HiSilicon Licenses Range of ARM Mali Graphics Processors

Monday, May 21st, 2012
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Expanding the range of graphics performance while enabling heterogeneous computing for mobile and home devices

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom & SHENZHEN, China — HiSilicon and ARM (LSE:ARM; Nasdaq:ARMH) today announced that HiSilicon has licensed a range of ARM® Mali™ Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), including the market-leading Mali-400 MP GPU and the latest high-performance Mali-T658 GPU. The new licenses will increase the scalability of the GPU performance points that HiSilicon will be able to offer manufacturers of mobile, consumer and home devices. HiSilicon has also licensed the latest ARM Cortex™ processor technology for use in next-generation devices.

The span of ARM GPUs now licensed will provide HiSilicon with outstanding performance ranging from current best-in-class graphics found in today’s leading mobile and consumer products to solutions supporting the next generation of iconic and innovative devices. As the mobile and consumer markets continue to diversify, the graphics solution can provide key differentiation and define the user experience. One size of GPU performance will no longer be able to address the high number of applications that demand breathtaking graphics performance, such as 3D graphics, photo enhancement and console level gaming, as well as more intuitive interfaces, including voice and gesture recognition.

The inherent GPU compute capabilities of the Mali architecture will enable HiSilicon to efficiently open up a range of new use-cases outside traditional graphics processing, including computational photography, image-processing and augmented reality. The ability to connect the CPU and GPU processors coherently will enhance the capabilities of next-generation energy-efficient devices to deliver a user experience above and beyond what has been seen to date in the market.

“The Mali GPU architecture enables HiSilicon to optimize our range of graphics solutions to address next-generation mobile and home device requirements,” said George Yiu, head of processor BU, HiSilicon. “Mass deployment of heterogeneous computing platforms is becoming more of a reality and I see ARM technology providing a unique advantage to address the needs of smart terminals through to the cloud.”

“In the past 12 months we have seen tremendous uptake and growth in the unit shipments of Mali-enabled SoCs across multiple device categories, including market-leading smartphones, tablets and DTV solutions,” said Simon Segars, EVP and general manager, processor and physical IP divisions, ARM. “By being able to harness and optimize the performance that will be possible through ARM’s energy-efficient Cortex processors and Mali GPUs, HiSilicon will be able to provide consumers with richer user experiences in the most energy-efficient way.”

HiSilicon is part of the ARM Connected Community®, a global network of over 900 companies with access to a wide variety of resources and aligned to provide optimized solutions based on the ARM architecture.