Dimensity 9500 Leak Suggests MediaTek Isn’t Holding Back

Nick Papanikolopoulos

April 29, 2025

It looks like MediaTek is gearing up for a big leap in 2025. Their upcoming flagship chip, the Dimensity 9500, is already turning heads—thanks to some early details shared by the often-reliable Digital Chat Station. Now, leaked specs aren’t official, sure, but this one feels too detailed to ignore. Apparently, the chip will be built using TSMC’s N3P process. That’s a shift from the Dimensity 9400 and 9400+, which were based on the slightly older N3E node. The difference isn’t huge at a glance, but performance gains from N3P could add up over time, especially when you’re pushing devices hard.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting—or confusing, depending on how deep into mobile architecture you usually go.

No More Little Cores?

According to the leak, the CPU setup will be: one Travis core, three Alto, and four Gelas. If that sounds unfamiliar, you’re not alone. Travis and Gelas are reportedly the next-gen Cortex-X and Cortex-A7xx cores, respectively. ARM hasn’t exactly published a public rollout calendar, but from what’s been floating around, that checks out.

Alto is… something else. Not a small core, apparently. There’s some speculation it could be a reworked version of an older Cortex-A7xx line, maybe a performance-tuned middle ground. Nevis, the expected Cortex-A5xx replacement, isn’t part of this setup. So, this is an all-big core design—something we haven’t seen much of yet.

Clock speeds? The word is, Travis could hit over 4GHz. That’s high. Really high. And while that might sound great, it raises obvious questions about thermal output and efficiency. Then again, if MediaTek is investing this much in architecture, maybe they’ve figured out how to manage it.

Memory, Storage, and Other Essentials

The 9500 will reportedly include 16MB of L3 cache and an additional 10MB of system-level cache. It supports LPDDR5X RAM (up to 10,667Mbps), which is plenty fast. Combine that with support for 4-lane UFS 4.1 storage and, well, you’ve got a chip built to fly.

What’s unclear is how that performance plays out in real-world use. Benchmarks are one thing. But actual multitasking, gaming, app switching—those rely on more than just numbers. Still, specs like these suggest MediaTek is aiming high.

Graphics and AI—The Next Big Play?

The Immortalis-Drage GPU is also getting an upgrade. Improved ray tracing, lower power draw—those are the highlights. Not exactly headline-grabbing stuff unless you’re deep into mobile gaming, but it points to refinement where it matters.

Read Also: Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 Revealed: Everything You Need to Know

Then there’s the NPU. Version 9.0, reportedly. And it’s expected to hit 100 TOPS (trillion operations per second). If accurate, that’s double—or maybe more—than the numbers floating around for the Dimensity 9400. Hard to say definitively since MediaTek hasn’t published official TOPS for that one.

Still, 100 TOPS is serious firepower. That much AI capability means faster photo processing, better live translation, smarter voice assistants—the list goes on. Whether apps can actually use all that performance is another question, but at least the headroom is there.

Timing and What’s Next

No launch date yet, but odds are we’ll see the Dimensity 9500 debut in the fall—October or November, if MediaTek sticks to its usual playbook. Before that, the company is expected to roll out the Dimensity 8450, which will likely serve as a kind of preview of what’s coming. But really, the Dimensity 9500 is the one to watch. On paper, it’s aggressive—big cores, high clocks, hefty AI. If MediaTek can deliver on even most of it, the gap between them and Qualcomm may start to look a lot smaller.

Then again, we’ve seen bold spec sheets before. Until it’s in a device, you never really know.

Disclaimer: We may be compensated by some of the companies whose products we talk about, but our articles and reviews are always our honest opinions. For more details, you can check out our editorial guidelines and learn about how we use affiliate links.

Follow Gizchina.com on Google News for news and updates in the technology sector.