Arm, the British chip and software design powerhouse, convened its Arm Everywhere China showcase in Shanghai to announce a suite of fresh AI‑computing offerings aimed squarely at mobile devices. Central to the reveal is the AI‑native compute platform CSS for Mobile 2 and the new Mali G2‑Ultra NX GPU, a processor built around neural‑accelerated graphics that promises higher visual fidelity while keeping heat and power draw to a minimum.
Arm positions its on‑device AI solution as a more transparent alternative to Nvidia’s contentious DLSS 5, arguing that its method aligns better with developers’ original creative intent. While Arm did not name specific products that will ship with the Mali G2‑Ultra NX, the predecessor Mali G1‑Ultra already powers smartphones from brands such as Xiaomi, Vivo and OnePlus, suggesting a similar market trajectory for the newer chip. Deyan Lazarov, a member of Arm’s GPU product team within the Edge AI division, explained that the G2‑Ultra NX has been in development for roughly two and a half years. Its design goal is to give mobile developers access to compute‑heavy features—most notably real‑time ray tracing—without the thermal and battery penalties that have traditionally limited such capabilities on phones, tablets and handheld consoles.
"We’re seeing a growing appetite for ray tracing in mobile titles," Lazarov noted. "It was a slow burn at first, but now more games are actively exploring how to integrate it." The new GPU is engineered to work hand‑in‑hand with Unreal Engine technologies like MegaLights. Arm collaborated with Sumo Digital to produce a demo called Neural Dawn, which showcases the chip’s ability to render high‑quality scenes while staying within mobile power envelopes.
Lazarov described the target audience as "mobile‑first games that still want desktop‑grade visuals," as well as cross‑platform titles that aim to deliver a consistent experience whether players are on a console at home or a phone on a train. Among the upcoming games slated to leverage the Mali G2‑Ultra NX are Tencent’s Arena Breakout Infinite, NetEase’s Where Winds Meet, and Infold Games’ Infinity Nikki. Lazarov emphasized that mobile devices face unique constraints: they cannot dissipate heat like a PC or console and must run continuously on battery power.
To address this, Arm’s solution blends neural processing with the conventional rendering pipeline, offloading a substantial portion of the workload from the GPU. This not only cuts GPU power consumption but also improves overall system efficiency, giving developers more leeway to prioritize visual fidelity, frame‑rate, or battery life as they see fit. Arm is backing this vision with an open‑software philosophy and a toolbox of developer resources. "We’ve spent the last two years working closely with the ecosystem to make AI‑driven graphics developer‑friendly," Lazarov said.
"Our aim is to let developers reap big efficiency gains and then reinvest that budget wherever they need—whether that’s sharper images, smoother performance, longer battery life, or a mix of all three." Key components of Arm’s suite include Neural Super Sampling (NSS), Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD), and Neural Frame‑Rate Upscaling (NFRU). These technologies can upscale lower‑resolution frames, generate additional rays for better lighting, and even synthesize new frames using AI reconstruction. Lazarov illustrated the process with a two‑frame example: in the first, the GPU renders only a quarter of the image while the neuro‑accelerators reconstruct the remaining three‑quarters via NSS.
In the second frame, the GPU does no traditional rendering at all; every pixel is produced by the neural engine, demonstrating a full AI‑reconstructed pipeline. Nvidia’s DLSS 5 also uses AI to add detail, but it has drawn criticism for its "black‑box" nature and the risk of diverging from a developer’s artistic vision.
Arm’s approach, by contrast, relies on convolutional networks that do not generate content from imagination but rather learn how existing content should look. These networks are trained on real‑world data and, crucially, are released publicly on platforms such as GitHub and Hugging Face. This openness lets developers fine‑tune the models with their own art styles, preserving intellectual‑property control and ensuring the upscaled output matches the game’s unique aesthetic.
"DLSS is a closed, proprietary system—you can’t see what it’s trained on or retrain it with your own data," Lazarov explained. "Our networks are open, so you can adapt them to your game’s specific look and feel." Another distinction is the mobile‑first design philosophy.
Arm’s networks are built to operate within strict power, bandwidth and memory budgets typical of smartphones. Attempting to run DLSS on a phone would instantly exceed those limits, whereas Arm’s solution can run comfortably within them. Power efficiency is a headline claim for the Mali G2‑Ultra NX. Arm reports up to four‑fold improvements in both performance and efficiency, alongside a 70 % reduction in DRAM traffic—a major source of power draw on mobile chips.
Less external memory access translates directly into longer battery life and cooler operation. In practical terms, Lazarov cited a benchmark: the previous‑generation GPU could only push Neural Dawn to 40 fps at its limit and dropped to 15 fps under normal conditions. The new G2‑Ultra NX easily sustains 60 fps, delivering a smoother experience without sacrificing visual quality.
Development tools are already available for Unreal Engine, with plans to expand to Unity and other engines. Arm recently announced a partnership with Unity China, indicating that Unity support is on the roadmap.
For studios using custom engines, Arm provides an SDK that offers a streamlined integration path, allowing developers to embed AI‑native graphics without waiting for dedicated plug‑ins. Lazarov highlighted that retrofitting an existing shipped title with Arm’s technology can be accomplished in as little as three months, enabling rapid updates that enhance graphics or efficiency.
The Neural Dawn demo itself was built by a team of fewer than 20 people in under 18 months, illustrating how Arm’s tools can accelerate development cycles and help studios bring cutting‑edge visual experiences to mobile audiences quickly.