Arm announces its first graphics processor with hardware ray tracing for smartphones
Chip designer Arm has announced Immortalis-G715, a new flagship graphics processing unit (GPU) and its first to bring hardware-based ray tracing to Android phones and tablets.
The Immortalis-G715 is built on Arm Mali architecture, and the manufacturer said it provides variable-rate shading, matrix multiply instruction support, and an improved execution engine.
It was also designed with 10 to 16 cores in mind.
Last year’s Arm Mali-G710 delivered software-based ray tracing. However, manufacturers, including Samsung, are moving towards hardware-based ray tracing.
Arm’s director of product management, Andy Craigen, explained that ray tracing techniques use significant power, energy, and area on a system-on-a-chip.
“However, ray tracing on Immortalis-G715 only uses 4% of the shader core area, while delivering more than 300% performance improvements through the hardware acceleration,” he said.
Craigen said Arm had decided to introduce hardware-based ray tracing now, saying its “partners are ready, the hardware is ready, and the developer ecosystem is (about to get) ready”.
Arm’s senior vice president of its client line of business, Paul Williamson, said Arm believes the technology has a firm place but would take time for mobile game developers to adopt.
Arm has partnered with MediaTek to launch the Immortalis-G715.
“Congratulations to Arm on the launch of the new Immortalis GPU, featuring hardware-based ray tracing,” MediaTek’s vice president and general manager for its wireless communications business unit, JC Hsu, said.
“Combined with the new powerful Cortex-X3 CPU, we look forward to the next level of mobile gaming and productivity for our flagship and premium mobile SOCs.”
In addition to the Immortalis-G715, Arm announced new products in its Mali line of GPUs, including the Mali-G715 and G615.
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