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ARM's New CPU and GPU Will Power Mobile VR In 2017 (theverge.com)

An anonymous cites a story on The Verge: ARM, the company that designs the processor architectures used in virtually all mobile devices on the market, has used Computex Taipei 2016 to announce new products that it expects to see deployed in high-end phones next year. The Cortex-A73 CPU and Mali-G71 GPU are designed to increase performance and power efficiency, with a particular view to supporting mobile VR. ARM says that its Mali line of GPUs are the most widely used in the world, with over 750 million shipped in 2015. The new Mali-G71 is the first to use the company's third-generation architecture, known as Bifrost. The core allows for 50 percent higher graphics performance, 20 percent better power efficiency, and 40 percent more performance per square mm over ARM's previous Mali GPU. With scaling up to 32 shader cores, ARM says the Mali-G71 can match discrete laptop GPUs like Nvidia's GTX 940M. It's also been designed around the specific problems thrown up by VR, supporting features like 4K resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 4ms graphics pipeline latency.

38 comments

  1. Hello from Italy! by For+a+Free+Internet · · Score: -1

    Italy is a great country and it will be greater when we vanquish the discusting Italian chauvinist nationalists, let the refugees in and give them full citizenship rights for all immigrants! Down with teh Vatican! For communism of Lenin and Trotsky!!!!!!!

    --
    UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
    1. Re:Hello from Italy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Down with teh Vatican!

      Uh that won't be easy. The Vatican is its own nation-state with its own currency, laws, ambassadors, guards, alliances, etc. The Vatican is also one of the most wealthy, powerful, and politically connected institutions in history. You know - just like Jesus was! Oh wait... he was a humble carpenter you say? Shit.

      That's the problem with Catholics - no sense of irony. If they had a sense of irony they'd have realized long ago that maybe, just maybe, torturing people and executing them in horrific ways like burning at the stake ... is not very Christ-like at all. I've read the Bible and I can't find anywhere that Jesus did that! That and - in the Bible - Jesus was tempted by Satan and offered dominion of the world, which Jesus rejected. Soon after, the Catholic Church and its Pope became the crowning authority, the maker and breaker of kings and queens. Oh delicious irony...

      I can't imagine the mental gymnastics it takes to be a practicing Catholic. I guess some people really need prescribed rituals. One more piece of irony: the Vatican's three hundred foot walls are much more of a barrier than anything Trump wanted to build, yet there he is, the Pope, criticizing him for it. Hypocrite.

    2. Re:Hello from Italy! by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      That's the problem with Catholics - no sense of irony. If they had a sense of irony they'd have realized long ago that maybe, just maybe, torturing people and executing them in horrific ways like burning at the stake ... is not very Christ-like at all.

      What does it have to do with Catholics? Non-Catholic Christians haven't done any better in the past.

  2. So you just couldn't leave it in Africa eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Congratulations on your purchase of a brand new nigger! If handled properly, your apeman will give years of valuable, if reluctant, service.

    INSTALL YOUR NIGGER.

    You should install your nigger differently according to whether you have purchased the field or house model. Field niggers work best in a serial configuration, i.e. chained together. Chain your nigger to another nigger immediately after unpacking it, and don't even think about taking that chain off, ever. Many niggers start singing as soon as you put a chain on them. This habit can usually be thrashed out of them if nipped in the bud. House niggers work best as standalone units, but should be hobbled or hamstrung to prevent attempts at escape. At this stage, your nigger can also be given a name. Most owners use the same names over and over, since niggers become confused by too much data. Rufus, Rastus, Remus, Toby, Carslisle, Carlton, Hey-You!-Yes-you!, Yeller, Blackstar, and Sambo are all effective names for your new buck nigger. If your nigger is a ho, it should be called Latrelle, L'Tanya, or Jemima. Some owners call their nigger hoes Latrine for a joke. Pearl, Blossom, and Ivory are also righteous names for nigger hoes. These names go straight over your nigger's head, by the way.

    CONFIGURE YOUR NIGGER

    Owing to a design error, your nigger comes equipped with a tongue and vocal chords. Most niggers can master only a few basic human phrases with this apparatus - "muh dick" being the most popular. However, others make barking, yelping, yapping noises and appear to be in some pain, so you should probably call a vet and have him remove your nigger's tongue. Once de-tongued your nigger will be a lot happier - at least, you won't hear it complaining anywhere near as much. Niggers have nothing interesting to say, anyway. Many owners also castrate their niggers for health reasons (yours, mine, and that of women, not the nigger's). This is strongly recommended, and frankly, it's a mystery why this is not done on the boat.

