Thursday ARM revealed a new GPU built for high performance devices like superphones, tablets and smart-TVs. Called the ARM Mali-T658, this latest edition to the Midgard architecture-based GPU family promises to deliver up to ten times the graphics performance of the Mali-400 MP GPU which is found in a wide range of today's mainstream consumer products. It also promises four times the GPU Compute performance of the Mali-T604 GPU.
"Next generation consumer devices based on the Mali-T658 GPU will address the growing user expectation for slick user interfaces and desktop-class graphics," said Pete Hutton, general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. "Intuitive user interfaces will mean that consumers can access the full functionality of their connected devices, for richer user experiences. This includes HD gaming and new compute-intensive applications, such as augmented reality."
Did you catch that key description desktop-class graphics? According to ARM, the GPU supports a wide range of graphics and compute APIs including Microsoft DirectX 11, Khronos OpenGL ES, OpenVG, Khronos OpenCL, Google Renderscript and Microsoft DirectCompute. That's right: a "superphone" GPU capable of rendering DirectX 11 graphics!
Thursday in a press release ARM said the new GPU has been designed to work with the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 processors either in standalone modes, or when they're combined in big.LITTLE processing mode.
"The autonomous nature of the Mali Job Manager, and its ability to carry on graphics processing with a reduced load on the CPU, means it is very well suited to work alongside a big.LITTLE CPU system," the company said. "By using the right processor for the right task the Mali-T658 is able to handle GPU compute tasks in parallel with the CPU handling the always-on always-connected tasks. The ability of the Mali-T658 GPU to scale up to eight cores provides unprecedented energy-efficiency, flexibility and scalability to match the CPU and GPU performance points through one coherent interface."
For more information on the new Mali-T658 GPU, head here.
