Continuing the core theme of ‘AI Next’ at COMPUTEX this year, Dr Rick Tsai, Vice Chairman and CEO of MediaTek delivered his keynote speech at the event covering the company’s advancements in AI for consumer, automotive and IoT applications, demonstrating how AI can be used to enhance daily life.
For a company founded in 1997, MediaTek’s mission has been to continuously pursue innovation, Tsai explained, having evolved from a manufacturer of optical drives and DVD players to producing system-on-chips (SoCs) for the mobile market, and now, investing in the advent of AI.
This monumental shift shows how major players like MediaTek are putting significant time and investment into AI, backing a technology they believe will be transformative – from using voice assistants for meetings and translation purposes to using smart environmental controls to adjust air conditioning and lighting settings. These were examples provided by Tsai in his presentation of how AI can be applied to daily life.
The figures speak for themselves: last year, its Dimensity chip series generated over $2 billion in revenue for the company’s shareholders. The Dimensity series was officially launched in 2019, with the 9000 series launched in 2021. The 9400 chip series was released in October 2024, marking MediaTek’s fourth generation of SoCs and boasting greater power efficiency and battery life.
In the last 10 years, the company has put out 20 billion chips which, if divided by 7 billion people, is about 2.5 per person, said Tsai – serious output.
Tsai noted that areas of interest for the company beyond AI involve its shift from 2.5D packaging to 3D, in partnership with one of its partners, TSMC; exploring satellite communications and 5G RedCap for its low-cost, low-power capabilities; and moving into two nanometer (2nm) nodes.
3D packaging involves vertically stacking semiconductor chiplets within a single package, to shrink the size of the footprint and improve the performance. Meanwhile, 2nm nodes represent the next evolution after 3nm, enabling increased transistor density on chips and therefore greater performance.
Entering the AI era
MediaTek has expanded into the computing and automotive sectors – the latter of which was done in the last two years. It is now entering “the AI era”, said Tsai, more specifically focusing on utilising Generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI to support real-world use cases.
Focusing on how AI can improve daily life, MediaTek currently supports over 540 AI models on its Edge platforms which includes 240+ models on mobile supporting Gemini and Llama, and 100+ models for IoT applications.
By integrating AI agents with deep reasoning capabilities like Microsoft Phi-3 Mini into its Dimensity 9400 chips has enabled intuitive user interactions across mobile, home, and automotive sectors.
“This combination of the hardware improvement … and whole ecosystem collaboration is what MediaTek is known to do well,” Tsai added.
For IoT applications its 720 Genio chip can be “ubiquitous” for supporting use cases where IoT is needed; from exercise machines to smart point of sale systems in supermarkets and even in hospitality where it’s looking at how chips can power robots.
In automotive, it developed the Dimensity Auto Cockpit platform in partnership with NVIDIA, integrating NVIDIA’s AI and graphics technology. The chips that are part of this platform are designed for in-vehicle applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
“The chip provides the family … a pleasant driving experience. You can learn things about your environment through APIs, and play games in the backseat with an immersive audio system,” said Tsai, positioning the car as an extension of the home in terms of the comfort and convenience it can provide.
The rising computational complexity of AI accelerators are driving developments in chips, using 2nm processes; chiplet-based designs with multiple dies; and high-bandwidth interconnects. The trend is towards larger package sizes and vertical stacking to support high-bandwidth memory and integrated power delivery, as the demands of AI functionality grows.
“This complexity represents huge challenges for … the chip companies,” stressed Tsai. To combat these challenges, MediaTek is investing in its IP portfolio, nurturing relationships with TSMC and other partners, and focusing on flexibility to support technology cycles and customer needs, he said.
Close collaboration with NVIDIA
A close partnership with NVIDIA saw Tsai bring Jensen Huang, CEO and Founder of NVIDIA onstage – a move that was met with cheers from the audience.
In Huang’s keynote at COMPUTEX he detailed the company’s vision for AI infrastructure, accelerated computing, and the platforms driving the next generation of intelligent systems. Of the products announced, Tsai highlighted the DGX Spark; a personal AI development workstation for researchers.
“I was amazed with DGX Spark, an AI supercomputer for the Cloud developers,” said Tsai. The DGX Spark is powered by NVDIA’s GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, co-developed by MediaTek and NVIDIA. Tsai shared that MediaTek designed the CPU.
The system can run up to 200 million parameter AI models with the capability to scale further through interconnectivity, up to 400 million. It represents the product of a close collaboration between MediaTek and NVIDIA on AI infrastructure, and like-minded CEOs embracing AI.
“I bet most of the people in the audience do not know the scale of AI infrastructure that MediaTek has,” said Huang, “and the reason for that is because they’re doing advanced research in AI, developing AI models, creating all of this amazing technology that you could use in consumer electronics … all of the home theatre technology … and audio technology for your cars. You’re turning a car into a home theatre.”
In wrapping up the presentation with the centre being MediaTek and NVIDIA’s partnership and joint goals on advancing AI infrastructure, Huang called what they are working on “a gigantic initiative” anticipated to change fundamentally how we live our lives. No small task, then.
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