MediaTek MT9638 chip for 4K smart TVs launched

MediaTek on Wednesday announced the launch of a new chip for smart TVs. Called MT9638, the new chip is aimed at smart TVs with a 4K resolution. It comes with features such as a high-performance AI processing unit (APU), AI super-resolution, AI picture quality and AI voice assistants, plus variable refresh rate (VRR) and MEMC (motion estimation and motion compensation). The chipset will be available in the consumer market in the second quarter of this year.

MediaTek’s latest MT9638 chipset comes with a multi-core Arm Cortex-A55 CPU and Arm Mali-G52 GPU. The chip supports up to 4K60 resolution with a multimedia decoding engine for HEVC, VP9 and the latest AV1. It also has support for HDR 10+ display.

MediaTek’s new processor comes with Dolby Atmos and DTS Virtual X surround sound support. For connectivity, the chip has HDMI 2.1a and USB 3.0 along with Wi-Fi 6 support. Other important features include up to four far-field microphones, and support for voice assistant with low power consumption on standby. For memory, it has 48b DDR3 and 64b DDR3.

The latest chip follows MediaTek’s MT9602 processor, which had launched in October last year. The smart TV chip brought support for 4K HDR and features such as AI-PQ (picture quality) & AI-AQ (audio quality). Motorola was the first brand to announce a smart TV with the MT9602 processor.

MediaTek says it has sold more than 2 billion units of TV chips globally so far.

“As smart home appliances become more intelligent and diversified, smart TVs are becoming the new hub for the smart home as consumers take advantage of AI-enabled multimedia features to control all their devices right from their TV,” said Alex Chen, General Manager of the TV Business Unit at MediaTek. “The new MT9638 continues our legacy as the No. 1 chip provider of smart TVs, bringing consumers incredible AI, multimedia, gaming and entertainment experiences in theater-quality 4K.”