AMD, Nvidia and Intel may have a stranglehold on GPU sales, but that's not discouraging ARM from pressing onward with its own affairs. The chipmaker today unveiled its fourth-generation Mali GPU, offering up to five times more performance than previous Mali products and vowing to deliver "visually rich user experiences not previously seen in consumer electronic devices."
ARM says its Mali-T604 packs a multicore (up to four cores), tri-pipe architecture that employs various patented technologies and reduced memory bandwidth consumption by up to 30%. Better visuals aside, the new chip consumes less power and has a smaller footprint than its predecessors. It also supports 4X FSAA with minimal performance drop, as well as OpenCL and DirectX.
The Mali-T604 will land in numerous consumer electronic devices, ranging from smartphones to high-end digital entertainment systems. It's currently available to license by partners, and Samsung will be the first manufacturer to use the new GPU – though the company's plans are unclear. Some believe the Mali-T604 could appear in Samsung's upcoming Orion SoC, a successor to Hummingbird.