MediaTek Plans to Open New Design Center in the US With Aid From the State

Taiwan’s MediaTek, the world’s fourth largest chip designer by revenue, plans to create a new design center in Indiana in partnership with Purdue University, the firm told Reuters. MediaTek, which makes processors for many Android phones and smart speakers, declined to say how much it would invest in its first Midwestern design hub, but said it will receive $1.4 million (nearly Rs. 11 crore) from the state for the center.

“Being in Indiana means we’ll have access to some of the best engineering talent in the world,” said Dr. Kou-Hung Lawrence Loh, corporate senior vice president of MediaTek Iand president of MediaTek USA, in a statement the company plans to release later on Tuesday.

The company will seek to hire engineers from top schools in Indiana and nearby states that it would normally recruit to its design centers in California or the Northeast, it said.

MediaTek also said it plans to endow a professorship at Purdue to compete for federal research grants, a funding source that could see a large boost if a bill to support the chip industry gets congressional approval. The announcement will come after Taiwan’s GlobalWafers said on Monday it will build a $5 billion (nearly Rs. 39,500 crore) silicon wafer plant in Sherman, Texas, as a global shortage of semiconductor chips continues to bite supply chains, forcing some automotive and electronics firms to scale back production.

In a related development, last week MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ was unveiled as the company’s latest smartphone system-on-chip (SoC). The new Dimensity chipset is rated to deliver a five percent boost in CPU performance and more than 10 percent improvement in GPU performance over the Dimensity 9000. The Dimensity 9000+ comes with support for up to 180Hz full-HD+ displays and up to 320-megapixel cameras. It also includes support for the latest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Dimensity 9000+ carries an integrated 5G modem to support high-speed data access.