Latest ARM Premium Mobile Technology to Drive Immersive Experiences

Cambridge,
UK, May 30, 2016 – ARM
has announced a suite of premium mobile processor technologies to redefine
flagship devices from 2017. The ARM Cortex-A73 processor and the ARM Mali-G71 graphics processor offer sustained
performance
and efficiency gains that will lead to new products with enhanced contextual and visual capabilities. This
will allow devices to run high resolution content for longer periods while
staying within strict mobile power budgets.

“The
smartphone is the world’s most
ubiquitous compute device, offering experiences that improve with each new
product generation,” said
Pete Hutton, executive vice president and president, product groups, ARM. “In
2017, we will see devices with the Cortex-A73 and Mali-G71 processors that
stand out thanks to their impressive and sustained performance,
and even more
stunning visuals. This technology can make engaging with 4K video, virtual reality
and augmented
reality an everyday experience on a mobile device.”

The Mali-G71 graphics processor unit (GPU) increases the momentum for
ARM Mali products, now the industry’s number one shipping graphics processor
technology. The new core enables a 50 percent increase in graphics performance,
a 20 percent increase in power-efficiency and 40 percent more performance per
mm2.

The
Mali-G71 scales efficiently up to 32 shader cores, twice as many as the previous
generation premium IP GPU – the Mali-T880. The uplift means the Mali-G71 surpasses
the performance of many discrete GPUs found in today’s mid-range laptops. The product
is also fully coherent, helping to simplify software development and efficiency.
It is ideally suited to power immersive VR and AR experiences on mobile devices
and leading silicon providers including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Samsung Electronics
have already taken licenses.

Bifrost,
the third-generation ARM GPU architecture, is the foundation of the Mali-G71. The
architecture is optimized for Vulkan and other industry-standard APIs, building
on innovations from the previous Utgard and Midgard architectures.

“VR is one of the most important
technological breakthroughs for the gaming industry in a generation,” said
Niklas Smedberg, technical
director, platform partnerships, Epic Games. “The ability to deliver a
compelling VR experience on all platforms, but especially mobile, is critical
for the industry’s continued growth and advancement. To enable a great mobile
VR experience, devices need to be the highest performing and most energy
efficient available.”

“It’s
basic math – the sheer number of smartphones in the world is already double PCs
and rising, which makes it the single most important device for accelerating VR
gaming adoption,” said Clive Downie, CMO Unity Technologies. “ARM is making
smart investments that move the mobile VR and AR ecosystems forward. By
creating more efficient and powerful technology solutions for mobile
they are helping push the boundaries of what is possible in the virtual
world and everyone will benefit.”

At
under 0.65mm2 per core (on a 10nm FinFET process technology) the Cortex-A73 is the smallest and most efficient
‘big’ ARMv8-A core. Its advanced mobile
microarchitecture enables a 30 percent uplift in sustained performance and power
efficiency over the Cortex-A72.

Size
and efficiency improvements enhance the ability of silicon providers to use the
Cortex-A73 in ARM big.LITTLE™ configurations. These improvements create further
opportunities for designers to scale big cores along with the GPU and other IP in
a single SoC. Ten partners have licensed the Cortex-A73 so far, including
HiSilicon, Marvell and Mediatek.

“In order to deliver more quality and excellent
smartphone experiences to consumers, Huawei will continue enhancing the
integrated performance of our premium smartphones,” said Kevin Ho, President, handset
business, Huawei consumer business group. “The system-level approach that ARM
takes in developing its IP is a vital element in ensuring our design teams are
able to maximize efficiency and performance across the entire device.”

In
addition to smartphones,
ARM’s latest premium IP suite offers the increased performance density and
throughput required for other consumer electronics applications such as
large-screen compute devices, industrial gateways, in vehicle infotainment and
smart TVs.

“The complexity of delivering greater
performance and higher efficiency in lockstep requires HiSilicon to take the
most comprehensive possible approach to SoC design,” said Daniel
Diao, deputy general manager of the Turing processor business unit at HiSilicon. “Knowing that ARM validates all of its CPU,
GPU and CCI interconnect IP to work better together in a cache-coherent system
creates opportunities for our teams to accelerate design cycles and address the
most compute-intensive applications.”

“MediaTek
customers are building premium experience devices with more demands on power
and performance than ever before,” said Rolly Chang, corporate vice president
and general manager of wireless communication business unit at MediaTek.
“Partnering with ARM ensures our SoC designs deliver uncompromised premium
experiences in next-generation mobile devices.”

“Next-generation premium experiences will be defined by pushing
the boundaries of what’s possible with mobile VR and AR,” said Jae
Cheol Son, senior vice president, processor development team, Samsung
Electronics. “A scalable GPU like the Mali-G71 will help Samsung design teams
address increasingly complex mobile VR and AR use cases.”