ARM announces Mali 8 GPU series - Mali-T860, Mali-T830, Mali-T820

Today ARM unveiled its next generation graphic processors - Mali-T820, Mali-T830 and Mali-T860. All three new GPUs support all popular APIs - OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.1, OpenCL 1.1 and 1.2, DirectX 11 and RenderScript Compute.

The flagship GPU is Mali-T860 with sixteen shader cores (each with two ALU cores), native 10-bit YUV input and output and it is 45% faster than the current Mali-T628 unit. It supports DirectX 11.1.

The Mali-T830 targets the mid-range class - it offers four shaders (each with two ALU cores), optional native 10-bit YUV input and output. Unlike the Mali-T860, the Mali-T830 supports DirectX 11 FL9_3.

The Mali-T820 is a low-end GPU, also packing four shaders but each of them offers just one ALU core. It supports DirectX 11 FL9_3 as well, but not DirectX 11.1.

ARM also detailed a new Mali-V550 video decoder. It handles H.265 hardware encoding and decoding on a single core and it also supports H.264, MP4, VP8, VC-1, H.263 and Real. Each core of Mali-V550 is capable of handling 1080p resolution at 60 fps, but it can be scaled up to eight-core configuration capable of 4K @ 120fps video encoding/decoding.

Finally, ARM also introduced a new Mali-DP550 display processor with extremely energy-efficient processing. It supports 7 layer composition, rotation, post-processing, and scaling to support 4K displays.

The new Mali gear is compatible with the current generation CPUs - Cortex A7, Cortex A15, Cortex A17, as well with the next-gen Cortex A53 and Cortex A57. ARM expects its partners to start embedding the new GPUs in chipsets in mid-2015 and expects the first devices using them to kick off by the end of 2015.

Via