Arm announces Mali G57 GPU for midrange smartphones

Chip designer Arm has announced the Mali G57 GPU for midrange smartphones. It is the first midrange GPU on the new Valhall architecture. It is still unknown when the first smartphones with G57 GPU will appear.

Arm does not disclose many details of the G57, but says that the GPU should use about 30 percent less energy for the same workload than the previous G52. Also, the performance on machine learning tasks should be better. That is not very relevant, because many socs now have separate processors for handling things such as image recognition and performing neural calculations. Arm is now developing it himself with his Ethos npus.

It is unknown when manufacturers will start processing the G57 in socs, but the G77 will be available from next year. Huawei, AmLogic and Rockchip, among others, use Arm GPUs in their socs. For example, the G52 is in the Kirin 810, the soc that is included in the new Honor 9x smartphone. It is unknown whether Huawei will also be able to use the G57, as the British Arm has cut ties with Huawei over the ban on US companies trading with Huawei. Arm claims that his US division co-develops products and is therefore subject to the trade ban.