MediaTek is aiming to do a Qualcomm and make Arm chips for Copilot+ PCs, targeting a 2025 release

pcgamer.com:

For almost thirty years, MediaTek has been making processors and controllers for smartphones, TVs, satnavs, and all kinds of electronic devices. Now, according to one report, the Taiwan-based company is looking to produce an Arm-based CPU to compete against Qualcomm in the Copilot+ PC market, targeting a 2025 launch.

That's according to Reuters, stating that this information has come from three sources familiar with the project. In media, that phrase is commonly used to protect leakers from litigation, and given that there have also been reports that MediaTek has been working with Nvidia on a couple of projects, the information is likely to be accurate.

So why is MediaTek doing this and why only now? In the case of the latter, it's because Qualcomm has enjoyed an exclusive deal as being the only vendor of chips to be supported by Windows on Arm, a version of Microsoft's operating system that isn't x86-based. The exact details of the deal aren't publicly known but it's generally believed that the contract will end this year, paving the way for other chip manufacturers to enter the market.

Reuter's report states that MediaTek is taking a different approach to Qualcomm and rather than designing a bespoke CPU architecture based on the Arm instruction set, it's using Arm's standard layouts. In theory, that will make it cheaper and far quicker to produce, though it provides less scope for fine-tuning performance, power consumption, and so on.

But as a cheaper alternative to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X (which itself is much cheaper than chips from AMD and Intel), MediaTek's processor could do wonders for the ultra-cheap laptop market. That's normally been the preserve of basic Chrome notebooks, which are fine for doing emails and light web browsing, but little else. Something with more poke would be welcome.

One question all of this raises is does this mean MediaTek's collaboration with Nvidia is over? We've previously reported on the two companies working on a project to