palgorithm

Sam Martin

Graphics, side projects, talks and technical notes.

I work on computer graphics and machine learning at Arm, with a focus on neural graphics. I used to be a games developer and once helped make a thing called Enlighten. When I was younger I wanted to make music for a living. I haven't entirely given up on that hope yet, but am having a lot of fun making other stuff in the meantime.

This site is a small home page for projects, talk materials and occasional notes about whatever. My Fantasy World Cup 2026 model is hosted here as a current side project / mini obsession.

LinkedIn Professional profile Twitter / X @palgorithm

Neural Graphics

Arm Neural Technology

I lead the neural technology project at Arm and am part of the technical leadership for their ecosytem efforts. Machine learning is disrupting traditional graphics and scaling much faster than classic graphics techniques, so we look at new hardware, new software and APIs, and new use cases.

This includes Neural Super Sampling, Neural Frame Rate Upscaling, and other emerging neural graphics techniques. We are consciously taking an open approach - no opaque models. Empowering developers and the graphics community is a major part of everything we are doing.

Check out Neural Technology

Neural Dawn

Neural Dawn (coming later this year) is a production-quality Unreal Engine game created by Arm and Sumo Digital. Arm are partnering with Sumo to show what is now possible. This is not a demo. It's a real game, made to the vision of the amazing developers at Sumo.

It combines neural upscaling, neural denoising, neural frame generation and Unreal Engine MegaLights. I'm part of the technology leadership for this on the Arm side, but the credit for how amazing this game is all goes to the developers who have been an inspiration and a pleasure to work with.

Check out Neural Dawn

Side Projects

Fantasy World Cup tracking graph thumbnail

Modelling

Fantasy World Cup Football 2026

A public modelling and tracking site for a FIFA fantasy football team, built as a data, optimisation and AI-assisted development experiment.

Open project

Talks / Publications

SIGGRAPH Course

Moving Mobile Graphics

Recurring SIGGRAPH course, collected course notes and materials, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2024 and 2026.

A long-running half-day course introducing the state of the art in mobile graphics through practitioners working on mobile rendering, GPU-driven systems, neural graphics and graphics API design.

Web page

Keynote

Eras In Mobile Graphics

Keynote, Graphics Programming Conference, Breda, Netherlands, November 2025.

Looking both forwards and back on the major eras of mobile graphics, reflecting on some lessons from the past, and then making rash decisions about what might come in the future. It was a lot of fun, and great conference. Shame the video got lost!

Slides Slides (my copy with notes) Web page Video (lost!)

Talk

How GPUs Must Adapt in the Age of Machine Learning and AI

ACM SIGGRAPH 2025, Vancouver and online, 2025.

A session on AI-powered reconstruction, denoising and upscaling, and what it takes to make neural graphics practical on mobile GPUs with strict power budgets.

Slides (my mirror with notes) Video

Expand for older talks

Talk

Efficient Rendering With Tile Local Storage

Marius Bjorge, Sam Martin, Sandeep Kakarlapudi and Jan-Harald Fredriksen, ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 Talks, Vancouver, Canada, July 2014.

A SIGGRAPH talk/publication on exploiting tile-local storage to reduce bandwidth and improve rendering efficiency on tile-based mobile GPUs.

Web page Slides (local mirror)

Talk

The Revolution In Mobile Game Graphics

Marius Bjorge and Sam Martin, GDC 2014, San Francisco, USA, March 2014.

A GDC talk on the move from simple mobile graphics toward physically based shading, real-time global illumination and on-chip rendering for console-style architectures on mobile GPUs.

Slides Slides (mirror) Web page

Publication

Challenges With High Quality Mobile Graphics

Sam Martin, Marius Bjorge, Sandeep Kakarlapudi and Jan-Harald Fredriksen, ACM SIGGRAPH 2013 Mobile, Anaheim, USA, July 2013.

A SIGGRAPH Mobile publication on the rendering and platform constraints involved in bringing high-quality graphics techniques to mobile hardware.

Web page Slides (local mirror)

Talk

Advancing Dynamic Lighting On Mobile

Sam Martin and Matt Wash, ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Mobile, Los Angeles, USA, August 2012.

A SIGGRAPH Mobile talk on adapting dynamic lighting and global illumination ideas to the performance, memory and bandwidth limits of mobile devices.

Web page Slides (local mirror)

Demo

Enlighten Real-Time Radiosity

ACM SIGGRAPH 2011 Real-Time Live! and Computer Animation Festival, Vancouver, Canada, August 2011.

A real-time demonstration of Geomerics Enlighten technology showing dynamic indirect lighting and radiosity for production game content. The submission is in my name by presentation credit goes to Graham Hazel who did all the work on the day.

Web page Slides (mirror TODO)

A real-time radiosity final composite thumbnail

Talk

A Real-Time Radiosity Architecture For Video Games

Sam Martin and Per Einarsson, Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games, SIGGRAPH 2010, Los Angeles, USA, August 2010.

An advances.. course talk on an architecture for real-time radiosity for games (aka Enlighten), including the interaction between precomputed transfer, runtime lighting updates and production renderer integration.

Slides Slides (local mirror) Web page