The Mali series of graphics processing units (GPUs) are semiconductor intellectual property cores produced by ARM Holdings for licensing in various ASIC designs by ARM partners.
Contents
This line of GPUs was a result of ARM Holdings acquisition of Falanx Microsystems A/S june 23, 2006.
Technical details
Like other embedded IP cores for 3D rendering acceleration, the Mali GPU does not include display controllers driving monitors (such as the combination often found in common video cards). Instead the Mali ARM core is a pure 3D engine that renders graphics into memory and hands the rendered image over to another core that handles the display.
ARM does, however, license display controller SIP cores independently of the Mali 3D accelerator SIP block, e.g. Mali DP500, DP550 and DP650.
ARM also supplies tools to help in authoring OpenGL ES shaders named Mali GPU Shader Development Studio and Mali GPU User Interface Engine.
Display controllers such as the ARM HDLCD display controller are available separately.
Variants
The Mali core grew out of the cores previously produced by Falanx and currently constitute:
Some Malis support cache coherency for the L2 cache with the CPU.
Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) supported by Mali™-T620, Mali-T720, Mali-T760, Mali-T820/T830, Mali-T860/T880 and Mali-G71.
Implementations
The Mali GPU variants can be found in the following systems on chips (SoCs):
Mali Video
Mali Video is the name given to ARM Holdings' dedicated video decoding and video encoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a number of video codecs, such as HEVC, VP9, H.264 and VP8. As with all ARM products, the Mali Video Processor is a semiconductor intellectual property core licensed to third parties for inclusion in their chips. Real time encode-decode capability is central to videotelephony. An interface to ARM's TrustZone technology is also built-in to enable Digital Rights Management of copyrighted material.
V500
The first version of a Mali Video processor was the V500, released in 2013 with the Mali-T622 GPU. The V500 is a multicore design, sporting 1–8 cores, with support for H.264 and a protected video path using ARM TrustZone. The 8 core version is sufficient for 4K video decode at 120 frames per second (fps). The V500 can encode VP8 and H.264, and decode H.264, H.263, MPEG4, MPEG2, VC-1/WMV, Real, VP8.
V550
Released with the Mali-T800 GPU, ARM V550 video processors added both encode and decode HEVC support, 10-bit color depth, and technologies to further reduced power consumption. The V550 also included technology improvements to better handle latency and save bandwidth. Again built around the idea of a scalable number of cores (1–8) the V550 could support between 1080p60 (1 core) to 4K120 (8 cores). The V550 supported HEVC Main, H.264, VP8, JPEG encode, and HEVC Main 10, HEVC Main, H.264, H.263, MPEG4, MPEG2, VC-1/WMV, Real, VP8, JPEG decode.
V61
The Mali V61 video processor (formerly named Egil) was released with the Mali Bifrost GPU in 2016. V61 has been designed to improve video encoding, in particular HEVC and VP9, and to allow for encoding either a single or multiple streams simultaneously. The design continues the 1–8 variable core number design, with a single core supporting 1080p60 while 8 cores can drive 4Kp120.
The Lima FOSS driver
On January 21, 2012, Phoronix reported that Luc Verhaegen is driving a reverse-engineering attempt aimed at the Mali series of GPUs, specifically the Mali 200 and Mali 400 versions. The project will be known as Lima and support OpenGL ES 2.0. The reverse-engineering project was presented at FOSDEM, February 4, 2012, followed by the opening of a website demonstrating some renders. On February 2, 2013, Verhaegen demonstrated Quake III Arena in timedemo mode, running on top of the Lima driver.