Arm, the UK‑based semiconductor and software design powerhouse, staged its Arm Everywhere China showcase in Shanghai to announce a suite of fresh AI‑computing innovations aimed at the mobile market. Central to the reveal is a complete AI‑native ecosystem that includes the next‑generation CSS for Mobile 2 compute platform and the brand‑new Mali G2‑Ultra NX GPU. This graphics processor is built around neural‑accelerated rendering, promising higher visual fidelity while dramatically cutting heat output and power draw compared with conventional mobile GPUs.
While Arm did not disclose the exact product line‑ups that will ship with the Mali G2‑Ultra NX, the predecessor Mali G1‑Ultra has already found its way into smartphones from brands such as Xiaomi, Vivo and OnePlus, suggesting that the new chip will soon appear in a similar range of consumer devices. Deyan Lazarov, a senior member of Arm’s GPU product team within the Edge AI division, explained that development on the Mali G2‑Ultra NX has spanned roughly two and a half years. The goal, he said, was to give mobile developers the tools to leverage compute‑heavy techniques—most notably real‑time ray tracing—without the prohibitive thermal and battery penalties that have traditionally limited such features on phones and tablets. "There’s a growing appetite for ray tracing in mobile games," Lazarov noted.
"It started out slow, but now more titles are actively exploring how to integrate it." The new GPU is engineered to work hand‑in‑hand with modern game‑engine technologies. Arm has already demonstrated integration with Unreal Engine’s MegaLights system, and in collaboration with Sumo Digital produced a demo title called Neural Dawn that showcases the Mali G2‑Ultra NX’s capabilities. Lazarov emphasized that the chip targets games that are "mobile‑first but aspire to look like desktop‑class experiences," as well as cross‑platform titles that need to deliver a consistent visual quality whether they run on a console at home or on a commuter’s phone on a train. Among the announced partners are Tencent (Arena Breakout Infinite), NetEase (Where Winds Meet) and Infold Games (Infinity Nikki), all of which plan to exploit the new hardware’s strengths.
A key challenge for mobile graphics is the limited thermal envelope and battery capacity compared with consoles or PCs. "Phones can’t dissipate heat the way a console can, and they run continuously off a battery," Lazarov explained.
Arm’s answer is to fuse neural processing with the traditional rendering pipeline. By offloading portions of the image generation to dedicated neuro‑accelerators, the GPU workload drops, which in turn reduces power consumption and eases system‑level constraints.
"That extra efficiency means developers face fewer compromises," Lazarov said. "They can choose to reinvest the saved budget into higher visual fidelity, smoother frame rates, longer battery life, or any combination of those goals." To make these benefits accessible, Arm is taking an open‑software stance. Over the past two years the company has been building a suite of tools and libraries that developers can integrate directly into their workflows. The core AI techniques include Neural Super Sampling (NSS), Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD), and Neural Frame Rate Upscaling (NFRU).
Together they allow the system to upscale lower‑resolution images, generate additional rays for more realistic lighting, and synthesize intermediate frames, all through AI‑driven reconstruction. Lazarov illustrated the process with a two‑frame example. In the first frame, the GPU renders only 25 % of the pixels while the neuro‑accelerators reconstruct the remaining three‑quarters using NSS. In the second frame, the GPU does no traditional rendering at all; the neuro‑accelerators produce the entire image, demonstrating a fully AI‑reconstructed output.
Nvidia’s competing DLSS 5 technology also uses AI to enhance image quality, but it has drawn criticism for its “black‑box” nature and for sometimes diverging from a developer’s artistic intent. Arm positions its solution as fundamentally different. "Our networks are not generative; they’re convolutional models that simply know how things should look based on real‑world training data," Lazarov explained.
"We train them on authentic content and then publish the models publicly on GitHub and Hugging Face." Because the models are open, developers can fine‑tune them with their own art assets. If a game has a distinctive visual style, a studio can capture data from that game, retrain the network, and ensure that upscaling or frame‑generation respects the original aesthetic. This preserves intellectual‑property control and eliminates the risk of an opaque vendor‑controlled model altering the look of a title.
In contrast, DLSS is a proprietary, closed system that cannot be retrained on custom data. "It’s a take‑it‑or‑leave‑it approach," Lazarov said.
"Our model is take‑it‑and‑make‑it‑fit‑your‑needs." Another major distinction is mobile‑first design. Arm’s networks are built with strict power, bandwidth and memory budgets in mind. "If you tried to run DLSS on a phone, you’d instantly blow past the power envelope," Lazarov warned.
Arm’s solution, by contrast, delivers up to four times the performance and efficiency of the previous generation while slashing DRAM traffic by roughly 70 %, a major source of power consumption on mobile SoCs. Performance numbers illustrate the leap.
On the prior‑generation GPU, the Neural Dawn demo could only sustain about 40 fps at its maximum setting and dropped to 15 fps under normal conditions. The Mali G2‑Ultra NX pushes the same demo comfortably beyond 60 fps, delivering smooth, high‑quality gameplay.
From a developer‑experience perspective, Arm currently offers Unreal Engine plug‑ins and is planning support for Unity and other engines. An SDK provides a streamlined integration path for custom engines, allowing studios to adopt the technology without waiting for dedicated plug‑ins. Lazarov noted that retrofitting an existing shipped title with Arm’s AI‑native graphics can take as little as three months, enabling rapid updates and visual upgrades. Arm’s open approach, combined with its focus on power‑efficient neural reconstruction, aims to give mobile developers a practical, flexible alternative to the closed, console‑centric solutions that dominate the high‑end market today.
By making AI‑enhanced graphics transparent, tunable and mobile‑aware, Arm hopes to empower creators to deliver desktop‑level visual experiences on devices that fit in a pocket, without sacrificing battery life or thermal comfort.