“This technology can make engaging with 4K video, virtual reality and augmented reality an everyday experience on a mobile device”, said ARM executive VP and product groups president Pete Hutton, referring to the Cortex-A73 and the Mali-G71 processors.
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The Mali-G71 boasts graphics performance better than some of those found in today’s mid-range laptops, while the Cortex-A73 will boost the power of smartphones, including 30 per cent more efficient battery power.
ARM has unveiled the Cortex-A73 processor and the Mali-G71 graphics processor, which the company claims will redefine flagship devices beginning next year.
The processors will allow users to do much more with their mobile devices over longer periods of time, which would be necessary for smartphones and tablets to run augmented reality and virtual reality systems.
The Mali-G71 graphics processor unit (GPU) is said to increase graphics performance by up to 50 percent, power-efficiency by up to 20 percent, and support up to 40 percent more performance per mm. ARM says it’s able to sustain peak performance speeds far more than its previous chips, and it has the smallest footprint yet for one of its mobile processors (under 0.65mm sq). With scaling up to 32 shader cores, ARM says the Mali-G71 can match discrete laptop GPUs like Nvidia’s GTX 940M. HiSilicon, MediaTek and Samsung Electronics are among those to have already licensed the technology. The architecture is optimized for Vulkan and other industry-standard APIs, building on innovations from the previous Utgard and Midgard architectures. “By creating more efficient and powerful technology solutions for mobile they are helping push the boundaries of what is possible in the virtual world and everyone will benefit”, it said in a statement. Now, here is a very interesting approach that ARM took with its Cortex-A73; instead of choosing to maintain A72’s 3-wide microarchitecture’s decoder width, the firm instead chose to go back to a 2-wide decoder and even then, its able to deliver higher performance and sport a lower-power design compared to Cortex-A72.
ARM says it expects production from chip manufacturers to start towards the end of this year, with the first handsets packing its new cores due for release in the first quarter of 2017.
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