    HOUSE YOUR NIGGER.

    Your nigger can be accommodated in cages with stout iron bars. Make sure, however, that the bars are wide enough to push pieces of nigger food through. The rule of thumb is, four niggers per square yard of cage. So a fifteen foot by thirty foot nigger cage can accommodate two hundred niggers. You can site a nigger cage anywhere, even on soft ground. Don't worry about your nigger fashioning makeshift shovels out of odd pieces of wood and digging an escape tunnel under the bars of the cage. Niggers never invented the shovel before and they're not about to now. In any case, your nigger is certainly too lazy to attempt escape. As long as the free food holds out, your nigger is living better than it did in Africa, so it will stay put. Buck niggers and hoe niggers can be safely accommodated in the same cage, as bucks never attempt sex with black hoes.

    FEED YOUR NIGGER.

    Your Nigger likes fried chicken, corn bread, and watermelon. You should therefore give it none of these things because its lazy ass almost certainly doesn't deserve it. Instead, feed it on porridge with salt, and creek water. Your nigger will supplement its diet with whatever it finds in the fields, other niggers, etc. Experienced nigger owners sometimes push watermelon slices through the bars of the nigger cage at the end of the day as a treat, but only if all niggers have worked well and nothing has been stolen that day. Mike of the Old Ranch Plantation reports that this last one is a killer, since all niggers steal something almost every single day of their lives. He reports he doesn't have to spend much on free watermelon for his niggers as a result. You should never allow your nigger meal breaks while at work, since if it stops work for more than ten minutes it will need to be retrained. You would be surprised how long it takes to teach a nigger to pick cotton. You really would. Coffee beans? Don't ask. You have no idea.

    MAKE YOUR NIGGER WORK.

    Niggers are very, very averse to work of any kind. The nigger's

  3. Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by JMZero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ..but they are not the present. Top-end processor/GPUs are just now getting fast enough for VR to work well. The next generation will be wireless connections to the PC doing the rendering. A fully integrated solution that doesn't suck is at least a couple generations away.

    --
    Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    1. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by Kjella · · Score: 2

      Depends on rendering complexity, I guess. If you can do Super Mario-style graphics well in VR, there could be a niche for that separate from photorealistic VR. Like how the Wii was a big hit despite having the weakest graphics, for more casual players and use as a gimmick.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by WarJolt · · Score: 2

      I think you don't understand an SoC.

      The mobile GPU has an added advantage over a desktop PC. More bandwidth between host memory and device memory. The GPU is basically connected to system memory controller. With desktop GPUs it will always take time to DMA all your data over a PCI express bus. That's great for precaching all your rendering data on the GPU, but it kinda limits how you can design your VR application. It will definitely evolve into Augmented Reality. You'll need a lot of memory bandwidth to combine to real world with the virtual world.

    3. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by phizi0n · · Score: 1

      VR will never not suck. Even if the technology allowed photo-realistic experiences and was accessible to all, you still have the problem of cutting some of your senses off from your surroundings. It is a totally niche technology that is only viable in very controlled environments like at an amusement park. VR at home will result in lots of broken things, injuries, and friends/family pranking you. VR in public will be a lot worse with all sorts of stupid deaths and a huge increase in muggings.

    4. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by jsh1972 · · Score: 1

      Lightweight backpack PC with a big lithium ion battery underneath.

    5. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by jsh1972 · · Score: 1

      Replied to wrong comment fail...oops!

    6. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by jsh1972 · · Score: 1

      Lightweight backpack PCs with lithium ion batteries underneath does away with the bothersome tether.

    7. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      VR will never not suck. Even if the technology allowed photo-realistic experiences and was accessible to all, you still have the problem of cutting some of your senses off from your surroundings. It is a totally niche technology that is only viable in very controlled environments like at an amusement park. VR at home will result in lots of broken things, injuries, and friends/family pranking you. VR in public will be a lot worse with all sorts of stupid deaths and a huge increase in muggings.

