ARM Mali-T658 supercharged GPU announced

ARM Mali-T658 supercharged GPU announced
Chip and win

ARM has announced the latest in its line of GPUs that will be integrated into the next generation of smartphones and smart TVs.

The ARM Mali-T658 is a chip that is packed with power. To put it into context, the new Mali chip has 10 times more performance than its predecessor – the Mali-400 MP GPU – which currently resides in devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2.

In short, it holds enough power to take on the likes of the PS3 and the Xbox 360, which is, frankly, a little scary.

With the new update ARM is hoping to "redefine heterogeneous computing for the embedded space" which essentially means its new GPUs are ideal to tackle the high-performance graphics we now crave from out low-powered gadgets.

In ARM's way

Not only can the ARM Mali-T658 tackle graphics, it has also been built to take on the likes of computational photography, image-processing and augmented reality.

According to ARM, the Mali-T658 is scalable up to eight cores and is compatible with the ARMv8 architecture – more specifically the ARM Corte-A15 and Cortex-A7 processors either in standalone modes or in big.LITTLE processing mode.

"Next generation consumer devices based on the Mali-T658 GPU will address the growing user expectation for slick user interfaces and desktop-class graphics," said Pete Hutton, general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM.

"Intuitive user interfaces will mean that consumers can access the full functionality of their connected devices, for richer user experiences. This includes HD gaming and new compute-intensive applications, such as augmented reality."

Just this week Nvidia unveiled its Tegra 3 chip, the world's first quadcore processor for mobile phones.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.