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China is getting first crack at a British technology that might change how mobile games are made and played. Today, the Xiaomi 18 Fold launches in mainland China with an Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX graphics processor inside its custom Xring O3 chip. What\u2019s so special about that? After five years of development, Arm now has an AI gaming graphics accelerator<\/em> inside its GPU.<\/p>\n By following Nvidia\u2019s playbook, Arm-powered phones are about to have PC-like technologies to make games run faster, at higher resolution, with advanced lighting techniques, all without using more power than they do today. The jagged edges you see in the mobile versions of popular games might begin to go away.<\/p>\n And these advancements won\u2019t just be locked to Chinese phones. The chips, devices, and games are already inbound.<\/p>\n \u201cYou will be able to buy it; you will be able to get it in phones next year, you will be able to get it in other types of larger screen devices, whether that be tablets or Chromebooks,\u201d Arm\u2019s Chris Bergey, EVP of Edge AI, tells The Verge<\/em> in an interview.<\/p>\n While he can\u2019t say which<\/em> other devices will contain the Mali G2-Ultra NX, he hints that some of Google\u2019s upcoming Googlebooks might use this graphics tech as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think it\u2019s going to be huge,\u201d Bergey tells me.<\/p>\n There are two ways to look at Arm\u2019s new Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX. One is that it\u2019s stronger than prior mobile GPUs, period, with an alleged 85-percent performance increase over the GPU that Xiaomi was using previously, and a 14 percent increase over Arm\u2019s previous flagship in \u201cnon-AI gaming.\u201d<\/p>\n But the other, more important way is that it enables a suite of hardware-accelerated graphical techniques that sound very similar to Nvidia\u2019s DLSS, including AI upscaling (where it imagines a higher-resolution image), frame generation (where it generates new \u201cfake\u201d frames between existing ones), and even ray reconstruction like Nvidia\u2019s DLSS 4.5.<\/p>\n \u201cThis really is about bringing Tensor-like capabilities into the GPU shader,\u201d Bergey tells us.<\/em> Image: Arm<\/p>\n Arm is calling all of these techniques \u201cneural graphics,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t mean quite<\/em> the same thing as when Nvidia uses that term \u2014 we\u2019re not talking about enhancing faces by reimagining how light and shadow work, at least not just yet.<\/p>\n Note: Games won\u2019t necessarily feel four times faster even if they look that way.<\/em> Image: Arm<\/p>\n Instead, these improvements are about speed, offering what Arm claims is up to four times the framerate when \u201cNeural Super Sampling,\u201d \u201cNeural Frame Rate Upscaling\u201d and \u201cNeural Denoising\u201d are all applied simultaneously, because each technique lets the system do less work rendering actual pixels and frames, counting on AI to fill in the rest.<\/p>\n Note that games likely won\u2019t feel four times faster, though, even if they look that way. Half of the boost is because your phone will imagine new frames between existing ones \u2014 and when Nvidia, AMD, and Intel do \u201cframe generation,\u201d it typically comes with the cost of additional latency.<\/p>\n Regardless, these techniques won\u2019t all arrive immediately. \u201cThe first titles will largely be super sampling,\u201d says Bergey, with frame gen coming in early 2027 and denoising \u201csoon after that.\u201d<\/p>\n But when you put them together, he says a phone can now genuinely play an experience like this Neural Dawn technology demo, below \u2014 and without draining your battery fast. \u201cIt might be like, hey, you can now play 1080p, 60 frames per second for three hours,\u201d Bergey tells me. \u201cIn the past, it was 30 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n With the Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max tablet, which pairs Arm\u2019s GPU with a larger battery, screen, and surface area for cooling, may offer even more performance. The Chinese company is showing off 3.2K resolution at 120 frames per second.<\/p>\n Bergey says that an entire phone with these chips will consume no more than 2.5 watts, with only 1.5 watts allotted to the GPU. \u201cThat\u2019s basically what you want for real sustained gaming where it\u2019s not getting warm in your phone, you\u2019re not like \u2018Oh, where\u2019s my charger,\u2019 that kind of thing,\u201d says Bergey.<\/p>\n Or, he says, device and chipset makers can run this GPU at lower wattage to last longer. It\u2019s not just for gaming phones: \u201cThis is not overclocking, this is mainstream,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is about AI replacing traditional rendering; anywhere you can use it, you will use it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Xiaomi claims its flagship Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max tablet, with the same Xring O3 chip, can play games at 3.2K resolution and 120fps. Image: Xiaomi<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just for premium phones and tablets, either: \u201cWhile Mali G2-Ultra NX targets flagship smartphones, neural graphics will also be available across the Premium and Pro configurations, bringing the technology to a broader range of mobile segments and tiers.\u201d<\/p>\n Arm isn\u2019t the only one attempting to push these speed-boosting PC technologies into the mobile realm. The developers of the graphically intensive Stellar Blade<\/em>, for example, recently revealed they\u2019re making their game run at 60fps on the Nintendo Switch 2 by using both Nvidia\u2019s DLSS and a version of AMD\u2019s frame generation technique. The Switch 2 has an Arm-based mobile chip too, though it contains a custom Nvidia GPU.<\/p>\n Like with the most advanced versions of Nvidia, AMD, and Intel\u2019s techniques, game developers will need to integrate Arm\u2019s features into their games, though participating game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity can help. Bergey doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s a switch gamers will be able to flip for just any game they like.<\/p>\n Arm\u2019s partners.<\/em> Image: Arm<\/p>\n Where Winds Meet<\/em>, Infinity Nikki<\/em> and Arena Breakout<\/em>: Infinite<\/em> are the first three games confirmed to take advantage of Arm\u2019s new graphics accelerator, and Bergey tells us more games are on the way. Some will be announced in the coming weeks, he says \u2014 he\u2019s just not allowed to reveal them quite yet.<\/p>\n Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\n\n