ARM Community: Mobile Game Graphics Going High-End - ARM Community

Consumers are now looking for handsets that deliver everything that previously required separate devices, including high-end 3D gaming. Until now the meaning of ‘high-end mobile 3D graphics’ has mostly been limited to good looking static models with baked light maps. When can we expect to see some proper real-time pixel toasting?

Excitingly enough, a few pioneering game developers have lately created some mobile content that tries to do something beyond the basic fixed function shading which we all grew sick of in the 90’s. Rage by Id pushes the bar of OpenGL ES 1.1 using Carmack’s black magic texture streaming tricks. Infinity Blade, based on the Unreal Engine, features some basic per pixel bump shading the low resolution versions for iPhone. In the higher resolutions however, the game seemingly is more or less surviving on the great artist work alone.

ARM’s GPU strategy has always focused on high performance in the demanding pixel shading cases, required to truly enable desktop- and console-level effects in mobile games in all resolutions. To create the chips for the next generation mobile graphics, silicon vendors are migrating to Mali. Tier-1 handsets based on multi-core Mali-400 are hitting the consumers in early Q2 this year.

The Mali-400 MP GPU with 4 cores at 400 MHz gives 1600 megapixels per second of raw fillrate performance, and easily process frames with more than 100k visible vertices. If it can truly deliver anything near its theoretical performance figures, this would really open the door for effects and content way beyond anything we’ve seen so far in mobile games.

The ARM demo team in Trondheim, Norway decided to put Mali-400 MP to the test to see what mobile game graphics can really look like if upgraded to take advantage of the performance of these GPUs. We loaded in some top notch stock game content and let our shader-artist “have his way” with the material editor. Over 25,000 skeletally animated vertices, skin shaders requiring a triple-digit amount of flops per pixel, multiple per-pixel light sources and 2048x2048 textures went into the demo, before we launched it up on a quad-core Mali-400 mobile device.



And there it was: a glimpse into the future of what mobile game content can soon look like. In 1080p, with 4X anti-aliasing, and in 60 frames per second. Like a walk-cycle in the park.

Come have a look at ARM’s booth at GDC 2011!

Anders Lassen, Graphics Product Specialist, ARM. Anders is truly passionate about real time graphics, fascinated since childhood by virtual worlds and immersive graphics. Since joining ARM, Anders has gained over six years of hands-on experience working with the bleeding edge Mali GPU technology, specializing in extracting the full performance potential of embedded graphics systems to develop compelling user experiences. Anders holds a masters degree in industrial economics and technology management.