Your phone’s GPU is about to do something it’s never done before: think. Arm has announced CSS for Mobile 2, a full compute platform built from the ground up for agentic AI and next-gen mobile graphics. This isn’t a spec bump. It’s a rethink of how CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators work together inside a smartphone.
A GPU that finally does AI natively
The star of the show is the Mali G2-Ultra NX, the first Mali GPU with dedicated neural accelerators baked right in. That matters because it means graphics and AI processing share the same pipeline instead of constantly handing work back and forth. The result? Up to 4x better performance per watt for neural graphics workloads. Arm also claims a 14% improvement on traditional game content compared to the last generation, which is solid if not jaw-dropping.
Real games are already on board. NetEase’s Where Winds Meet is planning a neural-enhanced version this year, and Tencent’s Arena Breakout Infinite has a tech demo in the works. So this isn’t vaporware.
The CPU is doing the AI heavy lifting too
The new C2 CPU cluster pairs the C2-Ultra and C2-Pro chips with two SME2 units. Compared to the C1-Ultra, the C2-Ultra delivers 1.7x higher AI performance and 15% better single-thread speed while using 38% less power at the same performance level. That’s the kind of efficiency gain that actually changes battery life in the real world.
- 70% speedup on the latest Small Language Models
- 1.7x higher AI performance vs C1-Ultra
- 38% lower power at equivalent performance
- Neural graphics up to 4x more efficient per watt
Why this matters for your next phone
AI on phones has mostly meant isolated features: a smarter camera here, a suggested reply there. Agentic AI is different. It means your phone running tasks on your behalf, coordinating apps, managing context, and making decisions continuously. That needs a system designed around that workload, not patched onto one. CSS for Mobile 2 is Arm’s answer to that shift. And given Arm’s reach across Android and iOS silicon, this platform will likely end up inside the phones most people actually buy.