Arm has officially unveiled its new-generation Mali G2-Ultra GPU, which natively supports the NX neural accelerator, driving large-scale adoption of AI super-resolution technology in Android smartphones. Compared to its predecessor, the G1-Ultra, the 14-core version delivers a 9% to 14% boost in gaming performance, with some benchmarks even showing a 17% to 20% improvement. At the foundational architecture level, the G2-Ultra represents the most significant transformation in seven generations, featuring a redesigned execution engine that supports larger desktop-class shaders and doubles the number of registers, enabling Unreal 5 engine functionalities to run without register overflow. The third-generation ray-tracing unit reduces DRAM traffic by 13%, while the G2 series introduces hardware-accelerated opacity micro-maps for the first time, enhancing ray-tracing performance by 18% to 24%. The NX neural accelerator stands out as the G2-Ultra's biggest highlight. Integrated within the GPU shader core, it operates at a low power consumption of just 1W, supports INT8 and INT16 operations, and features an independent motion engine with a clock frequency up to twice that of the main GPU. Real-world testing shows that the NX neural accelerator can boost the frame rate of the Neural Dawn demo from 15fps to a stable 60fps, with power consumption slightly exceeding 2W and DRAM memory traffic reduced by 70% compared to the G1-Ultra, enabling dual improvements in resolution and frame rate through related technologies. Arm's neural super-sampling technology, trained on real-world gaming data, offers superior temporal stability with less jitter and ghosting. Relevant models are now available to developers or in early access, but they require NX-capable GPUs and are not compatible with the G1 series. Arm has introduced five configuration combinations, with the Ultra tier scalable to notebook-level performance. High-end smartphone SoCs are expected to adopt approximately 12-core versions, paired with NX cores and ray-tracing support. Relevant models will be made available through Vulkan ML, accelerating the arrival of the AI era for Android gaming.