      You say that like it's a bad thing. We badly desperately need more chlorine in the gene pool. We can't just have some Hitler choose - far too dangerous - so letting the morons self-select is the best possible way. Think of it as a public service. And there will be lots of luls.

    8. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by JMZero · · Score: 1

      Well, I actually understand this reasonably well. I'm a programmer, and I've done some 3d development - I've also spent some time with Cardboard, and I've had an Oculus DK2 since they launched.

      There's definitely special concerns around VR, and I'm sure a custom designed mobile architecture will be able to get some juice out of tight system integration... but you also just need to fill a bunch of polygons at very consistent, very high FPS. Huge dedicated boards in PCs are a lot better at this than tiny low power mobile chips.

      This new chip apparently rivals a GTX 940M. That's a bloody long way from anyone's minimum specs for VR. That's not to say that there isn't some experiences that would work great on one of these. I've seen some fun things on Cardboard, and there's definitely advantages to being less tethered (though right now, tracking is also a real problem for these sorts of setups). But many VR experiences just need more horsepower than these things are going to have for a couple generations.

      --
      Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    9. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Replied to wrong comment fail...oops!

      That's because you're a stupid nigger.

    10. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by JMZero · · Score: 1

      It's already pretty cool, actually, even if you're so scared of "moving around your living room blind" that you're just sitting down and watching stuff.

      I mean... uh... have you tried it? If you haven't, you might not understand that pranking people in VR isn't a negative, it's super fun. Poking people while they're playing (especially if they are covered in spiders) makes the whole thing more immersive and social.

      I don't know how VR will play out, but it's already pretty entertaining - and there's no reason it won't get to be more entertaining over time as hardware and especially software gets better.

      --
      Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    11. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's definitely special concerns around VR, and I'm sure a custom designed mobile architecture will be able to get some juice out of tight system integration... but you also just need to fill a bunch of polygons at very consistent, very high FPS. Huge dedicated boards in PCs are a lot better at this than tiny low power mobile chips.

      Alternatively, you could employ a low-latency eye tracker and selectively degrade the parts of the picture that are currently in the peripheral regions of the user's field of vision. That should work for all three of geometry processing (here you just add two more dimensions to your dynamic LOD), shading, and rasterization. That might turn out to work even better than single screen high resolution displays, since those have to display the whole FOV at high resolution because the machine doesn't know what you're looking at.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    12. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by phizi0n · · Score: 1

      Sure, just like how 3D TV caught on so well...

    13. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by JMZero · · Score: 1

      I didn't say it'll catch on - how would I know? People buy tons of stupid crap, and sometimes good ideas get buried. Maybe everyone will think like you do - "oh, I couldn't possibly be seen with something odd looking on my head" or "what if my living room is suddenly full of knives" and "I won't buy a holodeck until it accurately recreates smells"? So yeah, VR could completely flop, I agree on that.

      But that's not what we were talking about. You said it will always suck. I said it's already cool. And it is.

      --
      Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    14. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by JMZero · · Score: 1

      I know there's been some experimentation with this, and it might end up being an important thing for any setup (even without the performance stuff, it could be that cheesing some "focus effects" using eye position would make things more realistic).

      But I don't think we'll see it as a core feature (or a solution to general performance problems) within the next generation or two.

      --
      Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    15. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sometimes stuff that seems cool now sucks in six months.

      We shall wait and see.

    16. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by phizi0n · · Score: 1

      Exactly. VR is full of flaws but some people are blinded by flavor of the month syndrome and can't see that it sucks. The idea of it is cool but the reality of it is not. You're not going to see people spend all day playing VR games but you will see people bust it out at a nerd party to show off how much money they have available to waste on stupid shit that is fun for 15 mins.

    17. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by JMZero · · Score: 1

      I don't, and have no intention of playing VR games for hours on end. They work better in short increments, and I don't have a ton of time to get super deep in a long game. Yes, a lot of stuff - maybe even most of the stuff that comes out - will only be good for 15 minutes. I'm OK with that. Hopefully they make lots of fun 15 minute games and what not. But yeah, if you need "game time value per money", VR is definitely not the right place to get it, at least not yet. I'm sure some people will be super disappointed by their VR, because it won't improve the experience of playing CoD for 9 hours, but that doesn't mean VR isn't cool.

      And why the nerd party hate? Do all of you cool, non-nerd dudes (who are totally not interested in VR and totally don't want it) take time off from banging cheerleaders to argue about VR on Slashdot?

