Neural Dawn is Android's first artificial intelligence game

Computer gamers have been accustomed to DLSS-like technologies where artificial intelligence produces frames for years. Now the same idea is coming to phones: Neural Dawn, developed by Arm and Sumo Digital, is online as the first game to produce frames with artificial intelligence on Android. What's surprising is that the game runs a ray-traced lighting system on the phone, which normally challenges powerful computers.

Artificial Intelligence Era on Mobile

This year, the agenda of the mobile processor world is artificial intelligence again. But there is a new aspect to this agenda for players. The latest GPU developments from Arm and Qualcomm are based on neural scaling techniques long known on the PC side.

So artificial intelligence is used to increase the frame rate and resolution. In this way, new generation games can look better and run smoother without the cost of traditional processing. Additionally, this method aims to reduce the load on the processor.

On the other hand, this approach is demonstrated with a concrete game so that it does not remain only in technology demos. This is where Neural Dawn comes into play. Moreover, the game is presented as the first example to use this technology on Android.

What Technologies Does Neural Dawn Use?

Neural Dawn was developed as a lightweight platform game. Arm worked closely with developer studio Sumo Digital to bring the project to life. The two technologies that enable the game to run on mobile are:

Neural Super Sampling and Denoising (NSSD): Neural super sampling and denoising.

Neural Frame Rate Upscaling (NFRU): Neural frame rate upscaling.

Therefore, Neural Dawn combines an approach that both sharpens the image and increases the number of frames in a single game. Moreover, it works with a costly feature such as ray-traced lighting. Therefore, gaming can be considered a challenging case for mobile hardware.

Additionally, the game uses Unreal Engine's MegaLights lighting system throughout. This system normally imposes a heavy load. That's why it's important to introduce neural techniques.

The Game Can Be Played Now

Version 1.0 of Neural Dawn was released last week. Thus, instead of just watching the technology in promotional videos, it became possible to directly open the game and try it. Therefore, the development that was seen as mobile's own DLSS moment is now in the hands of the players. The price of the game was not shared.