UK : ARM announced the ARM Mali-400 MP scalable multiprocessor graphics solution, capable of  delivering performance of up to 1G pixels per second and enabling licensees to serve multiple product markets with the same architecture, whilst retaining the flexibility to choose the optimum power, performance and area configuration for their application. 

The pioneering Mali-400 MP architecture offers breakthrough scalability, also reducing costs for developers and OEMs associated with platform fragmentation, as no changes are required to support one to four processors.

“Architectural reuse of software and hardware components is of increasing importance to SoC developers,” said Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer, MultiMedia Intelligence. “The scalability of the ARM Mali-400 MP GPU, from 300 million to over one billion pixels per second, will enable OEMs to deliver a wide range of market-leading products on the same underlying architecture, reducing their total cost of ownership and maximizing ROI.”

The ARM family of Mali GPUs is opening up new product markets that will benefit from graphics acceleration, from mobile feature phones through to 1080p-based iDTVs.  Recent Mali GPU licensees in the set-top box market mean that the consumer experience in the home is set for a radical change.

“We see an increasing need for pixel processing of up to 1G pixels in the home as HD screens become ubiquitous,” said Ola Larsén, vice president of marketing at TAT, an ARM Mali Developer Relations Program Partner. “The set-top box and digital TV user interface will never be the same once graphics acceleration such as Mali technology becomes the standard.”

The Mali-400 MP solution builds on ARM’s experience and knowledge gained in the widely-adopted ARM MPCore™ technology, implemented in the ARM11™ MPCore and Cortex™-A9 MPCore multicore processors, designed to reduce system bandwidth, optimize performance and reduce power consumption.

“The battle for consumers’ attention across all consumer electronics product markets means that the graphics acceleration capability of these devices is rapidly becoming a must-have feature. Consumers expect an equally compelling user experience when accessing content from their mobile and digital home entertainment devices,” said Michael Dimelow, director of marketing, Media Processing Division, ARM. “The ARM Mali-400 MP graphics solution enables our customers to bring scalable graphics processing performance to a wider range of product markets and more economically than before.”

Power consumption and area efficiency are key aspects of the Mali-400 MP GPU design. The ability to scale performance to meet different price points and power budgets allows the Mali-400 MP GPU to address the widest possible market while bringing significant cost benefits through utilizing the same single software stack across multiple devices.

The ability to capture the attention of consumers through the display on their electronic devices, as demonstrated by a range of high-end designs today, is driving the need for hardware graphics acceleration in a wide range of consumer devices. The scalable multicore graphics processing design of the Mali-400 MP solution will help bring graphics acceleration to almost any device with a screen.

Availability
The ARM Mali-400 MP GPU is available for licensing today.  More information about the ARM Mali graphics stack.