      --
      Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    18. Re:Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by naranek · · Score: 1

      Wireless is not as easy as it sounds. You need to send the sensor data to the computer and then send high resolution high frame rate video back to the HMD. That requires huge amounts of bandwidth, because compressing and decompressing the data would take time and consume resources on the wireless headset. If you end up having a power cord in the HMD, why not also put in a signal cable.

      Any extra latency in the signal chain from motion to photons is also really bad. Currently you don't get that much boost from using two graphic cards, because the extra time needed to transmit data back and forth the primary and secondary card eats much of the benefit you get from having two graphic cards.

      I agree that a fully integrated solution that doesn't suck is definitely at least a couple of generations away. It will be awesome though.

      --
      Only dumb birds land downwind.
    19. Re: Mobile chips are the future of VR.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      show off how much money they have available to waste on stupid shit that is fun for 15 mins.

      Other things which should be boring after 15 min:

      MMO fetch quests.

      Tetris.

      Watching people carry/kick around a ball.

      Different people have different tastes and right now I prefer a virtual slingshot to any of the above.

  4. Happy Memorial Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    As we celebrate our country and remember the sacrifices of those that have gone before us this Memorial Day 2016, please say a prayer of thanks for those that have given the ultimate sacrifice in search of the extermination of the muslim scourge, and also those that even today continue to advance our Judeo-Christian values throughout the world. We continue to liberate the oppressed masses around the world from the clutches of tyranny and muslim overlords. If you see a servicemember today, please be sure to stop and say thanks, or at least give a subtle salute or thumbs up - it will be appreciated.

    1. Re:Happy Memorial Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      If you see a servicemember today, please be sure to stop and say thanks, or at least give a subtle salute or thumbs up - it will be appreciated.

      Yes we should thank them for propping up our failing economy. If they didn't go overseas and blow the shit out of brown people who aren't a threat to us, didn't have anything to do with 9/11, and didn't give a fuck about us until we started using the CIA to overthrow their democratically elected leaders and install dictators willing to play ball - well if our vets didn't do that, our whole military-industrial-complex empire would have collapsed by now.

      Keep believing "they hate us for our freedoms". No, they hate us because we're the bullies of the world and we won't stop fucking with them. They hate us because unlike Americans who watch corporate news, they're on the receiving end (and thus aware) of the fucked-up sociopathic shit the American government does in the name of the American people.

    2. Re: Happy Memorial Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who is this "us" you speak for? Do you have a tapeworm in your stomach?

  5. My nigger doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Should I worry or just let it sign on for food stamps?

    1. Re:My nigger doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Should I worry or just let it sign on for food stamps?

      You must be careful because this sort of nigger tends to be the most fertile and the most willing to attempt sex with fellow niggers. Especially when it realizes that making more niggers increases the EBT payout. So you see, this problem can quickly and exponentially grow out of control.

      At the very least you should have it spayed or neutered. If at all possible you should drop it off at Detroit with its 90% nigger population - so it can experience firsthand the results of allowing niggers to run a city. If niggers were capable of learning from experience it would soon beg to work your fields again, but the best it can hope for is to be mowed down in another gangsta drive-by.

      You should order a replacement nigger and this time RTFM. There is a reason a good thrashing right after installation is the recommended procedure!

  6. windshield splatter by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

    I for one am looking forward to the "mobile VR" phenomenon.

    I plan on finding a nice comfortable seat at an outdoor cafe and watching hipsters walk into traffic. This is my dream for the future. I even have a nice spot scoped out. It's on Division St near Paulina in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. The food is good and the drinks aren't watered down. Plus there's a Starbucks on the corner that's a honeypot for hipsters. Any of you from Chicago know exactly where I'm talking about.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  7. Will There be Mali Driver Source? by LuxuryYacht · · Score: 3

    Will There be Mali Driver Source or a way to build for Linux without being tied to only one kernel version? Source is highly unlikely, but it would be nice to have some way to build mali drivers for Linux for other than the one kernel version they pick of if you require an RT kernel for you application. I'd even settle for a tool that modifies their binary so that you can at least build for the kernel version you need vs the only one they chose to release a binary for.

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
    1. Re:Will There be Mali Driver Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What will it take before somebody gets an Arm Core with another graphics package? Is Nvidia or AMD interested or not?

