Mali (GPU)

The Mali series of graphics processing units (GPUs) and multimedia processors are semiconductor intellectual property cores produced by ARM Holdings for licensing in various ASIC designs by ARM partners.
Mali GPUs were developed by Falanx Microsystems A/S, which was a spin-off of a research project from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Arm Holdings acquired Falanx Microsystems A/S on June 23, 2006 and renamed the company to Arm Norway.
Technical details.
Like other embedded IP cores for 3D rendering acceleration, the Mali GPU does not include display controllers driving monitors, in contrast to common desktop video cards. Instead, the Mali ARM core is a pure 3D engine that renders graphics into memory and passes the rendered image over to another core to handle display.
ARM does, however, license display controller SIP cores independently of the Mali 3D accelerator SIP block, e.g. Mali DP500, DP550 and DP650.
ARM also 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.
Variants.
The Mali core grew out of the cores previously produced by Falanx and currently constitute:
Some Microarchitectures (or just some Chips?) support cache coherency for the L2 cache with the CPU.
Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) is supported by Mali-T620, T720/T760, T820/T830/T860/T880 and Mali-G series.
Implementations.
The Mali GPU variants can be found in the following systems on chips (SoCs):
Mali Video Processors.
Mali Video is the name given to ARM Holdings' dedicated video decoding and video encoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a number of video codecs, such as HEVC, VP9, H.264 and VP8. As with all ARM products, the Mali Video Processor is a semiconductor intellectual property core licensed to third parties for inclusion in their chips. Real time encode-decode capability is central to videotelephony. An interface to ARM's TrustZone technology is also built-in to enable Digital Rights Management of copyrighted material.
Mali-V500.
The first version of a Mali Video processor was the V500, released in 2013 with the Mali-T622 GPU. The V500 is a multicore design, sporting 1–8 cores, with support for H.264 and a protected video path using ARM TrustZone. The 8 core version is sufficient for 4K video decode at 120 frames per second (fps). The V500 can encode VP8 and H.264, and decode H.264, H.263, MPEG4, MPEG2, VC-1/WMV, Real, VP8.
Mali-V550.
Released with the Mali-T800 GPU, ARM V550 video processors added both encode and decode HEVC support, 10-bit color depth, and technologies to further reduced power consumption. The V550 also included technology improvements to better handle latency and save bandwidth. Again built around the idea of a scalable number of cores (1–8) the V550 could support between 1080p60 (1 core) to 4K120 (8 cores). The V550 supported HEVC Main, H.264, VP8, JPEG encode, and HEVC Main 10, HEVC Main, H.264, H.263, MPEG4, MPEG2, VC-1/WMV, Real, VP8, JPEG decode.
Mali-V61.
The Mali V61 video processor (formerly named Egil) was released with the Mali Bifrost GPU in 2016. V61 has been designed to improve video encoding, in particular HEVC and VP9, and to allow for encoding either a single or multiple streams simultaneously. The design continues the 1–8 variable core number design, with a single core supporting 1080p60 while 8 cores can drive 4Kp120. It can decode and encode VP9 10-bit, VP9 8-bit, HEVC Main 10, HEVC Main, H.264, VP8, JPEG and decode only MPEG4, MPEG2, VC-1/WMV, Real, H.263.
Mali-V52.
The Mali V52 video processor was released with the Mali G52 and G31 GPUs in March 2018. The processor is intended to support 4K (including HDR) video on mainstream devices.
The platform is scalable from 1 to 4 cores and doubles the decode performance relative to V61. It also adds High 10 H.264 encode (Level 5.0) and decode (Level 5.1) capabilities, as well as AVS Part 2 (Jizhun) and Part 15 (AVS+, Guangdian) decode capability for YUV420.
Mali-V76.
The Mali V76 video processor was released with the Mali G76 GPU and Cortex-A76 CPU in 2018. The V76 was designed to improve video encoding and decoding performance. The design continues the 2–8 variable core number design, with 8 cores capable of 8Kp60 decoding and 8Kp30 encoding. It claims improves HEVC encode quality by 25% relative to Mali-V61 at launch.
The AV1 codec is not supported.
Mali-V77.
The Mali V77 video processor was released with the Mali G77 GPU and Cortex-A77 CPU in 2019.
Mali Display Processors.
Mali-D71.
The Mali-D71 added Arm Framebuffer Compression (AFBC) 1.2 encoder, support for ARM CoreLink MMU-600 and Assertive Display 5. Assertive Display 5 has support for HDR10 and Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG).
Mali-D77.
The Mali-D77 added features including Asynchronous timewarp (ATW), Lens Distortion Correction (LDC) and Chromatic Aberration Correction (CAC). The Mali-D77 is also capable of 3K (2880x1440) @ 120 Hz and 4K @ 90 Hz.
Mali Camera.
Mali-C71.
On April 25, 2017 the Mali-C71 was announced, ARM's first Image Signal Processor (ISP).
Mali-C52 & Mali-C32.
On January 3, 2019 the Mali-C52 and C32 where announced, aimed at everyday devices including drones, smart home assistants and security, and internet protocol (IP) camera.
The Lima and Panfrost FOSS drivers.
On January 21, 2012, Phoronix reported that Luc Verhaegen was driving a reverse-engineering attempt aimed at the Mali series of GPUs, specifically the Mali 200 and Mali 400 versions. The project was known as "Lima" and targeted support for OpenGL ES 2.0. The reverse-engineering project was presented at FOSDEM, February 4, 2012, 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. In May 2018, a Lima developer posted the driver for inclusion in the Linux kernel. In May 2019, the Lima driver became part of the mainline Linux kernel. The Mesa userspace counterpart was merged at the same time.
Panfrost is a reverse-engineered driver effort for Mali Txxx (Midgard) and Gxx (Bifrost) GPUs. Introducing Panfrost talk was presented at X.Org Developer's Conference 2018. As of May 2019, the Panfrost driver is part of the mainline Linux kernel. Panfrost supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and has an experimental OpenGL ES 3.0 support disabled as default as of February 2020.