News: Arm announces next Generation core family called Arm Lumex (www.phoronix.com)

Arm has unveiled its next-generation Lumex platform, introducing a new family of AArch64 CPUs featuring Scalable Matrix Extensions 2 (SME2), marking a significant advancement for AI and machine learning workloads on Arm architecture. The lineup includes the performance-focused C1 Ultra and C1 Pro CPUs, alongside the new C1 Premium and C1 Nano models to cover various performance tiers. Notably, the C1 Ultra promises a 25% improvement in single-threaded performance and double-digit IPC gains year-over-year, indicating strong efficiency and speed enhancements. Lumex integrates the new Mali G1-Ultra GPU, the DynamIQ Shared Unit (DSU), and a deeply optimized software stack, positioning it as a comprehensive platform designed to accelerate AI inference and media workloads. The widespread support for SME2 hardware is particularly significant, signaling Arm’s push toward matrix acceleration similar to x86_64 advancements like AVX-512 and AMX. By embedding SME2, the platform is expected to boost the adoption of AI-friendly software libraries and frameworks, enhancing Arm’s competitiveness in data center and edge AI applications. This announcement is an important milestone for the AI/ML community as it promises stronger hardware-software synergy on Arm devices, potentially expanding the ecosystem for AI workloads with efficient matrix processing capabilities. While performance benchmarks and real-world testing on Linux and other platforms are eagerly anticipated, Lumex sets a clear direction for enabling next-gen AI computations across diverse computing segments.