ARM Introduces Bifrost Mali-G51 GPU, and Mali-V61 4K H.265 & VP9 Video Processing Unit

Back in May of this year, ARM unveiled Mali-G71 GPU for premium devices, and the first GPU of the company based on Bifrost architecture. The company has now introduced the second Bifrost GPU with Mali-G51 targeting augmented & virtual reality and higher resolution screens to be found in mainstream devices in 2018, as well as Mali-V61 VPU with 4K H.265 & VP9 video decode and encode capabilities, previously unknown under the codename “Egil“.

Mali-G51 GPU

ARM Mali-G51 will be 60% more energy efficiency, and have 60% more performance density compared to Mali-T830 GPU, making the new GPU the most efficient ARM GPU to date. It will also be 30% smaller, and support 1080p to 4K displays.

Under the hood, Mali-G51 include an updated Bifrost’s low level instruction set, a dual-pixel shader core per GPU core to deliver twice the texel and pixel rates, features the latest ARM Frame Buffer Compression (AFBC) 1.2, and supports Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.2, and OpenCL 2.0 APIs.

More information can be found on the product page, and an ARM community blog post entitled “The Mali-G51 GPU brings premium performance to mainstream mobile“.

Mali-V61 VPU

Mali-V61 can scale from 1 to 8 cores to handle 1080p60 up to 4K @ 120 fps, supports 8-/10-bit HEVC & 8-/10-bit VP9 up to 4K UHD video encoding and decoding, making it ideal for 4K video conference and chat, as well as 32MP multi-shot @ 20 fps.

The company claims H.265 and VP9 video encoding quality is about the same for a given bitrate with Mali-V61 as shown in the diagram below.

Beside the capability of selecting 1 to 8 cores, silicon vendors can also decide whether they need encoding or decoding block for their SoC. For example camera SoC may not need video decoding support, while STB SoCs might do without encoding. While Mali-V61 is a premium IP block, ARM is also expecting it in mainstream devices possibly also featuring Cortex A53 processor cores and Mali-G51 GPU.

You’ll find more details on the product page, and ARM community “Mali-V61 – Premium video processing for Generation Z and beyond” blog post.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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