Jiwei reported that at the end of 2023, major smartphone brands will release a series of new products one after another. Artificial intelligence, often referred to as AI, is entering the field of vision of consumers in a more high-profile way, and the focus of new product promotion is also more inclined to fully evolved AI capabilities in terms of imaging and performance.
In fact, as early as 2017, smartphones have had preliminary AI applications, such as smart camera filters, scene recognition, voice assistants, etc., but under the stimulation of the emergence of ChatGPT, in just one year, "end-side generative AI" has landed on smartphones, and MediaTek and other head chip design manufacturers have played a key role.
Yes, generative AI will make a breakthrough change in the way smartphones are used, gradually infiltrating and changing the interaction habits of users operating mobile phones, and promoting the second evolution of mobile phones. For both consumers and manufacturers, AI capabilities will gradually become another focus of smartphones in the future, with broad market and application prospects.
MediaTek has a forward-looking layout and has become a pioneer of AI smartphones
The development of artificial intelligence is closely related to hardware technology, and traditional AI large model inference is usually deployed in the cloud and is not limited by resources, but it has been difficult to popularize in recent years due to people's concerns about privacy and convenience. In order to run on mobile phones, large AI models not only need strong performance, but also have strict requirements for power consumption, compatibility, and memory efficiency, which poses severe challenges to chip manufacturers.
As a pioneer in the SoC industry, MediaTek has been forward-looking in the layout of terminal AI technology many years ago, and has built a rich AI ecosystem with the Neuropilot AI development platform. MediaTek integrates the seventh-generation AI processor APU 790 in the Dimensity 9300 flagship chip launched in November 2023. The new generation of APUs has powerful performance and can support up to 33 billion parameters of AI large language models on terminals. A series of MediaTek's leading technologies have made it possible for many generative AI applications to run on smartphones. The subsequent launch of the Dimensity 8300 SoC chip, which also integrates the AI processor APU 780, supports up to 10 billion parameter large models, bringing generative AI functions to more mainstream smartphones.
According to the AI-Benchmark** rankings, the three smartphones equipped with the Dimensity 9300 have the highest running score of 3423 points, ranking first in the AI performance list of smartphones in January 2024.
Taking the recently released vivo X100 X100 Pro, IQOO Neo9 Pro, OPPO Find X7 and other mobile phones as examples, thanks to the Dimensity 9300 flagship core and built-in AI large model, these smartphones can already achieve AIGC** intelligent elimination, AI call summary, AI Wensheng diagram, AI photo, AI noise reduction, AI super resolution motion compensation, as well as intelligent text creation, dialogue learning Q&A and other functions comparable to ChatGPT. With the blessing of AI functions, users can automatically generate call summaries after the call, summarize key content, arrange schedules and memos with one click, and avoid security risks caused by uploading content to the cloud. In many aspects such as text search, scheduling, and post-production, AI can greatly improve the operation efficiency of smartphones and solve problems for users. With the device-side large model, a more intelligent AI smartphone can subvert the experience of mobile phone users.
2023 can be seen as the first year of the real development of AI smartphones. According to research firm Canalys**, the market share of AI phones will reach 5% in 2024 and rise to 45% by 2027. MediaTek Dr. Lu Zhongli said that generative AI technology will also revolutionize the existing AI experience, and from the user experience level, many high-frequency scenarios of daily use of mobile phones will benefit from it.
aiThe field is deeply cultivated, and the Dimensity chip has been adapted to a variety of mainstream large models
As early as 2019, MediaTek conducted pre-research on the architecture and algorithm adaptation at the APU level around the Transformer model, especially in image and voice. Thanks to the rapid progress of MediaTek chip technology, algorithm optimization and the development of AI open source ecology,MediaTek is working with a number of AI industry partners and terminal manufacturers to jointly promote the implementation and popularization of device-side AI large language models and generative AI applications, and realize that mobile chips support cutting-edge mainstream AI large models such as Android, Meta Llama 2, Wenxin Yiyan large model, and Baichuan Intelligent Baichuan large model.
In 2023,MediaTek has jointly launched the PaddlePaddle and Wenxin large model hardware ecological co-creation plan to empower terminal devices with AI large models. The cooperation between the two parties will support the running of Wenxin large models on terminal devices such as smartphones, automobiles, smart homes, and the Internet of Things based on MediaTek chips, enabling terminal devices to provide a safer, more reliable and differentiated user experience.
MediaTek also leverages Meta's new generation of open-source large language model (LLM) LLAMA 2, MediaTek's advanced AI processor (APU) and complete AI development platform (Neuropilot) to establish a complete device-side AI computing ecosystem. Based on the LLAMA 2 model, MediaTek has successfully implemented generative AI applications to run directly on the end device.
At present, MediaTek's latest mobile SOC Dimensity 9300 and Dimensity 8300 chips are equipped with a new generation of APU processing unit, which is specially designed for generative AI, with greatly improved performance of integer operation and floating-point operation, and is deeply adapted to the Transformer model for operator acceleration. In addition, MediaTek has developed mixed-precision int4 quantization technology, combined with MediaTek's unique memory hardware compression technology "neuropilot compression", which can make more efficient use of memory bandwidth and greatly reduce the occupation of terminal memory by AI large models, so that the Dimensity 9300 supports AI large language models with 1 billion, 7 billion, 13 billion, and up to 33 billion parameters on the terminal.
Embracing the AI era, MediaTek's neuropilot platform provides comprehensive empowerment
The future of AI devices is promising, not limited to smartphones. MediaTek has built the Neuropilot AI development platform to advance the AI mobile phone ecosystem, covering smart home, wearables, IoT and connected cars, allowing developers to easily leverage the diverse computing power of MediaTek's hardware platform to efficiently develop AI applications. With MediaTek SoC's excellent computing performance and real-time smooth experience, device manufacturers can create new AI product series in a short time.
To accelerate on-device AI development, the NeuroPilot SDK supports all MediaTek AI-enabled hardware, allowing developers to "write once, apply anywhere" for existing and future MediaTek hardware platforms, as well as all product lines including smartphones, automotive, smart home, IoT, and more. This not only simplifies the creation process, but also saves cost and time to market, and it supports a software ecosystem that includes Android and Linux operating systems, and provides a complete library of compilers, analyzers, and applications.
The Dimensity 9300 platform has been very successful, and the launch of the Dimensity 9400 in the fourth quarter of 2024 will take the performance to another peak.
MediaTek Dr. Lu Zhongli said that in terms of the complexity of end-side AI, the annual increase may be two, three, or even tenfold, and this gap cannot be completely made up by Moore's Law, so it needs to be innovated in hardware and optimized at the algorithm and software level.
AI mobile phones are indeed a very important trend and trend, and generative AI will not only drive the demand for mobile phone upgrades, but also drive the growth of the overall flagship and high-end mobile phone market. It is reported that MediaTek will launch the Dimensity 9400 in the fourth quarter of this year, and it is believed that with MediaTek's innovative architecture design and firm investment in the end-side generative AI route, MediaTek will continue to maintain its leading position in AI smartphones in the future.
Looking to the future, the application of artificial intelligence is bound to be more in-depth. As consumers gradually accept and master AI applications, it is expected that generative AI will become an indispensable and important function of smartphones and even automobiles, and continue to improve the user experience. With the efforts of AI model developers, chip companies and equipment manufacturers, artificial intelligence will also fully enter users' lives. (Proofread by Zhao Yue).