Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX brings DLSS to Android

Arm’s Mali G2-Ultra NX GPU brings AI upscaling, frame generation and ray tracing to Android phones, starting with Xiaomi’s 18 Fold in China. The Verge reports that the phone uses the GPU inside its custom Xring O3 chip. Arm says the same graphics technology will reach phones, tablets and Chromebooks from next year.

Arm describes the Mali G2-Ultra NX as its first AI-native Mali GPU, with neural processing built directly into the graphics pipeline.

Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX is DLSS-style graphics for Android

The Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX handles three neural graphics jobs. Neural Super Sampling reconstructs a higher-resolution image from a lower-resolution render, while Neural Frame Rate Upscaling generates intermediate frames to make gameplay look smoother. A third system combines upscaling with denoising for ray-traced scenes.

That is broadly the same idea behind Nvidia’s DLSS, although Arm uses its own names and implementation. The work is designed to reduce conventional rendering and memory demands rather than simply asking a phone GPU to push more pixels.

Arm says its Neural Dawn demonstration reached up to four times higher performance efficiency and up to 70 percent lower external memory traffic than native rendering. Those are vendor results from a specific demonstration, not a promise that every game will see the same improvement.

Phones, tablets and Chromebooks are next

The first commercial appearance is in Xiaomi’s 18 Fold, which launched in mainland China with the Xring O3 chip. tbreak has already covered the phone’s launch specifications and Leica cameras, while Qualcomm’s competing Adreno Neural Fusion GPU shows that AI-assisted mobile graphics is becoming a broader industry push. Arm has not named the other phones that will use the GPU, but told The Verge that devices with the technology are expected next year, including larger-screen products such as tablets and Chromebooks.

The company also claims up to 24 percent higher benchmark performance and up to 120 frames per second when neural frame-rate upscaling is used. The GPU adds a new execution engine and third-generation hardware ray tracing alongside the neural accelerators, as detailed on Arm’s product page.

Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX is not a feature that can be switched on in an existing Android phone. Developers need to integrate Arm’s neural graphics tools into games and engines, and manufacturers need to ship compatible silicon. The company says its development kit supports Vulkan, Unreal Engine and custom engine integrations.

There is no confirmed UAE launch date, phone list or local pricing for the technology yet. UAE gamers will need to wait for compatible devices and game support rather than expecting a software update to add it to current phones.