MediaTek Launches Chipset Supporting the Google Assistant and Android Things

MediaTek recently introduced its newest full-featured chipset designed to enable Voice Assistant Devices (VADs) and smart speakers, including the Google Assistant. MediaTek also announced support for MT8516 based Android Things pre-certified system on modules (SOMs) at Google I/O.

By supporting the Google Assistant and Android Things, MediaTek is able to deliver an exceptional smart home user experience with seamless interaction between voice command devices and IoT products. MediaTek is one of the world’s largest fabless semiconductor companies, powering more than 1.5 billion consumer devices a year.

“Smart home products are growing in popularity and MediaTek’s expertise is making connected devices smarter, smaller and more power efficient without sacrificing performance,” said Joe Chen, Executive Vice President and Co-COO of MediaTek. “Our dedicated Android support will help expand the market for voice-based intelligent devices.”

The MediaTek MT8516 is a highly power-efficient application processing platform. It has diverse interfaces and connectivity that focuses on audio and microphone processing. It was designed specifically for cloud-supported voice assistant devices.

The MT8516 is equipped with a quad-core, 64-bit ARM® Cortex-A35 MPCore™ operating at up to 1.3 GHz. The chipset also pre-integrates WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. For product manufacturers this chipset brings simplicity of design, reduced time to market and opportunities to be more innovative with products through a smaller design footprint.

For microphone voice input and connected audio products, the MediaTek MT8516 has interfaces for TDM (up to 8 channels) and PDM inputs (2 channels). In addition, the chipset has flexible memory support including LPDDR2, LPDDR3, DDR3, DDR3L and DDR4 to accommodate diverse platform needs.

New Google Assistant devices using MT8516 are expected on the market in Q4 of this year.