects in december, so helio x20, x30, samsung’s mongoose exynos, sd820, kirin 940 and 950… They all need some months to be released because manufacturers need time to work on the ultimate cores!
  - Rob
    October 30, 2015
    It has nothing to do with arm as it was released early 2015, it generally takes around 12 months after a core is announced to become available. The design would’ve been taped out by mediatek at least 6-7 months ago now. I think the x20 is a stop gap till their true flagship the x30 is ready.

MattD
October 30, 2015
I’m so curious about x30… We’re at a point when almost every soc could handle everything except havy game, so this will have enough raw power for sure… But what i really want to see is his power-efficiency: the multi cluster configuration with 2 core for every lowpower-needing operation could be the final evolution of the big.little configuration, granting glorious bettery life in everyday use!
Still i remark: “could”… Nothing is sure by now, so we must see how it performs when it’s released, but actually I’m really hyped for the x30 rather than the x20!
- balcobomber25
  October 30, 2015
  It’s like the computer SoC wars of the 90-00s. Eventually the speeds plateau and they start to focus on improving things like efficiency and graphics.
  - Hans
    October 30, 2015
newphoenix
October 30, 2015
Excellent picture. Love this kind on news

saor
October 30, 2015
“cheaper flagships” assuming the phone maker passes on the saving…
- balcobomber25
  October 30, 2015
  Most of them do, the ones who don’t are Gionee, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. The rest are of the major players are pretty good at passing on savings
realjjj
October 30, 2015
utter BS
Mediatek said today they’ll have it at the end of Q1 -beginning of Q2 and one more 16ff chip in Q2.
- balcobomber25
  October 30, 2015
  With these type of announcements I tend to believe the analysts predictions more than the companies statements.

Marius Cirsta
October 30, 2015
Well this is certainly nice but I have to wonder what I’ll be able to use such a beast of a SOC for … I think I’d rather have more power efficient SOCs.
The thing is if you want a good smartphone you also get one of the powerful SOCs and not a more power efficent one based on say only A53 cores. A53 cores at 2-2.2 GHz are good enough for me and if made in 14-16 nm they’d be power efficient too.
- Lazar Prodanovic
  November 1, 2015
  Line of power efficiency on silicon lies within margins of 1-1.1 GHz. So the A72 clocked @ 1.8GHz have similar power efficiency as A53 @ 1.6GHz & A72 will be a little faster at given clocks. Same story goes if you get A72’s at 1.6GHz against A53’s at 2.2GHz but actually performance gap becomes bigger. Actual contrapart of A53 cores that would be capable to reach A72’s at 1.6GHz should be running at 2528MHz & should consume more power. On the other side Mors low is breached with FinFET 14-16nm process as price for gate is much bigger than planar 28nm (around 40%) so doubling transistor count on it is doubtful, instead their is a new Globefonders 22nm FD-SOI that gives some hope in future progress concerning Mors low & cetera.

Joel Adames
October 30, 2015
i believe that if we hear anything similar to this from Qualcomm, Hawei, Samsung, it will totally validate this type of arrangement. I mean, for some reason expensive FLAGship phone makers asume thinner is the way to go, so in order to get awesome performance and decent battery life this is an excellent way if proven effective. If so then a 2920mah battery Samsung Galaxy s7 (just an example) could be a battery beast and still be around 7.2 mm and not more than 170mgs weigth, while touting good antutu/geek-bench bragging rigths and then Iphone follows and everyone else…. what do you say guys??????

Steven Fox
October 30, 2015
Nobody actually needs 10 cored, it’s BS. Higher clocked octa core is suffficient, but I doubt that the GPU in the X20 and X30 will pack a decent punch.
- Joel Adames
  October 30, 2015
  - Lazar Prodanovic
    November 1, 2015
    You really don’t need more than 4 general purpose CPU cores (one cluster) at any time what you do need are better general purpose accelerators (DSP’s, FPGA’s & ASICS) & special purpose ones (like GPU’s & encryption blocks).

flashmozzg
October 30, 2015
I just hope they’ll release good 14/16nm middle-end 64 bit chip with proper 4 cores / 4 + 4 setup and not some kind of Frankenstein bullcrap.
Michael Ogbonnaya
October 30, 2015
The way these guys are going, very soon I will be able to model, texture, lighten, render and animate my animated 3D shots and images right on my smartphone. Phew!!!
- The Bastard Christ
  October 31, 2015
  for about 15 minutes… then it’s dead.
- Lazar Prodanovic
  November 1, 2015
  Try with some other manufacturer that actually adds good GPU & DSP instead idiotic clusters & you might just be able to do that.

yalok
October 30, 2015
They have yet to show the X20 to us.
Kekrembec
October 30, 2015
Unless Chinese manufacturers like Meizu and Xiaomi make sufficient software optimizations, we still will fell x30 performance as a dual core SoC. So, what?
- Guaire
  October 31, 2015
Wala Alan
October 31, 2015
Mediatek really needs to open all their CPU firmware’s to the public so that the Helio X30’s full potential will not be limited by the OEMs’ software optimizations

Nolan
November 1, 2015
In Chinese culture, a H2 2016 prediction in 2015 means actual commercial availability around H3 2017.
Lazar Prodanovic
November 1, 2015
I hate MediaTek. They had a wining entry lv SoC design this year in the form of MT6732. & what they did? Well they did nothing at all; no suport or kernel, android Lollipop builds for it. They won’t have chance like that in a long time if they have it ever again. & they probably won’t as on going development of home grown Chinese SoC’s (currently blocked by all means by US government) will eat them alive in next couple of years & they know this very good. Don’t want to talk about open source this time as it’s entirely different story.
- kzm
  November 3, 2015
  - Lazar Prodanovic
    November 3, 2015
    & first in the line to bare consequences when China menages to do it all home grown (including foundries). They are already crying about it.
    - kzm
      November 3, 2015
      - Lazar Prodanovic
        November 3, 2015
        That they (MTK) are doing it all wrong, bad & cetera.
        You can find your own point but make it after reading a ton of scientific & wite papers including & industry reports & predictions like I did.
        & you can start with this:
        http://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/design-chronicles/archive/2015/10/28/berkeley-professor-pushes-agile-methodologies-for-more-efficient-chip-design
        kzm
        November 3, 2015
        My Jiayu S3 MTK phone has Lollipop though.(based on your first comment above). I don’t care what they do.
        
        Lazar Prodanovic
        November 3, 2015
        Then why did you ask in the first place? Your ignorance is your choice.
        S3 is probably only phone based on MT6752 that got a regular Lollipop update it represents the best buy in the mid range of the year (supposing you both it about 8 month’s ago).
        kzm
        November 3, 2015