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The conversation around mobile AI has been dominated by talk of NPUs, TPUs, and dedicated neural accelerators. But what if your phone’s general-purpose CPU could shoulder that burden instead? Arm is betting big on exactly that with its new C2-Ultra, the powerhouse architecture set to define the next generation of 2027 flagships — from the latest MediaTek and Samsung silicon to, perhaps, Google’s future Tensor chipsets.

Arm’s pivot here is interesting, if that’s the right word. Shifting focus away from just pushing higher clock speeds and pipeline width towards accelerating more specialist use cases has potentially significant upsides if those workloads stick around. However, there’s no guarantee the market won’t keep demanding ever-higher peak general performance, particularly as mobile and PC use cases continue to collide.