ARM expands its Mali GPUs, targets smartphones, tablets

BANGALORE, INDIA: ARM has introduced the second generation of the Mali-T600 series graphics processing units. The processing units are targeted at enhancing the user experience for tablets, smartphones and smart TVs. They are the first to include Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) that is a texture compression technique from ARM.

The products claim to ensure an increase in performance by almost 50 percent. ASTC increases battery life in devices and optimises GPU performance at the same time.

The second generation of the Mali-T600 Series comprises three GPUs - the Mali-T624, Mali-T628 and Mali-T678 and is based on the Mali Midgard architecture. The Mali-T624 and Mali-T628 products provide market leading graphics and GPU compute to smartphones and smart-TVs, while the Mali-T678 has been optimised to address the demands of the rapidly growing tablet market.

math intensive activities, such as computational photography can now realize improved energy efficiency in terms of using computational methods of enhancing or extending digital photography and multi-perspective views. It can also enable mobile devices for photo editing.

"People expect higher standards of visual computing on their smartphones, tablets and smart-TVs with seamless access to their digital world and personal content. GPU compute enables this as it increases the range of functions mobile devices can perform within the available battery life. ARM continues to focus on system-wide optimisation by integrating market leading CPU and GPU technologies to drive both high performance and energy-efficiency,” said Pete Hutton, general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM.

The Mali-T624 GPU offers scalability from one to four cores, whilst the Mali-T628 from one to eight cores provides up to twice the graphics and GPU compute performance of the Mali-T624, extending the graphics potential for smartphones and smart-TVs.

These products are ideal for advanced consumer applications such as 3D graphics, visual computing and photo editing for smartphones and smart-TVs. The Mali-T678 offers energy-efficient high-end visual computing applications, such as computational photography, multi-perspective views and augmented reality.

It offers the highest GPU compute performance available in the Mali-T600 Series of products, delivering a four-fold increase when compared with the Mali-T624 GPU through features such as increased ALU support.