MediaTek's next big change! Embracing NVIDIA, entering the cloud server | AI dehydration

Author: Zhang Yifan

Editor: Shen Siqi

Source: Hard AI

Is MediaTek going to turn the tables this time?

At the Computex conference, MediaTek announced its participation in the Arm Total Design Alliance and obtained authorization for Arm's Neoverse N1 platform.

This authorization provides solutions for data centers, edge computing, and high-performance computing (HPC) fields.

With this authorization, MediaTek, after AI smartphones and automotive electronics, is officially entering the cloud server field, opening up a new area of growth.

Morgan Stanley speculates that after entering the cloud server market, MediaTek may become a partner of NVIDIA and participate in the design of the next-generation Rubin architecture.

Furthermore, in terms of AI PCs, Morgan Stanley predicts that the WoA PC chip developed by MediaTek in collaboration with NVIDIA will be unveiled at CES in January next year.

1. Cloud Server Business

MediaTek believes that by 2028, the TAM for customized ARM-based server CPUs will reach $5 billion, while the TAM for customized AI accelerators will reach $40 billion.

Currently, MediaTek's AI layout mainly involves AI smartphones and automotive electronics.

With the authorization for Arm's Neoverse N1 platform, MediaTek is officially entering the cloud server field.

Morgan Stanley believes that after entering the cloud server market, MediaTek may become a partner of NVIDIA and participate in the design of the next-generation Rubin architecture.

At the Computex conference, NVIDIA's CEO mentioned that the collaboration between the company and MediaTek mainly involves providing IP and allowing MediaTek to collaborate based on the developed IP.

Morgan Stanley states that this IP development collaboration may imply "ASIC+GPU hybrid design." Therefore, it is predicted that MediaTek may participate in the design of NVIDIA's next-generation Rubin architecture.

To further support this prediction, Morgan Stanley mentioned that AIchip, another Taiwanese chip designer, previously revealed that the 2nm AI chip is very complex, involving multiple chip designs. This coincides with NVIDIA's recent release of the "CPU+GPU+HBM+Network and High-Speed Interface" Rubin multi-chip architecture.

Additionally, Morgan Stanley mentioned that MediaTek's collaboration with Google is also worth noting. Although MediaTek has not yet passed Google's verification due to design inefficiencies, and the TPU orders have been taken over by Broadcom, market rumors suggest that MediaTek is seeking the possibility of taking over the orders for the upcoming 3nm TPUv7 chip.

Finally, in the AI server market space, MediaTek shared its perspective.

MediaTek predicts that the TAM for AI custom chips will reach $45 billion by 2028, exceeding Morgan Stanley's forecast of $37 billion MediaTek further added that by 2028, the TAM for customized ARM-based server CPUs will reach $5 billion, while customized AI accelerators will reach $40 billion.

二、AI Smartphone Business

Unlike the layout in cloud servers, MediaTek's AI layout in the smartphone business is very clear.

The smartphone business accounts for 61% of MediaTek's total revenue and has always been a deeply laid out business area for MediaTek.

The latest two chips for AI smartphones:

• Dimensity 9300: Targeting high-end, released in November 2023, supports running AI large models with up to 33 billion parameters on the mobile side;

• Dimensity 8300: Targeting mid-range, released in November 2023, supports up to 10 billion parameter AI large language models at most;

Compared to other smartphone SoC giants such as Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Gen3 and Apple A17 Pro, although Dimensity 9300's comprehensive performance is slightly lower, it has an advantage in power consumption.

According to the recent revelations by tech blogger Phone Chip Master, MediaTek's next-generation Dimensity 9400 still maintains its power consumption advantage. At the same time, the company also revealed that the next flagship of Honor will be equipped with the Dimensity 9400 SoC.

However, competition from Qualcomm will become more intense.

三、AI PC

Morgan Stanley predicts that MediaTek + NVIDIA's WoA PC chips will ship 5 million units in 2025 and 15 million units in 2026.

Given the current exclusive agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm on WoA, Qualcomm remains the only supplier of ARM CPUs for Microsoft's Windows system until the agreement expires this summer.

Perhaps for this reason, at this year's Computex, NVIDIA and MediaTek have not yet announced their new WoA PC chips.

However, the market still sees the huge potential of the NVIDIA + MediaTek WoA PC chips. Morgan Stanley predicts that this WoA PC chip may be announced at CES in January next year and is expected to be launched in the second half of 2025.

Considering the successful release of Microsoft's WoA Surface laptop and Copilot application, Morgan Stanley predicts that the MediaTek + NVIDIA WoA PC chip will ship 5 million units in 2025 and 15 million units in 2026.

In addition, Morgan Stanley found through supply chain verification that MediaTek's WoA PC chip will use ARM Cortex-X5 cores, adopt TSMC's 3nm process, and have even stronger performance than expected Considering the combination of this chip with NVIDIA's excellent graphics processor, Morgan Stanley expects the price of this chip to be $300, higher than Qualcomm's X Elite ($230).

It is worth noting that several PC OEM manufacturers have already shown interest in the future products of NVIDIA and MediaTek