ARM has announced the Mali-470 GPU targeted at Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices.
The new Mali-470 GPU has half the power consumption and two times the energy efficiency of the Mali-400, and is designed for next-generation wearables and IoT devices such as industrial control panels and healthcare monitors that rely on low-cost and low-power chips.
The Mali-470 supports OpenGL ES 2.0, used by Android and Android Wear, hinting that the GPU could also find its way into low-cost smartphones. If not, ARM promises that the chip will bring smartphone-quality visuals to wearable and IoT devices, supporting screen resolutions of up to 640×640 on single-core devices, and higher resolutions for multi-core configurations.
ARM envisions the new GPU paired with its efficient Cortex-A7 or A53 CPU designs for a low-power SoC.
“ARM scrutinises every milliwatt across the entire SoC to enable OEMs to optimize energy efficiency and open up new opportunities,” said Mark Dickinson, vice president and general manager of ARM’s multimedia processing group.
“Tuning efficiency is particularly relevant for devices requiring sophisticated graphics on a low power budget such as wearables, entry-level smartphones and IoT devices. The Mali-470 has been designed to meet this demand by enabling a highly capable user interface while being extremely energy efficient.”
ARM expects the first SoCs using the GPU be ready by the end of 2016, meaning that the chip will start showing up in devices the following year.
The launch of the Mali-470 GPU comes just hours after ARM announced plans to pick up the product portfolio and other business assets of Carbon Design Systems, a supplier of cycle-accurate virtual prototyping solutions.
The deal will see Carbon’s staff transfer to ARM, where the chip firm will make use of the Massachusetts-based outfit’s expertise in virtual prototypes. This will enable ARM to iron out any bugs and make improvements to chips before they move to foundries for production.
ARM also said that Carbon will help the firm enhance its capability in SoC architectural exploration, system analysis and software bring-up.
Courtesy-TheInq
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