Arm’s Latest Mali Processors Bring High-end Capabilities To Mainstream Devices

It’s nice to envision a world where only high-end devices exist, and with Arm’s latest processors, the gap between high-end and mainstream is tightened. The new products include the Mali-G52 and Mali-G31 graphics processors, the Mali-D51 display processor, and also the Mali-V52 video processor. Yup – that’s a lot to wrap your head around, but it’s honestly not too confusing. Or is it? Where was I again?

The Mali-G52 and Mali-G31 are suited for DTV (digital TV), mainstream, and entry-level mobile devices. The G52 delivers 30% better performance density than its predecessor, as well as a 15% improvement in energy efficiency. Further, machine-learning capabilities have seen a boost of 3.6x.

Moving down the ladder, we arrive at the Mali-G31, which is the first “ultra-efficient” processor to be built on the Bifrost architecture. This is Arm’s smallest chip to support OpenGL ES 3.2 and the latest generation of the Vulkan API. It’s 20% smaller and has 20% better performance density than its predecessor (Mali-G51).

The Mali-D51 takes “many” of the benefits of the Mali-D71 and shrinks them down into the smallest DPU Arm has ever created. The result is a 30% power savings across the board, support for double the screen complexity (up to 8 full layers of UI), and 50% better memory latency for a better experience when content casting.

Finally, there’s the Mali-V52, a video processor that offers 20% better upload quality, 38% smaller silicon area, and double the decode performance for decoding up to not just 4K/60, but even 4K/120 when configured with all four cores.

One of the biggest focal points with this launch is machine-learning performance, and it’s an angle that other companies have been pushing, as well. That includes Qualcomm with its Snapdragon SoC, which utilizes Arm cores. The release is ultimately a very good thing for consumers who don’t even know it, because with higher-tier features and performance trickling down, taking advantage of AI on our phones isn’t going to be exclusive to premium devices for long.