Mali (GPU)

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.

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). ARM does licenses display controller SIP cores independently of the Mali 3D accelerator SIP block, e.g. Mali DP500, DP550 and DP650.^[1]

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 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.^[2]

Variants

The Mali core grew out of the cores previously produced by Falanx and currently constitute:

Model	Micro- architecture	Launch date	Shader core count	Fab (nm)	Die size (mm^2)	Core clock rate (MHz)	Max L2 cache size	Fillrate		Bus width (bits)	GFLOPS (per core)	API conformance					Fused multiply–add	Usage in SoCs	HSA/Zero-copy	Usage
								M△/s	(GP/s)			OpenGL	OpenGL ES	OpenVG	OpenCL	DirectX
Mali-55	?	?	1	?	?	?	N/A	?	?	?	?	N/A	1.1	1.0	N/A	N/A	No	?	?	Graphics
Mali-200	Utgard[3]	2007[4]	1	?	?	?	N/A	?	?	?	?		2.0	1.1
Mali-300		?	1	40 28	?	500	8 KiB	55	0.5	?	5
Mali-400 MP		2008	1-4	40 28	?	500	256 KiB	55	0.5	?	5
Mali-450 MP		2012	1-8	40 28	?	650	512 KiB	142	2.6	?	14.6
Mali-470 MP		2015	1-4	40 28	?	250–650	8–256 KiB	71	0.65	?	?
Mali-T604[5]	Midgard (1st-gen)	?	1-4	32 28	?	533	32–256 KiB	90	0.533	?	17		3.1 + AEP[6]		Full Profile 1.1	DirectX 11, feature level 9_3	Yes			Graphics & Compute
Mali-T658[5]		?	1-8	?	?	?		?	?	?	?
Mali-T622	Midgard (2nd-gen)	?	1-2	32 28	?	533		?	?	?	8.5
Mali-T624		Aug 2012	1-4	32 28	?	533		?	?	?	17@533 MHz
Mali-T628		Aug 2012	1-8	32 28	?	533 / 695		?	?	?	17 / 23.7
Mali-T678[7]		Aug 2012	1-8	28	?	?		?	?	?	?
Mali-T720	Midgard (3rd-gen)	Oct 2013	1-8	28	?	450/ 600	32–256 KiB[8]	650	5.2	?	7.65/ 10.2							Exynos 7580, MT6735, MT6753
Mali-T760		Oct 2013	1-16	28 / 14	1.75 mm ^2 per shader core at 14 nm[9]	600-700	256–2048 KiB[10]	1300	10.4	?	326 (20.375@600 MHz 23.8@700 MHz)				Full Profile 1.2	Direct3D 11.1, feature level 11_1[11]		Exynos 7420, Exynos 5433, MT6752, MT6732
Mali-T820	Midgard (4th-gen)	Q4 2015	1-4	28	?	600	32–256 KiB[10]	400	2.6	?	10.2@600 MHz					Direct3D 11.1, feature level 9_3		Amlogic S912
Mali-T830				28	?	600	32–256 KiB[10]	400	2.6	?	20.4							Exynos 7870
Mali-T860			1-16	28	?	700	256–2048 KiB[10]	1300	10.4	?	23.8@700 MHz					Direct3D 11.2, feature level 11_1		Helio P10 (MT6755)
Mali-T880		Q2 2016	1-16	16	?	700 / 850 / 900	256–2048 KiB[10]	1700	13.6	?	23.8 / 28.9 / 30.6					Direct3D 11.2, feature level 11_1		Exynos 8890, Helio X20 (MT6797), Kirin 950

Some Malis support cache coherency for the L2 cache with the CPU.^[12][13]

Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) supported by Mali™-T620, Mali-T720, Mali-T760, Mali-T820/T830 and Mali-T860/T880.^[14]

Implementations

The Mali GPU variants can be found in the following systems on chips (SoCs):

Vendor	SoC name	Mali version
Allwinner	Allwinner A1X (A10, A10s, A13), A20, A23 and A53	Mali-400 MP/MP2[15][16][17][18]
Amlogic	8726-M series (8726-M1, 8726-M3, 8726-M6, 8726-MX)	Mali-400 MP/MP2[19]
Amlogic	8726-M8 series (M801, M802, S801, S802)	Mali-450 MP6[19]
Amlogic	8726-M8B series (M805, S805)	Mali-450 MP2[19]
Amlogic	S912	Mali-T820 MP3
CSR	Quatro 5300 Series	Mali-400 MP
InfoTM	iMAP×15	Mali-400
InfoTM	iMAP×912	Mali-400 MP
InfoTM	iMAP×820	Mali-400 MP2
HiSilicon	Kirin 620	Mali-450 MP4
HiSilicon	Kirin 910	Mali-450 MP4
HiSilicon	Kirin 920/920T	Mali-T624 MP4
HiSilicon	Kirin 930/935	Mali-T628 MP4
HiSilicon	Kirin 950	Mali-T880 MP4
Leadcore	LC1810, LC1811, LC1813, LC1913	Mali-400[20][21][22][23]
MediaTek	MTK6592 Octa & MTK6592m	Mali-450 MP4 @ 700 MHz
MediaTek	MT6572	Mali-400 MP @ 500 MHz
MediaTek	MT6752	Mali-T760 MP2[24]
MediaTek	MT6753	Mali-T720 MP4 @ 600 (Boost) MHz[25]
MediaTek	MT6732	Mali-T760
MediaTek	MT6582	Mali-400 MP2 @ 500 MHz
MediaTek	MT6582M	Mali-400 MP2 @ 416 MHz
MediaTek	MT8127	Mali-450 MP4[26]
NetLogic	Au1380, Au1350	Mali-200[27][28]
Nufront	NuSmart 2816	Mali-400 MP
Nufront	NuSmart 2816M	Mali-400 MP
Nufront	NuSmart 115	Mali-400 MP
Rockchip	RK2926	Mali-400 MP[29]
Rockchip	RK3066	Mali-400 MP4[30]
Rockchip	RK3188	Mali-400 MP4[31]
Rockchip	RK3288	Mali-T764
Samsung	Exynos 3 Quad (3470), Exynos 4 Dual, Quad (4210, 4212 and 4412)	Mali-400 MP4[32]
Samsung	Exynos 5 Dual (5250)	Mali-T604 MP4[33]
Samsung	Exynos 5 Hexa (5260)	Mali-T624 MP3
Samsung	Exynos 5 Octa (5420, 5422, 5430 and 5800)	Mali-T628 MP6
Samsung	Exynos 7 Octa (5433/7410)	Mali-T760 MP6
Samsung	Exynos 7 Octa (7420)	Mali-T760 MP8
Samsung	Exynos 8 Octa (8890)	Mali-T880 MP12
Samsung	S5P6450 Vega	Mali-400 MP[34]
Socle-Tech	Leopard-6	Mali-200[35]
Spreadtrum	SC6815 - SC8835S	Mali-400[36]
ST-Ericsson	NovaThor U9500, U8500, U5500	Mali-400 MP[37]
STMicroelectronics	SPEAr1340	Mali-200[38]
STMicroelectronics	STi7108, STiH416	Mali-400 MP[39][40]
Telechips	TCC8803, TCC8902, TCC8900, TCC9201	Mali-200[19][41]
WonderMedia	WM8850, WM8950	Mali-400 MP[42]
WonderMedia	WM8880, WM8980	Mali-400 MP2
WonderMedia	WM8860	Mali-450

