Arm Total Compute Solutions redefine visual experiences and supercharge mobile gaming

By Paul Williamson, senior vice president and general manager, Client Line of Business, Arm

June 28, 2022 -- This time last year, I wrote about how digital experiences had never been more important, from personal to business devices – they helped us stay connected and entertained at a time when we needed it most. Compute continues to define our experiences in the modern world, and now these experiences are becoming even more visual.

Smartphones are at the center of our connected lives. From gaming to productivity, through video calling, social media or virtual environments, it is the device that provides us the connection to everyone and everything, in real time. For developers, making these immersive real-time 3D experiences even more compelling and engaging requires more performance.

Arm sets the standard for performance and efficient compute, and our latest suite of compute solutions for consumer devices will continue to raise the threshold of what’s possible in the mobile market, shaping the visual experiences of tomorrow.

Optimizing visual experiences with Arm Total Compute Solutions

Arm’s Total Compute strategy has always been anchored in developer access, security and compute performance. We set out to deliver uncompromised performance leadership for all consumer device markets and we’re constantly pushing the boundaries on what our partners can create with optimized system design and implementation.

Arm’s 2022 Total Compute Solutions (TCS22) offer different levels of performance, efficiency and scalability, and bring together all elements of the Total Compute strategy. The combination of Arm IP launched in TCS22 will offer up to 28% more performance and up to 16% power reduction across a range of workloads, such as gaming, where benefits will include longer play time. We continue to expand the dimensions of performance beyond general-purpose workloads to workloads requiring specialized processing, propelling mobile technology, not just on the GPU but across CPUs and System IP too.

Gaming performance unleashed with Arm Immortalis and Mali GPUs

While mobile device innovation has provided phenomenal growth in mobile gaming, the rise of highly visual AAA gaming experiences demand performance that can keep up. This year, we are launching a brand-new flagship GPU called Immortalis, built on the heritage of Mali, the world’s most shipped GPU, but configured and enhanced to deliver the ultimate mobile 3D experiences. Immortalis-G715 is the first Arm GPU to offer hardware-based ray tracing support on mobile, delivering more realistic and immersive gaming experiences.

In addition, we are launching the new premium Arm Mali-G715 GPU, which includes variable rate shading - a graphics feature available across all new GPUs - to deliver significant energy savings and a further gaming performance boost.

Last year we introduced Mali-G610 which has been popular for providing sustained gaming performance in premium devices. This year the Arm Mali-G615 brings premium mobile use cases, capabilities and features to a wider audience of developers and consumers sooner.

The latest Arm GPUs are the most performant to date, with a 15% performance improvement compared to the previous generation, demonstrating Arm’s focus on ensuring that the latest flagship and premium smartphones deliver the AAA gaming experiences that end-users are demanding. The new GPUs also build upon the highly efficient Arm Mali-G710 GPU, with 15% energy efficiency improvements to deliver more game time ‘on-the-go’.

For more technical details on Immortalis-G715 and the new Mali GPUs, visit our blog.

Armv9 CPUs: premium sustained performance and efficiency for next-generation devices

2021 saw the first of the Armv9 CPUs and this year we are meeting the demand for performance and efficiency with a new expanded CPU cluster. The new CPUs are all designed to push peak performance and deliver exceptional sustained performance and efficiency.

We are continuing to increase single-threaded performance with the new Arm Cortex-X3 which targets a range of benchmarks and applications, delivering a 25% performance improvement compared to the latest Android flagship smartphone and a 34% performance improvement compared to the latest mainstream laptops.

Arm Cortex-A715 focuses on efficient performance, delivering a 20% energy efficiency gain and 5% performance uplift compared to Cortex-A710, reaching the significant milestone of matching the performance of Cortex-X1.

The importance of efficient performance makes Cortex-A715 the CPU cluster workhorse of “big.LITTLE”-based configurations, with the technology now the most commonly used heterogeneous processing architecture for consumer devices worldwide.

Last year we launched the Armv9 based Arm Cortex-A510, our first high efficiency “LITTLE” core in four years, and this year’s updated version maintains performance while delivering a 5% power reduction. Meanwhile, the newly updated DSU-110 supports 50% more cores in CPU clusters compared to last year’s generation, enabling scalability across different tiers of consumer devices.

For more technical details on the new Armv9 CPU cores, visit our blog.

Mobile gaming runs on Arm

Compute performance has allowed us to develop ways to connect more authentically, closing the gap created by distance. As technology is evolving, visual experiences allow us to feel more present in a shared moment, or feel the transcendence of entering another world. TCS22 is shaping the visual experiences of tomorrow. We are engaging more people than ever in exploring 3D worlds and augmenting the world around us with virtual visual content. Mobile gaming is driving the evolution of real-time 3D technology and the growth of visual experiences will see it deployed even more widely in the future.

Developing on Arm allows creators to target energy-efficient high-performance computing solutions. That means longer play time for the next wave of innovative applications and visual experiences. I can’t wait to see what the developers of tomorrow will create. The best visual experiences live forever and I’m confident they will be on Arm.

Additional Resources

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Supporting Partner Quotes

Epic Games
"Arm is committed to innovation, and we’re pleased to see developers provided with new options through Arm’s new Total Compute solutions, including their Immortalis GPU. With enhanced capabilities and performance improvements, we can't wait to see how the Unreal Engine community will leverage these advancements to bring state-of-the-art experiences to upcoming mobile devices.” Nick Penwarden, VP of Engineering, Epic Games

MediaTek
“Congratulations to Arm on the launch of the new Immortalis GPU, featuring hardware-based ray tracing. Combined with the new powerful Cortex-X3 CPU, we look forward to the next-level of mobile gaming and productivity for our Flagship & Premium mobile SOCs.” Dr. JC Hsu, Corporate VP and GM, Wireless Communications Business Unit, MediaTek

Unity
“Unity and Arm share the goal of delivering the ultimate gaming experience and Arm’s new Total Compute solutions and new flagship Arm Immortalis GPU are key to meeting this goal while additionally growing real-time 3D experiences beyond gaming. Arm technology’s known sustained performance and power efficiency, together with Unity, will unleash creators to bring their innovative and immersive content to life with high-quality, 3D visual experiences.” Ralph Hauwert, SVP and GM, Core Unity & Cloud, Unity

About Arm

Arm technology is defining the future of computing. Our energy-efficient processor designs and software platforms have enabled advanced computing in more than 225 billion chips and our technologies securely power products from the sensor to the smartphone and the supercomputer. Together with 1,000+ technology partners, we are enabling artificial intelligence to work everywhere, and in cybersecurity, we are delivering the foundation for trust in the digital world – from chip to cloud. The future is being built on Arm.