ARM said on Thursday that LG Electronics has become the lead partner in its Cortex-A50 family by licensing the next-generation Cortex-A50 CPU core and the next-generation Mali GPU core. ARM added that the new Mali GPUs now licensed by LG will extend the performance capabilities beyond what was seen on the previous Mali-T678 GPU.
The Cortex-A50 family was actually launched in October 2012, and bridges the performance requirements of next-generation 32-bit and 64-bit applications. It comprises the Cortex-A57 and the Cortex-A53 low-power processors, and promises to drive the widespread adoption of technology applications ranging from gesture control to augmented reality to mobile gaming.
"Cortex-A50 series processors are excellent 32-bit processors with 64-bit capability," the company said in October. "Both the Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 can operate independently or be combined into an ARM big.LITTLE processing configuration that enables scalable performance and optimal energy-efficiency."
The two processors also introduce new power saving features such as retention modes and more extensive hierarchical clock gating to automatically save power when all or a portion of the processor is idle. ARM said these two new processors, despite their new capabilities, are still fully compatible with 32-bit ARMv7 softeare.
"Licensing the highest-performing IP from ARM for both CPU and GPU enables LG Electronics to expand the possibilities for end devices," said Pete Hutton, executive vice president & general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. "The capabilities of next-generation Cortex CPUs and Mali GPUs in concert will make innovative features, at market-leading levels of energy efficiency, a reality."
