ARM Mali-Cetus Next-Gen Display Processor Announced

You might be familiar with ARM. Most Android-powered devices in the market today use processors by ARM. These processors are normally coupled with ARM’s Mali graphics processors. Each new processor comes with a slightly improved graphics processor. ARM is now kicking things up a notch by announcing the Mali-Cetus, its next-generation graphics processor.

ARM has developed Cetus from the ground up so it’s an entirely new architecture that has been developed keeping high-resolution displays and multi-tasking in mind. The new composition unit can composite 8 user interface layers as opposed to 7 on its predecessors. It can even scale up to four of them as it has four scaling engines.

This will be particularly useful on devices powered by Android 7.0. The latest version of Google’s mobile software requires a separate layer for each app in order to improve multi-tasking.

ARM says that Mali-Cetus is going to work with up to 4Kx2K displays at up to 120Hz. It’s capable of doing that by splitting the 4K video layers to sub-units which also results in improved battery life.

The new co-processor interface will enable manufacturers to bring Mali graphics to their own hardware, thus expanding the reach of this technology.

Don’t expect to see devices with this technology soon, though, it’s going to be a few months before we see devices touting ARM’s Mali-Cetus display processor.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones, Tablets
Tags: ARM, Mali-Cetus