ARM announced a new GPU from the same family as Mali-400 that uses only half as much power. The new GPU, the Mali-470, is targeted at next-generation wearables and IoT devices that need low-cost and low-power chips. The new Mali-470 comes with support for the ubiquitous OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics API. According to ARM, it brings a strong balance between pixel control and energy efficiency, which makes it well-suited for user interfaces. Users aren’t likely to play 3D games on their smartwatches any time soon, so OpenGL ES 3.0 and beyond shouldn’t be necessary. (By the time it is, the more efficient Vulkan should be the de facto graphics API.)

Vivante Corporation announced an area-optimized version of its GC series OpenGL 2.0 ES GPU cores for Wearable and other IoT devices. Featuring the industry’s tiniest GPU core, less than one mm2, the GC400 gives MCU/MPU silicon vendors a simple plug-in solution and complete IoT software stack that easily adds full-featured smartphone graphics capabilities to any product line.