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.^[43] The reverse-engineering project was presented at FOSDEM, February 4, 2012,^[44][45] 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.^[46]

See also

• Adreno – GPU developed by Qualcomm (formerly AMD, then Freescale)
• PowerVR – by Imagination Technologies
• Vivante – available as SIP block to 3rd parties
• Tegra – family of SoCs for mobile computers, the graphics core could be available as SIP block to 3rd parties
• VideoCore – family of SOCs, by Broadcom, for mobile computers, the graphics core could be available as SIP block to 3rd parties.
• Atom family of SoCs – with Intel graphics core, not licensed to 3rd parties
• AMD mobile APUs – with AMD graphics core, not licensed to 3rd parties

References

1. "Initial support for ARM Mali Display Controller". Linux kernel mailing list. 2016-04-01.
2. https://lwn.net/Articles/667575/
3. Mali Graphics Webpage; Arm Holdings.
4. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8234/arms-mali-midgard-architecture-explored/2
5. http://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2012-pan-pacific-road-show/OpenGL-and-OpenGL-ES-Taiwan_Feb-2012.pdf Khronos Group OpenGL and OpenGL ES Taiwan Feb 2012
6. Android Extension Pack depends on implementation of GL_ANDROID_extension_pack_es31a in the driver
7. AnandTech | ARM Announces 8-core 2nd Gen Mali-T600 GPUs
8. depending on number of GPU shader core groups
9. "The Samsung Exynos 7420 Deep Dive - Inside A Modern 14nm SoC". AnandTech. Retrieved 2015-06-15.
10. depending on number of shader core groups
11. "ARM's Mali Midgard Architecture Explored". AnandTech. Retrieved 2014-07-07.
12. http://www.heterogeneouscompute.org/hipeac2011Presentations/OpenCL-Midgard.pdf Midgard OpenCL Cache coherency
13. http://www.chipdesignmag.com/pallab/2011/06/30/arm-mali-gpu-unifying-graphics-across-platforms/ Heterogeneous Computing
14. "Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) technology developed by ARM® and AMD".
15. "A10". Allwinner Technology. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
16. "A10s". Allwinner Technology. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
17. "A13". Allwinner Technology. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
18. "AllWinner Publishes A31 and A20 Processors Details". CNXSoft. December 9, 2012. Retrieved 2012-12-09.
19. Limadriver.org: Hardware
20. "LC1810". Leadcore. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
21. "LC1811". Leadcore. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
22. "LC1813". Leadcore. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
23. "LC1913". Leadcore. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
24. http://www.notebookcheck.net/ARM-Mali-T760-MP2.146753.0.html
25. http://www.notebookcheck.net/ARM-Mali-T720-MP4.150999.0.html
26. Mediatek MT8127
27. NetLogic Au1300
28. RMI Au1300 Press release
29. Filla Sapphire 7 Product Specification
30. Rockchip Licenses a Wide Range of ARM IP for Turnkey Solution Targeting Mass Market, Cost-Effective Android Tablets
31. http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/28nm-quad-core-era-rk3188-144500035.html
32. (English) ARM Powered Smartphone Sets New Graphics Benchmark on ARM blog
33. Samsung Confirms Mali is in the Exynos 5250 Processor - ARM Community
34. Hardkernel ODROID-E7 development board
35. Socle Leopard-6 SoC
36. Spreadtrum SC8819
37. ST-Ericsson NovaThor product page
38. STMicro SPEAr1340
39. STMicro STi7108 Press release
40. STMicro STiH416 Press release
41. 2010, ARM Limited: TCC8900 development board
42. WonderMedia Prizm WM8950 Press release
43. Phoronix, Jan 27 2012: Announcing The Lima Open-Source GPU Driver
44. Phoronix, Jan 21 2012: An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GPU Driver
45. FOSDEM schedule, Jan 21 2012: Liberating ARM's Mali GPU
46. Quake 3 Arena timedemo on top of the lima driver!

External links

• Graphics Processing from ARM website
• Mali Developer Center a developer focused site run by ARM
• Lima driver