Arm Lumex CSS (Compute SubSystem) platform for mobile devices combines high-performance Arm C1 CPUs with Scalable Matrix Extension version 2 (SME2) and Mali-G1 GPUs to enable real-time on-device AI use cases like assistants, voice translation, and personalization.
Lumex is part of Arm’s new product naming architecture announced last May, and targets specifically mobile devices. Arm says SME2-enabled Arm CPUs can deliver up to 5x faster AI performance, 4.7x lower latency for speech-based workloads, and 2.8x faster audio generation.
Lumex components:
- Next-generation SME2-enabled Armv9.3 CPU cluster:
- C1-Ultra for flagship peak performance with +25% single-thread performance vs Cortex-X925; suitable for large-model inference, computational photography, content creation, generative AI
- C1-Premium with C1-Ultra performance, but greater area efficiency (35% smaller area than C1-Ultra); suitable for sub-flagship mobile segments, voice assistants, multitasking
- C1-Pro for sustained efficiency; +16% sustained performance vs Cortex-A725; ideal for video playback, streaming inference
- C1-Nano for maximum efficiency, smaller area for wearables, and devices with small form factors
- Mali G1-Ultra GPU
- Scalable from 10 to 24 cores.
- New Ray Tracing Unit v2 (RTUv2) delivering up to a 2x uplift in ray tracing performance compared to its predecessor.
- 20% faster AI inference performance
- 20% better performance across graphics benchmarks compared to the previous generation,
- C1-DSU DynamIQ Shared Unit (DSU)
- Optimized for 3nm nodes
Developers can access SME2 performance using KleidiAI libraries, which are now integrated into all major mobile operating systems and AI frameworks, such as PyTorch ExecuTorch, Google LiteRT, Alibaba MNN, and Microsoft ONNX Runtime. Apps are said to automatically benefit from SME2 acceleration with no code changes required, and Google apps like Gmail, YouTube, and Google Photos are already SME2-ready.
Arm did not provide information about availability, but I’d suspect Lumex SoCs with C1 CPU cores and Mali-G1 GPUs may become available in 2026 in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Laptops may also get similar chips, but under the Arm Niva platform, rather than Lumex. Further details may be found in the announcement, the Lumex product page, as well as on the C1 and Mali product pages.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Awful naming scheme, their marketing department said “Hold my beer” to AMD and Intel.
What are they going to call a Cortex-A320 successor, “C2-Pico”?
Agreed. They don’t realize that people always have difficulties with multi-dimensional naming (family, model, sizing etc). Intel had it right for a while with i3/i5/i7/i9 to define market positioning, and model number announcing generation and size. AMD did the same with their Ryzen and EPYC. Arm followed them with Cortex A5xx/7xx/9xx. Here, I’m not sure how you’ll compare “lumex c3-micro” to “c1-ultra” and so on. Anyway, as I’m used to saying, marketing teams generally invent names and messages that can only be understood by those from the same schools, i.e. marketing speaks to marketing to impress their friends working for competitors, but those sound almost like private jokes that customers don’t understand.