ARM unveils four brand new mid-range chips aimed at affordable smartphones

Damien Wilde | Oct 23 2019 - 5:06 am PT

ARM has unveiled four brand new midrange chips aimed at more affordable smartphones and everyday smart home tech that will enable AR, high-fidelity gaming, and more.

The new Ethos-N57, Ethos-N37 NPUs are joined by the Mali-G57 and Mali-D37 GPU and DPUs in the ARM lineup. With a growing demand for enhanced power in cheaper devices and the aforementioned smart home tech, ARM aims to provide this growing space with more raw grunt and even enhanced capabilities we’re used to on more premium smartphones.

With the Ethos chips inside, we’ll gain access to AI applications with less bandwidth and battery life limitations. The ultra-efficient new Mali GPUs will enable more immersive experiences to a range of low-end and mid-range devices.

Both of the Ethos NPUs have been designed to enable cheaper devices access to AI applications and extend ARM’s machine learning chips reach. This will give even cheaper hardware more advanced features and functions without sacrificing battery efficiency.

The Mali-G57 GPU enables higher quality gaming, console-like graphics on mobile, and 4K/8K interfaces on TV sets. It is also the first chip-based upon the company’s Valhall architecture, which is the same underlying architecture as the much more premium Mali-G77.

Conversely, the Mali-D37 display processing unit is designed specifically for entry-level hardware and will no doubt be ideal for smart displays, tablets, and other smart home tech. Supporting resolutions up to 2K, the D37 might be a catalyst for higher-resolution affordable tech.

It is said to offer up to 30 percent better power efficiency, 30 percent better performance and 60 percent increased machine learning performance when compared to the previous Mali-G52 chip.

We don’t know when we’ll see any of the new ARM chips in consumer devices but it’s great to see more focus placed upon more affordable devices and even smart home tech.