Graphics growth
UK low power chip designer ARM has announced that Core Logic, a leading Korean fabless semiconductor company, has licensed ARM's Mali GPU for its mobile phone applications processors.
The handheld device processor news is currently being dominated by NVIDIA and its long awaited Tegra chip - especially since it was announced as the processor for Microsoft's new Zune HD. But it is the nature of ARM's diverse portfolio of designs that it often indirectly competes with its own partners.
As you would expect, a strength of Tegra is its graphics processing. While NVIDIA licenses IP from ARM for the more general processing parts of Tegra, the GPU is designed by NVIDIA itself. As Mali, which is scalable up to four cores, gains traction, its licensees will be in direct competition with Tegra.
Core Logic specialises in multimedia processors for camera-phones as well as the camera processors themselves. "We are seeing massive demand for ever higher specification graphics on all multimedia mobile devices, PMPs and PNDs," said Kwang Pyuk Suh, CEO of Core Logic.
"By extending our relationship with ARM, a reliable and proven supplier, and incorporating the Mali-400 MP GPU in our solutions, we are enabling our customers to meet this demand and deliver an equally compelling user experience on mobile as on digital entertainment devices."
"The Mali-400 MP GPU enables Core Logic to develop the highest quality multimedia system-on-a-chip technology that will lie at the heart of next generation digital entertainment and communication devices," said Lance Howarth, GM of ARM's Media Processing Division.
