Mali core concept (via ARM)
As mobile devices increase in popularity, demand for silicon-based processing power rises. This includes GPUs, without which we could not game, watch HD movies and alter photography. All of which are extremely necessary in this day and age of social-site based communications with others (that’s technical jargon for hooking up with friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc), retaining high-score positions on Angry Birds and sharing recent pic’s with location mapping on Four Square. To that end most of that processing power comes from companies such as ARM who recently released their new GPU, named Mali-450MP, to help scale well with existing and future CPUs in the mobile device market.
This means that companies such as HTC, Nokia and LG can extend the use of their current software platforms, as well as future platforms, using ARM’s new Mali-450 series GPUs Graphical Processing Unit). It also provides an increase in support of up to 8 CPU cores over its predecessor the Mali-400 which can only support 4 cores, which means the 450 can pump-out an increase in pixel processing and vertex shading throughput. Simply put, better visuals for games, pictures and videos for entry level and mid-range mobile devices.
So, what’s packed onto the new 8.6mm2 die? How about 4 processing cores with 256k of level 2 cache with each core running at 240MHz (in LP mode) or 480MHz (in GP mode) respectively. Running at 480 MHz provides 104M triangles with 3.8G pixels running with 4 X FSAA (Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing) with support for OpenGL 1.1/2.0 which is pretty impressive. The ARM Mali-450MP is available now for OEM manufacturers (price unknown at this time).
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