ARM®’s newest high performance GPU, the Mali™-T880, delivers better than ever graphics performance whilst remaining well within the energy constraints of a mobile platform. The exciting possibilities this opens up are beginning to be realised with the recent announcements of the Mali-T880 appearing in key devices by two of ARM’s partners.
As graphics content for mobile devices becomes increasingly complex, it places greater and greater pressure on the computational capabilities of GPUs. For a start, consumer expectations are that mobile gaming will provide the same high quality user experience as that available on console. The recent surge in virtual reality content, which is expected to make the biggest impact in mobile rather than desktop, also means that high capability GPUs are essential for all levels of mobile devices. Even mid-range smartphones these days are required to perform increasingly challenging computational procedures at low cost, so the next generation of high end mobile devices to hit the market are facing ever higher requirements for superior graphics capability. One of the key requirements is to be able to deliver high-end mobile gaming and applications, whilst still constrained by the power (and therefore thermal) limits of mobile devices.
The ARM Mali family of GPUs is perfectly positioned to address the needs of the whole mobile industry from entry level to top of the line, next-generation products. Based on the Mali Midgard architecture, the Mali-T880 is scalable from one to sixteen cores. It features an additional arithmetic pipeline per shader core in order to handle greater computational throughput than its predecessors and is up to 40% more energy efficient. Not only that, but the adoption of bandwidth saving technologies such as ARM Frame Buffer Compression (AFBC), Smart composition and Transaction elimination all allow for the Mali-T880 to be extremely efficient on memory bandwidth.
ARM Mali-T880 GPU Structure
Two of ARM’s partners have recently released their take on the Mali-T880, Samsung and Huawei have both taken advantage of the exceptional performance and leading energy efficiency of the Mali-T880 to fulfil these very current needs. Huawei’s Mate 8 smartphone, announced last week, is based on the HiSilicon Kirin 950 chipset and contains an optimal combination of ARM Cortex-A72 and Cortex-A53 CPUs and the Mali-T880 GPU to provide a harmonized suite of efficient computing power. Samsung’s Exynos 8 Octa uses the Mali-T880 to ensure the highest quality user interface, immersive gaming and virtual reality content.
Huawei’s New Mate 8 Smartphone
2016 is set to feature yet another step forward in high end devices and with the launch of the Samsung Gear VR, consumer expectations for mobile graphics continue to grow. As more and more of ARM’s partners begin to utilise the Mali-T880, keep an eye out for the next generation of devices hitting the market in the new year.
Stay tuned for more news on Mali and Premium mobile, there are heaps of exciting developments to come.