ARM Holdings PLC, which designs processors including those that power Apple Inc’s iPhones, yesterday unveiled its latest suite of premium mobile processors and graphic processors supporting virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) viewing on mobile devices.
The Cambridge, England-based company said it has licensed its latest ARM Cortex-A73 processor and Mali-G71 graphics processor units (GPU) to more than 10 customers, including Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc (聯發科), South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and China’s HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體), a handset chip designer owned by Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
“We will have chips available soon for VR/AR viewing on mobile phones via cardboard [visor kits],” MediaTek co-chief operating officer Joe Chen (陳冠州) told reporters yesterday.
The company this year plans to join Google’s VR/AR project, dubbed Daydream, to bring VR to mobile devices, which is different from the Vive headset from HTC Corp (宏達電), to view VR/AR from a powerful computer, Chen said.
In the first half of next year, MediaTek chips designed based on ARM Cortex-A73 will be seen on the market, the firm said.
ARM Cortex-73 and Mali-G71 are optimized for the latest 10-nanometer process technology. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is one of ARM’s partners in the new technology.
ARM’s technology “can make engaging with 4K video, VR and AR an everyday experience on mobile devices,” ARM executive vice president Pete Hutton said in a company statement.
The Mali-G71 GPU enables a 50 percent increase in graphics performance and a 20 percent increase in power efficiency, as well as 40 percent more performance per square millimeter, ARM said.
Worldwide shipments of VR hardware are expected to skyrocket to 9.6 million units this year, led by key products from Samsung, Sony, HTC and Oculus, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said in a report released last month.
Last year, only 350,000 VR headsets were shipped.
The figure is expected to surge to 64.8 million units in 2020, IDC said.
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