Arm Shipped 1 Billion Mali GPUs Globally in 2018, Says India MD

Arm, whose cores power a vast majority of mobile processors across the world, shipped 1 billion Mali graphics processors to SoC manufacturers in 2018 alone. The information was shared by Guru Ganesan, president and managing director of Arm India, during a presentation that highlighted the inclusion of the Arm Mali-G76 quad-core GPU in MediaTek's latest mobile SoC, the Helio G90 series.

Speaking at the launch of the MediaTek Helio G90 and G90T, Ganesan elaborated on the collaboration between Arm and MediaTek, prior to revealing the shipment statistic. While MediaTek uses Arm's cores in its processors without any proprietary customisation, rival chipmaker Qualcomm employs partial customisation of the Arm cores in its Kryo cores. HiSilicon, Huawei's semiconductor arm, does not use any customisation either, but relies on its own algorithms and integration with other processing elements for enhanced performance.

However, while Arm finds more implementation in processor cores, its presence in the mobile GPU segment is comparably lesser. This is because of Qualcomm's dominant market position, which designs its own GPU based on AMD's Imageon cores. That said, Arm supplies its Mali GPUs to all of Samsung Semiconductor, HiSilicon and MediaTek. For instance, Samsung's flagship Exynos 9820 SoC uses the 12-core Mali-G76, HiSilicon's flagship Kirin 980 uses the deca-core configuration of the same, and even though Arm now has a new generation Mali-G77, MediaTek's latest SoC, the Helio G90 and G90T, use a quad-core enhanced configuration of the Mali-G76 GPU.

The number illustrates how strong smartphone shipments remain, despite seeing a slowdown in growth to signify market saturation. It is also an important metric to measure, since despite the slowdown, smartphone OEMs are showing a trend of switching to a larger number of gaming devices in 2019, which should help Arm maintain its growth trajectory in shipments. Manufacturers such as Asus and Nubia have already begin launching gaming-centric phones with a gamer-oriented design, and with eSports and mobile gaming on the rise, the segment only looks set to grow.