ARM has announced the second generation of the ARM Mali T600 series graphics processing units (GPUs), which it claims perform 50 per cent better without using more power. Devices based on these GPUs will start to arrive by the end of this year.
It has also developed a new compression technology called Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) which optimises GPU performance, increases battery life in devices and also reduces the complexity of application development.
Some of the GPUs announced earlier, which will be available by the end of this year include a Mali 450 for mid-range handsets, the quad core T604 and the eight core T658, which are based on ARM’s Midgard architecture. It has further added the new quad core T624, and the T628 and T678, which are both scalable up to eight cores.
These chips are not just faster and conserve battery, they also support 4K (four times the high definition) and 8K video workloads and 60fps (frames per second) user interfaces in phones, tablets and smart TVs.
The premium T678 is aimed specifically at tablets, and in addition to allowing up to eight cores also doubles the number of arithmetic logic units per core, which improves its ability to do tasks involving maths, which further means that its computed performance (measured in gigaflops) is actually quadrupled compared to the T624.
The new GPUs include the ability to use computational methods of enhancing or extending digital photography, multi perspective views from different positions and real-time photo editing on mobile devices.