ARM Promises High Performance with Mali Processors

ARM, the leading UK-based chip maker, recently announced plans to introduce to the market new high-end processors meant for mobile phones, called Mali-200 and Mali-400. According to Remi Pedersen, graphics product manager at ARM, the new powerful processors are expected to come to the market before the end of the year.

It seems that the new processors will be able to deliver leveraged graphics capabilities, while keeping the cost of the cell phones rather low. Pedersen also states that the upcoming Mali-200 processors would be able to provide “16 million triangles/second, 275 million pixels/second,” while also delivering 4x Anti-Aliasing and even up to 16x without asking too much from the system.

A predecessor of these processors can already be seen in LG Renoir, namely the 65nm Mali-55, which offers Flash capabilities, as well as support for 3D gaming. By comparison, the Mali-400 comes with the same basic performance as Mali-200, yet it brings multi-core scalability, being able to go from a single-core at 100MHz up to quad-core at 300MHz. In addition, it can even scale to provide 1080p resolutions.

According to PC World, which talked with Remi Pedersen, ARM is also working closely with several third-party developers to come up with a software engine prior to fixing the handset design. “It gives us a better view of how different systems will perform. Take feedback from developers to create the next gen CPUs and the silicon partners.”

What ARM says that its upcoming processors will be able to deliver is the possibility to play Xbox 360 games on a cheap mobile phone. Yet there are no details on which manufacturers will include the company's processors in their future handsets, though we could see any of the chip maker's partners making the move, namely companies like Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Sony Ericsson or LG.