MediaTek launches the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first chip built on a 2nm process.

MediaTek has launched the Dimensity 9600 Pro. This is the company’s first smartphone processor built on TSMC’s 2nm manufacturing process. The company also launched a second chip at the same event, the Dimensity 9600M, which shares the naming and very little else.

The Dimensity 9600 Pro is the most expensive processor MediaTek sells. The Taiwanese company designs chips found inside a large share of the world’s Android phones. TSMC, also Taiwanese, is the contract manufacturer that builds the silicon, for MediaTek, Qualcomm and Apple alike. JC Hsu, corporate senior vice president and general manager of MediaTek’s wireless communications business unit, said devices “need greater performance, efficiency, and intelligence to keep pace with rapidly evolving user demands”.

The first phones with the two new chips arrive this quarter.

Speed and Efficiency

The Dimensity 9600 Pro has eight processor cores and neither of them is a small efficiency core. There are two Arm C2-Ultra cores at 4.55GHz, three C2-Pro cores at 4.35GHz and three more C2-Pro cores at 3.10GHz, with 34.5MB of cache in total. Media coverage in China puts the chip at more than 33 billion transistors.

Against last year’s Dimensity 9500, MediaTek claims 17% higher single-core performance and 15% higher multi-core. Its product page pairs each of those with a power figure: 37% more efficient on single-core work, 61% more efficient on multi-core.

The cores themselves are not MediaTek’s. Arm designs them and licenses the designs to chipmakers, and it announced the C2 generation on 8 September, a week before this launch. Arm’s own claim for the C2-Ultra is 15% higher single-thread and 12% higher multi-thread performance than the C1-Ultra it replaces. Arm also says the C2-Pro is an unchanged reissue of the C1-Pro that benefits only from the better manufacturing. Six of the Dimensity 9600 Pro’s eight cores are C2-Pro.

MediaTek’s headline speed gains therefore arrive within a couple of points of what Arm handed every one of its customers this year. The power figures are the ones that are attributable to MediaTek’s own engineering. A chip that does the same multi-core work on 61% less power runs cooler, and a cooler phone holds its top speed instead of slowing down ten minutes into a game.

2nm

MediaTek says “2nm” throughout and never names which version of the process it used. Arm says all of its C2 cores are designed for TSMC’s N2P, which is the refined 2nm variant. TSMC’s published figures for N2P are 18% more speed at the same power, or 36% less power at the same speed, measured against its N3E 3nm process.

The Dimensity 9600 Pro is also the first phone chip to use LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage. Those are the newest versions of the standards that set how quickly a phone moves data in and out of memory, and in and out of the storage that holds your apps and photos.

Samsung announced the Exynos 2600 on its own foundry’s 2nm process in December 2025, and that chip has been shipping in some Galaxy S26 models since March. Apple launched the iPhone 18 Pro on 9 September with the A20 Pro inside it, built on TSMC’s N2, six days before MediaTek’s announcement.

Dimensity 9600M

MediaTek’s announcement does not mention the manufacturing process for the other Dimensity 9600M Chip. The spec listings put it on 3nm with the previous generation of Arm cores: one C1-Ultra at 4.21GHz, three C1-Premium at 3.5GHz and four C1-Pro at 2.7GHz, with LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.1 storage. So, it’s basically last year’s Dimensity 9500’s hardware with newer scheduling software on top.

Which phones?

vivo launches the X500 series in China on 21 September, and we covered what it had confirmed at the end of August. The Pro and Pro Max take the Dimensity 9600 Pro, the standard X500 takes the 9600M. OPPO follows on 22 September with the Find X10 series, and Pete Lau has confirmed the Find X10 Pro Max ships worldwide on the 9600 Pro.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm will open its Snapdragon Summit on 22nd September with a flagship chip expected on the same 2nm family. So, expect comparisons later this month.