This year is a bit out of the ordinary for Arm as they usually announce their new generation of CSS designs during COMPUTEX. This year, they decided to delay it until September. Anyway, the Arm CSS for Mobile 2 is now official and it comes with new CPU and GPU designs, made for system-level demands of agentic AI and a new generation of immersive mobile gaming graphics.
New CPU design with double-digit IPC improvement
Arm has announced the C2 CPU clusters, and it deviates a little from the previous generation. This time, the company only has the C2-Ultra and C2-Pro CPUs, no Nano or Premium variants. The new C2-Ultra and C2-Pro will also have two SME2 units to handle complex computational tasks efficiently, including on-device AI. The two SME2 units can speed up small language models by up to 70%.
The C2-Ultra can deliver up to 1.7x higher AI performance and 15% higher single-thread performance while consuming 38% less power.
Massive GPU improvement
Alongside the new CPU cores, Arm also announced the new Mali GPU design. It was already featured in the Xiaomi Xring O3 a few weeks ago, There are technically two parts, so we’ll talk about the new Mali G2-Ultra NX first. There aren’t actually much details about the GPU itself.
For all that we know, Arm claims that the Mali G2-Ultra NX can deliver up to 14% higher sustained gaming performance and up to 24% higher peak benchmark performance compared to the Mali G1-Ultra.
Arm Neural Technologies
What’s most interesting is that Arm themselves put a heavy emphasis on their new GPU rendering tech. It’s called Arm Neural Technologies which encompasses a total of 3 things:
- Neural Super Sampling (NSS)
- Neural Frame Rate Upscaling (NFRU)
- Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD)
These three technologies use machine learning to dramatically reduce the power consumption of high-fidelity graphics on mobile. Since the Neural Accelerators are embedded into each GPU shader core, Arm GPUs like the new Mali G2-Ultra NX GPUs can take advantage of this new Neural Technologies.
It’s a bunch of technologies that uses machine learning to ensure the game looks great at higher resolution while maintaining high-quality images and a smooth frame rate, to put it simply. The goal of Arm Neural Technologies can somewhat be compared to NVIDIA’s DLSS technologies that have been around for a few years.
I personally do believe that mobile devices need this kind of technology more, as it needs to conserve as much power as possible, as both the battery life, battery health, and heat management are all challenges that can be tackled by utilising these types of technologies. As we’ve done so many gaming tests in the past, we can already see that traditional rendering has hit its absolute limit already. Plus, it can also potentially upscale low-resolution YouTube videos to conserve of mobile data too.
New tech showcase
Neural Dawn, developed with Sumo Digital, demonstrates the new level of graphics experiences we’re enabling on Mali G2-Ultra NX. This demo game showcases the Arm Neural Technologies and its capabilities, which I think look absolutely fantastic.
Other developers, including Tencent Games Central Tech’s MagicDawn and Unity China’s Tuanjie Engine, will also integrate the new Arm Neural Technologies into the engines. I was worried about the adoption of these technologies, but NetEase’s Where Winds Meet is already planning to integrated NSS into the game for players this year. The NSSD technology demonstration will be found in Tencent Games’ Arena Breakout Infinite, and NSS integration will be found in Infold Games’ Infinity Nikki.
Upcoming devices utilising these technologies
The new CPU and GPU designs found in the Arm CSS for Mobile 2 is expected to be found in the upcoming MediaTek Dimensity series of flagship chipsets, and the company is already teasing its upcoming announcement.
The upcoming OPPO Find X series and vivo X series flagship phones are expected to be equipped with the MediaTek Dimensity flagship chipsets.
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