March 23rd, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Gaming Gear | No Comments »
As a lot of you will probably remember, we recently wrote about ARM's strategic investment in Ideaworks3D. Now, the company officially announced it's vision on mobile gaming (hardware).
ARM today outlined its vision to shape the future of the next generation of graphics processing and mobile gaming against the backdrop of the 22nd annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Calif.. ARM’s collaborative approach to graphics acceleration solutions, combining the strength of the Mali complete graphics stack with the reach of ARM’s Partner ecosystem, has led to widespread adoption of Mali technology by 27 licensees to date. ARM continues to build on its success, delivering a wide range of powerful, easily configurable Mali graphics IP and working with leading silicon Partners, device manufacturers and content providers in the gaming and graphics industry to bring a proliferation of Mali GPU-enabled mobile phones and consumer devices to market, with immediately available console-quality mobile gaming content, stunning user interfaces, advanced navigation applications and Web browsing.
The Mali GPU family scales from Mali-55, the world’s smallest GPU to Mali-400 MP, the highest-performance embedded multicore GPU IP on the market which supports complex gaming applications at up to 1080p high-definition resolution, thereby addressing the widest range of performance points for all embedded graphics needs. This diverse offering enables ARM to lead in conformance to numerous open standards and confirms the company’s unique position as a world-class supplier of the complete range of hardware and software graphics IP, enabling application developers and device manufacturers to create competitive and cutting-edge designs.
The company was among the first to create a market for licensable GPU IP in mobile and has the most widely deployed 3D software engine (ARM Mali-JSR184) as well as graphics hardware delivered to system-on-chip (SoC) vendors in a wide range of target market segments. In order to achieve pervasiveness for the next wave of gaming and graphics processing, ARM is focused on expanding its already robust network of Mali technology licensees that already includes Amlogic, Broadcom, EMP, FXI, LG, Micronas, Motorola, MTekvision, NXP, Pantech, RMI, Samsung, Siemens, Socle, ST, Telechips and Zoran.
Mali GPUs are easily integrated into ARM’s overall system design approach, where interconnect, cache, CPUs and software are incorporated into chip design pre-silicon to ensure high quality, media-rich experiences. There are currently more than 80 million Mali graphics technology-enabled phones in the marketplace, including the widely available LGE Renoir handset, enabled by the Mali-55 GPU and ARM CPU, employing Mali GPU acceleration to drive the phone’s innovative Flash-based user interface.
As video becomes an increasingly important part of the consumer’s mobile experience, the need for flexible and scalable video solutions is rising. Complementary to the Mali graphics IP and part of the ARM multimedia portfolio is the highly flexible and scalable Mali-VE video encode and decode technology, for image resolutions from QCIF up to High Definition (1080p). Mali-VE solutions are also shipping in mass volume mobile handsets, where the optimum combination of high performance, efficient die size, programmability and low power consumption are key, delivering high quality visual displays.
Mali processors deliver stunning 2D and 3D graphics with 4x and 16x full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) to “smooth” otherwise jagged lines without any noticeable drop in performance. In addition to providing content developers with the state-of-the-art programmable features in OpenGL ES 2.0, Mali products also support SVG and Flash through OpenVG for improved text, navigation, UI and web-browsing experiences. Mali technology takes full advantage of complementary ARM products including memory controllers, interconnect and peripherals, application and embedded processors, and Mali video engines, physical IP and embedded firmware to deliver a powerful and complete graphics experience on mobile phones, PDAs, GPS and STB devices, with sustained performance, very low power consumption and leading memory bandwidth usage for up to 1080p resolutions.
