Currently the Samsung Galaxy S3 has set the new standard for mobile graphics. Encased in it’s body is a quad-core Mali 400 GPU which has been blowing all of the competition out of the water. The benchmarks scores it’s been putting out for mobile is mind blowing in how amazing it really is. So what could the future be? An updated quad core? ARM laughed at that idea and with the Samsung S3 barely out for a month has announced a processor that will blow the current flagship of phones away. ARM has announced a new GPU that is an eight core. Yes they’ve announced a new processor with twice the cores of that which is their current flagship product.
We’ll get to that in a moment though. With the quad core still being new there are of course updates coming out to that as well. Currently the Malu 400 GPU is what powers the Samsung S3 but we’re also going to be seeing 2 new quad-core’s coming out shortly. W’ere going to be getting a Mali 450 for mid-range handsets, a quad-core T604, and of course the eight-core T658 which no phones have committed too quite yet. There are also three other chipsets that can run from quad to eight core depending on what manufacturers purchase them with: the T624, the T628 and T678.
So the main feature of the three is that they are promising to deliver AT LEAST 50% more performance so that you’ll be able to get a whole new level of graphics and speed out of your phones that were previously impossible.
Not only is there a direct performance improvement but there is a side one as well that is being built into the hardware. ARM has created its own codec as a video standard for mobile devices known as Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) that has the goal of being released as a standardized codec for developers. Instead of having a huge amount of codecs to pick between or mash together they want to have a centralized codec that would interact directly with the hardware giving an improved experience for developers to work with. It will allow for all levels of textures which currently is the last thing developers are able to work with.
What this means for consumers though is an unparalleled mobile experience. The vast majority of users who have had a chance to play with the Samsung Galaxy S3 have been blown away with how quickly the entire phone reacts. From the interface of the device itself, the camera’s reaction time, from games to apps, all of this with a fluidly moving interactive background – the device is responsive in a way that can only be described of as fast. Anytime we hit a new level of speed on a device it’s only a matter of time before coders find a way to push it to being slow and the next generation of GPU’s for phones are going to already double the speed of what is currently on the market. Mobile devices are already thought of by many as having a portable computer in your pocket and the idea of an eight core can do with build in codec support makes that idea into reality.
Related Link: ARM
