14 DAY TRIAL // Back in 2013, Mediatek introduced the world’s first octa-core mobile chipset, which drew a lot of ridicule from major silicone producers that scoffed at the apparent capabilities of the chipset.
The MediaTek MT6592 is a 28nm chip that packs eight low-power Cortex-A7 cores, which operate simultaneously at between 1.7GHz and 2GHz. The chip also encapsulated ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture.
Qualcomm, in particular, has mocked MediaTek saying that chipsets don’t need more cores but better ones. Since then a lot has changed.
For starters, Qualcomm announced two octa-core processors of its own, including the mid-ranger Snapdragon 615 and high-end Snapdragon 810.
The chip-maker probably complied to the rigors of the market, rigors which amusingly were set by the advent of chips like the MediaTek MT6592.
But if you thought octa-core chips were a little much, listen to this next report coming from Chinese website My Drivers.
Chips with 10 and 12 cores seem to be in MediaTek's future
According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, MediaTek is cooking something really crazy in its development labs. At some point the silicone maker might stun us with an announcement that will be unveiling processors with 10- and even 12-cores.
It’s the first time we hear of such development, so it might take a while before we see MediaTek launch such chips into the wild, as such technology requires years and years of development. On the other hand, the Taiwanese chip maker might have been working on them in secrecy.
But given that most apps don’t even take advantage of four cores, let alone eight, ten or twelve, so it will be interesting to find out why MediaTek is building insane chips such as these.
Maybe the chip manufacturer is envisioning a future where mobile users will rely heavily on multi-tasking. For the time being you should take the information with a grain of salt, because we can’t really be certain at this point. However, once more details become available, be sure we’ll update you.