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MediaTek has unveiled the quad-core MT8135 SoC, which offers mainstream performance with its big.LITTLE MP arrangement of two clusters of dual Cortex-A15 and dual Cortex-A7 cores, and a powerful PowerVR Series6 GPU.

After laying claim to the world’s first true octa-core SoC, MediaTek has announced a quad-core chipset designated MT8135, which has two clusters of dual Cortex-A15 and dual Cortex-A7 cores operating simultaneously, made possible by leveraging ARM’s big.LITTLE MP architecture (where “MP” is short for multi-processing).

This is in stark contrast to Samsung’s implementation of big.LITTLE in their Exynos 5 Octa chipset, in which only one cluster can operate at a given time depending on the workload. The big.LITTLE MP configuration should allow a better performance to power usage ratio by combining the fast and powerful Cortex-A15 cores with the energy-efficient A7 cores, while still being able to power on individual cores as needed.

The MT8135 is also special in that it will be one of the first SoCs to include Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR Series6 GPU (PowerVR G6200), for “up to four times more ALU (arithmetic logic unit) horsepower” than the Series5XT GPU on the cheaper, quad-core Cortex-A7 MT8125; in short, a formidable increase in graphical performance that beats even the insanely powerful Nexus 10 (which uses a Mali-T604 GPU) in preliminary benchmarks performed by MediaTek.

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MediaTek has also retrofitted the MT8135 with support for the Miracast wireless display standard, and a 4-in-1 connectivity package that includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and FM radio, all developed in-house. The chipset is aimed at “the middle- to high-end tier of the tablet OEM market,” but with mainstream performance that was lacking in the company’s phone-focused SoCs.

There’s no mention of when the first devices to use the MT8135 will make an appearance, but with mass production set to begin in the third quarter of this year, early 2014 would be the best bet. For now, find all the technical jargon on the chipset at the source links.

Source: MediaTek, Imagination