ARM's New Mali-T604 GPU Could Pack "Desktop" Punch

What if there was a power-efficient GPU with brains as powerful as a power-sucking desktop chip? We may be on the brink of finding out. ARM has this week submitted the Mali-T604 GPU for full profile OpenCL conformance, and if all plays out, this thing could really knock some socks off in the months ahead. According to the company, it's the first first GPU Intellectual Property (IP) supplier to submit conformance for Full Profile OpenCL, "bringing desktop GPU computing features to the mobile, embedded and smart-TV markets."

It doesn't take a huge imagination to see how this could positively impact our lives going forward. Even compact applications could finally tap into high-grade graphics -- everything from in-car GPS units to point-of-sale systems could see a major upgrade. Wondering about specifics for the platform? Here's the word straight from ARM:

"The Mali-T600 Series of GPUs have been designed from the outset for GPU computing, including full support for work-groups and synchronization barriers. Building on a scalable multicore, multi-pipeline architecture design, the Mali-T600 Series GPU includes a number of advanced features. In particular, native scalar and vector operations for OpenCL's integer and floating point data types (including 64-bit); support for static and dynamic compilation; hardware accelerated image and sampler data types; fast atomic operations and compliance to IEEE754-2008 precision requirements."

Hopefully, we'll see the conformance passed and it start hitting end products in the near future.