The chip designers from ARM don't sit still, even though they've cornered almost the entire mobile market. They lifted the veil at an industry conference over the
Mali-450 graphics processor, which at the same clock speeds will be twice faster than the Mali-400, that is in the
Samsung Galaxy S II, since it will have eight instead of four cores.
This will put its performance on par with the overclocked Mali-400 in the
Galaxy S III, and, of course, manufacturers can overclock Mali-450 in its turn to achieve a significant performance boost.
The new GPU is aimed towards volume markets, since the high-end for future smartphones and tablets with ARM chips is reserved for Mali-T604 and the scorching
Mali-T658, both of which will support the upcoming OpenGL ES 3.0 environment, while Mali-450 won't.
The 6xx series with the Midgard architecture will be replaced in its turn with something called
Skrymir, circa 2014, and we don't even dare to imagine the possibilities of that one. Mali-450, however, will bring powerful graphics to mid-range phones that won't break the bank, and we are all for that.
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