Ray Tracing to Android? ARM to Release Immortalis GPU For 'Ultimate' Mobile Gaming Experience'

Ray tracing support is coming soon on mobile, according to ARM. The chipmaker recently brought its most advanced GPU to complement smartphone gaming.

The company says this next-gen hardware touts 15% improved performance for mobile gaming. The Android handsets will benefit from this GPU in 2023.

ARM Immortalis GPU For Mobile Gaming

The mobile gaming industry still lags behind the computer gaming sector despite the release of advanced smartphones in the market. One notable feature which has not yet come to handheld devices is the ray tracing feature.

By definition, ray tracing is a special graphics rendering technique that models light transport. It's useful in 3D graphics to enhance the visuals of the game. Nvidia is a known leader in this technology at the moment.

However, new hardware seems to help bring this feature to smartphones. According to The Verge, ARM has recently unveiled its upcoming flagship GPU dubbed "Immortalis-G715."

Since many consoles are slowly adopting the ray-tracing capability, it's about time for smartphones to take advantage of this technology for gaming.

Although it's the first time ARM will release a dedicated GPU for handsets, it's not the first company to launch a mobile chipset.

As such, Samsung has previously dropped the Exynos 2200 processor for its Galaxy S22. This hardware is said to have a ray-tracing feature that is intended for mobile devices.

The Immortalis series transition happened following Mali GPUs' success last year. 8 billion units have been reportedly shipped to the customers so far.

The Challenge in Ray Tracing

As per ARM's director of product management Andy Craigen, the ray-tracing method relies on "significant" resources on mobile SoC. He added that the upcoming Immortalis GPU would be able to deliver over a 300% boost in performance while only using 4% of the shader core area.

"We decided to introduce hardware-based Ray Tracing support now on Immortalis-G715 because our partners are ready, the hardware is ready, and the developer ecosystem is (about to get) ready," Craigen spoke.

Another ARM official Paul Williamson said that the arrival of ray-tracing could potentially match the "virtual" lighting coming from the real-world environment.

For now, ARM has revealed that the Immortalis GPU will arrive in Android smartphones in 2023, per CNET. By that time, many people will start testing out the feature of their games and compare if this technology is a huge game-changer in the mobile gaming sector.

We speculate that the ARM Immortalis GPU won't debut in the United States anytime soon. However, it's great to see that the chipmakers are gradually bringing a useful feature to smartphones amid the tight competition in the industry.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry