ARM unveils second-gen Mali-T600 GPUs, promises 50% boost in performance

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ARM unveils second-gen Mali-T600 GPUs, promises 50% boost in performance
Soon after the Samsung Galaxy S III was announced, its Exynos 4412 processor was given the benchmark treatment, and to no surprise, the quad-core piece of silicon delivered some impressive results. The chip was not just fast, but it was actually faster than any mobile processor out there, at least theoretically. That level of performance was partially thanks to the Mali-400 graphics processing unit that Samsung's SoC utilizes. However, ARM is yet to show us what its mobile GPUs are capable of.

ARM announced a trio of second generation Mali-T600 GPUs on Monday. First up are the Mali-T624 and Mali-T628, which offer 4 and 8 cores respectively and are meant to be used in smartphones and smart TVs. The Mali-T678 is also scalable up to 8 cores, but it is tailored for tablet use. All three units promise to deliver a 50% performance increase over Mali-T600 GPUs of the previous generation, all the while retaining their physical footprint and power efficiency. 

But there's more tricks that the new pieces of silicon are capable of performing. ARM has implemented a new graphics compression codec within its newest Mali-T600 GPUs called Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC for short). In a nutshell, ASTC supports a wide range of color standards and compression bit-rates. With its help, developers will be able to "use texture compression throughout the application, and to choose the optimal format and bit rate for each use case." The compression standard should not only make a developer's life easier, but should also help lessen the processing power an app needs in order to run, thus extending the device's battery life. It's pretty nerdy stuff, we know, but those of you who are into coding should get the idea.
 
So when we might see these GPUs inside a commercial product? ARM does not clarify on that, but our guess is that it will take some time until the second-gen Mali-T600 lineup gets to show off its processing prowess. What is pretty certain, however, is that Samsung could be quite interested in ARM's new GPUs.

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source: ARM via Engadget

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