At CES 2016 in Las Vegas, Taiwanese company MediaTek has laid out their plans to introduce three new system-on-chip (SoCs), MediaTek MT8581, MT7697, and MT2523G. The final device on the list will likely prove to be the most interesting, as it will very likely be included in wearable devices very soon.
It comes with GPS and Bluetooth on the chip and can render high-resolution displays.
It has a Cortex M4 CPU and can last over one week on a single charge. It will likely be ready for manufacturers in the first half of this year. The MT2523G is the first SoC device to come with GPS, dual-mode Bluetooth LE, and the high-resolution screen support, making it very desirable for smart device manufacturers. All of this is offered on a smaller board than anything on the market currently.
The next one, the MT7697 is focusing on providing as low of a power consumption as possible while still providing good connectivity options. It supports Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi. There’s a rumor that this chip is meant for Internet of Things devices, and specs on the internals are still unknown.
Finally, the MT8581 is intended for use in home theater systems. It supports Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD playback and supports scaling up and down from 4K resolution. The supported codecs include HEVC, H.264, and VP 9 4K for the 4K content and MPEG-2, VP8, and VC-1 2K for 1080p playback.
MediaTek also said that they intend to reach tens of billions of SoC units shipped per year by 2020 due to the increasing popularity of Internet of Things devices out there in the world. They currently ship around 1.5 billion units per year for mobile, tablet, and Smart TV usage, so this increase is truly incredible and would only further demonstrate the popularity of the Internet of Things.
