Mobile GPU: ARM Mali-450, two time more powerful than the Mali-400

While waiting for the Mali-T604 and Mali-T658 graphics processors, ARM has unveiled the Mali-450, two times more powerful than the Mali-400 present in numerous smartphones.

British company ARM offers application processor architecture which can be found in almost all smartphones and tablets (even though Intel has now officially entered the market with the first x86 Atom Medfield products) but they also offer mobile graphics processors with the Mali range.

While they are working on their future generations, like the Mali-T604 and Mali-T658 aimed at working with the ARM Cortex-A15 architecture, they have now added to the Mali-400 range, present in carious devices (like the Samsung Galaxy S II) with the release of the Mali-450 mobile GPU.

According to EETimes, the Mali-450 is two time more powerful than the Mali-400 as it is capable of hosting up to 8 cores (compared to the 1 to 4 cores in the Mali-400) with this aiming to provide advanced graphics performance for entry and middle of the range smartphones.

Product manager Steve Steele states that this isn’t just the doubling of the number of cores, as optimisations have also been made to the graphics engines. Despite this, the manufacturer is confident that they have developed a product that can be produced in large volumes for the range of middle of the line smartphones that will be sold in the coming year.

The GPU Mali-450 doesn’t have the processing capabilities of the Midgard architecture present in the Mali-T6xx range though, which allows for the applications processor to be used for tasks other than graphics processing. EETimes suggests that a Skyrmir platform which is represented in the top of the link Midgard architecture should be unveiled in 2014 (the Mali-T604 and Mali-T658 are expected in 2013).