  8. 50 percent higher graphics performance? lol by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    50 percent faster than their current turd is still a hopeless turd. Their GPU is nowhere near adequate for VR, except with 1990s poly counts.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  9. Not anytime soon by DrYak · · Score: 1

    Alternatively, you could employ a low-latency eye tracker and selectively degrade the parts of the picture that are currently in the peripheral regions of the user's field of vision.

    Current solution don't work at a sufficient speed with a low enough latency.

    Come to think of it, even *HEAD*-tracking is suffering from latency and rendering speed problems, to the point of being one of the big bullet point of the current crop of VR research.

    Eye speed can be said to be too fucking fast for current-day VR solution to be able to keep up with it.
    (Also currently, no rendering system I know of is designed to handle variable resolution. But it's not my area of expertise. And also, the kind of tile-based defered rendering that's popular on mobile GPU - see PowerVR - should be easier to adapt to variable resolution)

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Not anytime soon by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      You should only need a low-resolution camera to capture the eye, and those should be able to work at very high speeds. Processing the results is a slightly more complicated problem but probably still feasible, especially if the system can anticipate sudden moves from what is actually being displayed. I agree that total latency of the system is an issue, but I suspect it could be far more solvable than pushing enough computational power into mobile hardware to be able to get by without selective rendering. In fact, to me, it very much feels like concurrency and parallelism in computational models: you can pretend for only so long that you don't need to include it. Of course, right now, the software-hardware architecture for handling graphics simply isn't very friendly to this kind of real-time feedback, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to implement.

      By the way, path tracing is an obvious example of a system capable of handling variable resolution, and to some extent, so is REYES. Obviously, the latter is much more conducive to hardware implementation.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  10. ARM and Nvidia by DrYak · · Score: 1

    Nvidia does have their own solution coupled with an ARM Core.
    The platfrom is called Tegra, and it's one of the few Nvidia GPU for which, every once in a blue moon, the do throw a bone at Nouveau (opensource) driver developpers.
    I have no peculiar informations regarding Nvidia's official (closed source) drivers for Tegra.

    At least that's a platform that you can find on actual hardware released now.

    -----

    AMD is planning to release their own *home-made* ARM Core by 2017.
    The platform is called K12 and unlike other ARM on the market, won't be based on a standard Cortex A7x by ARM, it will be AMD's own design.

    There's a current technology preview for the platform called "Opteron A1110" (That one still uses a stock Cortex A53 core, but already demonstrates the kind of server AMD plans to build once K12 is finalized).
    Currently they aim to target small servers (e.g.: NAS, etc.), so do not expect to see soon tablets and smartphones running on AMD K12
    (Though eventually some high-end applications might be interested in using AMD K12s)

    AMD has the best open source track of any GPU manufacturer:
    - currently, with latest GPUs and APUs, the Linux kernel driver (i.e.: the DRM module) is completely open-source.
    - the only difference is what the user runs atop of it.
    - user can either run a full open-source stack on it (Mesa/Gallium3D) - (officially supported by AMD)
    - or run the official closed source openGL library (which has replaced the former full closed source stack fglrx).
    - eventually, they plan the consumer stack (i.e.: games and desktop) to be fully opensource (i.e.: integrate everything into Mesa, like Intel does already), and only keep the closed source stack for pro/workstation crowds (people running CAD software with weird needs).
    - there are RadeonSI opensource driver developpers *on AMD's own payroll* (and conversly AMD regular driver developpers are also dumping opensource code - though not with the same quality level - see the controversy around their HAL)

    This sound *very interesting* for the future, but as of today is limited to expensive (server) development boards based around still-cortex-based Opterons.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:ARM and Nvidia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For AMD's Opteron A1110 theres this for $300. http://www.lenovator.com/product/103.html

  11. I don't give a crap about VR but... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    ... it's a mildly good thing that mobile SoC get support for high refresh and display bandwith. A higher refresh is better, even just for displaying white on black scrolling text. If you plug a cell phone into a monitor and run a linux-like desktop etc. (while charging from the same cable) it's a least a bit useful and the increase in power use is not a problem. I'd even play the old Quake 3 (back then, games were games!)

    The only problem is high refresh monitors are also high margin ones, so you may well be able to get a low end 4k 60Hz monitor at $200 or a high end 4k 120Hz at $750.