Two years ago as computing subsystem complexity jumped, Arm launched its Total Compute Solutions (TCS) platform to help ease system-on-a-chip engineering challenges for chip designers. At Computex in Taiwan this week, the company unveiled the latest version of that platform, addressing the increasing demands of mobile computing use cases and devices.
The TCS23 platform collects the latest versions of Arm IP products, including its new fifth-generation GPU architecture and fourth-generation CPU architecture. In the GPU family, this includes the new Immortalis-G720, Mali-G720 and Mali-G620, and among products based on the Armv9.2 processor architecture, the new Cortex-X4, Cortex-A720 and Cortex-A520 CPUs, and the new DynamIQ Shared Unit, DSU-120, which provides double-digit performance, efficiency, and power improvements, according to Arm.
Chris Bergey, SVP and GM, Client Line of Business at Arm, said the platform update and the new generation architecture address the demand on the age of visual computing, particularly as graphics-intensive visual computing is coming to mobile devices and roughly 9 million developers globally focus their energies on addressing visual computing use cases with the mobile experience in mind.
In advance of Computex, Arm brought out an army of mobile device OEMs and developers to talk about how they excited they are for the TCS 23 platform, and Bryan Chang, General Manager of the ASUS Phone Business Unit, summed up why Arm’s emphasis on mobile is so important: “Mobile gaming has increasingly become the world's preferred form of gaming, and the smartphone is now the most popular way to game, with users demanding ever more performance and features to improve their gaming experience.”
Bergey said that in the latest-generation GPU architecture, Arm has focused its own energies on redefining aspects of the graphics pipeline to reduce memory bandwidth to better support new high-geometry games and real-time 3D applications, delivering among other benefits, “a console-like experience to mobile.” The new GPU architecture also supports better overall performance through the use of a new graphics feature called Deferred Vertex Shading.
“The new Immortalis-G720 is Arm’s most performant and efficient GPU ever, as we continue to push the boundaries of visual computing,” he said. “It delivers 15% performance and efficiency improvements over the previous generation, as well as a 40% uplift in system-level efficiency, leading to higher quality graphics for more immersive visual experiences.”
Regarding CPUs, Bergey said the new Arm Cortex-X4, the fourth-generation Cortex-X core from Arm, is key to a new Armv9 Cortex CPU compute cluster that provides a 15% performance gains over the third-generation technology, along with a power-efficient microarchitecture that consumes 40% less power than the previous generation Cortex. That all results in better, faster, and more responsive user interfaces and application launch experiences on mobile as more AI and machine learning-based applications come to these devices, he said.
“Our new CPU cluster provides performance when you want it and efficiency when you need it,” Bergey said.