In 2019, the Android team announced a new concept called Game Driver. The idea behind it is to provide frequent and timely updates to overcome any Vulkan device driver issues, so maximum performance can be extracted from all latest Vulkan features. The result is increased gaming performance for Android mobile devices. Following this announcement, Samsung Mobile and Arm have been working together to make the Game Driver concept a reality on Samsung Galaxy mobile devices, which feature Exynos SoCs built on Arm Mali GPUs.
The good news is that Samsung Galaxy users are able to download the new game driver app from the Google Play store. This makes the overall mobile gaming experience even better for the end user.
Samsung’s work on the Game Driver started from the package driver concept. As the capabilities of the Vulkan driver are still evolving, Samsung switched to focus on an updatable driver to improve the gaming experience. This means that users can easily update the driver in a similar way to how applications update. In its current form, the Game Driver is focused purely on game performance, but the aim is to add a quick update release for bug fixing. The final goal is to switch back to the initial package driver concept, which does not just target games but also enables the overall quality and performance of the driver.
The focus on game performance on mobile was considered to be an important first step for the Samsung driver due to two key trends:
Even game studios that have traditionally focused on developing only PC and console games are putting their resources into developing more mobile titles. In 2018, mobile became the largest gaming segment. According to the market intelligence agency Newzoo, mobile accounted for more than 46 percent of the global games market in 2019.
Users are also playing very popular high-fidelity, multi-user games, such as Fortnite, Call of Duty MOBILE and the Black Desert, on mobile devices and their consoles, while still expecting similar quality. This is why mobile devices need even greater performance to push the boundaries of graphics and optimize these gaming experiences.
The new Game Driver is based on our R25p0 driver release, which delivers important performance improvements. Looking at the Black Desert Online game title as a case study, we can see a performance gain of 6% on average in overall frames per second (FPS). This performance gain depended on the different rendered scenarios, as shown in the table below:
Picture 1: Ancient Remains
Picture 2: Hadum
Picture 3: Worldboss
Samsung has measured these improvements on the Samsung Galaxy S20, with these performance gains meaning that gamers can enjoy better and longer game play sessions.
When Arm launched the Mali-G78 GPU as part of the 2020 Mobile IP launch, we made sure it would support game driver. This support has been extended to current GPUs built on the Valhall architecture, such as Mali-G77 GPU, while all future GPUs come with this feature by default. Ensuring game driver support for Mali-G77 is important for our Samsung partnership, as the Exynos 990 SoC in Samsung Galaxy S20 mobile devices is built on Mali-G77.
Samsung Mobile is delighted with the new driver. Here’s what Jungwoo Kim, Principal Engineer at Samsung Electronics, had to say:
“Frequent updates to GPU Driver Software are key to providing the quick and efficient delivery of new GPU features and performance improvements. Demand for an easier driver update solution has increased as the transition of Graphics APIs from GLES to Vulkan becomes more commonplace, and the expectation of better mobile graphics and gaming performance becomes the norm. Samsung has worked closely with Google and major GPU vendors like Arm to make this happen across the Android ecosystem. As an interim solution, we shipped the game driver feature as a GPU driver update for the select games on the S20 and Note20. I am extremely honored to announce the first public update of Game Driver in mid-November and excited to keep this collaboration building on the strong relationship between Samsung, Google, and Arm.”
At Arm, we will continue to work with our partners to make the new game driver available to more Android mobile devices in the future. Bringing its performance benefits to many more mobile devices. Also stay tuned for future driver updates that include new features and performance improvements.
Samsung Galaxy S20 and Note20 users can download the Game Driver at the Google Play store.
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