July 2013 - At Siggraph 2013, we sat down with ARM to get an update on the ramping of the Mali GPU platform. The GPU IP core has recently signed up 7 new development partners for the IP and their product shipments are ramping at the rate of the first half of 2013 already exceeding all of their 2012 shipments. The product license to release schedule is still on a 3 year to volume but new designs are starting to shift towards a 1 year volume schedule.
The Mali cores are now back in the Samsung products, as part of the Exynos processors. In the mobile space, this addition now brings the ARM processor cores (CPU & GPU) as the #1 architecture in the Android marketplace. The cores are not just for handheld mobile.
The Mali GPU is leading core for the DTV and Smart TV marketplace. This market, includes settop box, Smart BD players, and IPTV devices in addition to the DTVs. The cores are now moving into the automotive cabin space with applications such as drivers heads up display, rear seat infotainment, and central console displays. This is part of the new market splits.
The high end is thermal limited and is targeted at GPU compute applications, the middle end is primarily graphics based and is Si Area limted. The low end is smaller graphics cores, price limited and targeted at any of the Internet of Things devices with a display or screen.
The new products in the mali family are OpenGL compatible and support OpenGL 3.0 ES. They include embedded security under the guidelines of the TCG Trust Zone since 2003. Their V500 product supports trustzone for DPI for content, as well as a secure hypervisor for virtualization.
Finally, the new cores are targeting compatibility with deep color images (10 bit data) and the HEVC (h.265) codec at frame rates up to 120fps. These new cores have been scaled to 16nm on tapeouts for the IP.
