Last year, Rockchip had a presentation in China where they highlighted their processor roadmap for 2020, and we learned about processors such as Rockhip RK3588 Cortex-A76/A55, RK3530 Cortex-A55 SoC’s, and RV1109 camera processor, but we had limited details about the processors at the time.
CNX Software has now received a more detailed roadmap that reveals some of the specifications about the new processors, and some Rockchip products that people may not be aware of such as a 3D structured light module and a 4G module.
Rockchip RK3566
Rockchip RK3530 is not shown in the roadmap, but there’s a similar RK3566 processor, so I assume the company just changed the name.
Rockchip RK3566 specifications:
- CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G52 2EE
- NPU – 0.5 TOPS with support for INT8/ INT16
- Multi-Media
- 8M ISP 2.0 with 3F HDR(Line-based/Frame-based/DCG)
- Support MIPI-CSI2,4-lane
- 1080p60 H.265, H.264 encoding
- 4K H.264/H.265/VP9 60fps video decoder
- DVP interface with BT.656/BT.1120
- Memory – 32-bit DDR3L/LPDDR3/DDR4/LPDDR4/LPDDR4X
- Storage – eMMC 4.51, NAND Flash, SFC NOR flash, SATA 3.0, SD card via SDIO
- Display
- Support Dual Display
- MIPI-DSI/RGB interface
- LVDS/eDP/DP
- HDMI 2.0
- Audio – 2x 8-ch I2S, 2x 2-ch I2S, PDM, TDM, SPDIF
- Networking – 2x RGMII interfaces (Gigabit Ethernet) with TSO (TCP segmentation offload ) network acceleration
- USB – USB 2.0 OTG and USB 2.0 host; USB3.0 HOST
- Other peripherals
- PCIe
- 3x SDIO 3.0 interface for Wi-Fi and SD card
- 6x I2C, 10x UART, 4x SPI, 8x PWM, 2xCAN interface
The processor targets Internet of Things applications and should be available in Q2 2020.
Rockchip RV1109
Rockchip RV1109 was unveiled last April, and we have some extra information about the processor:
- CPU – Dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.0GHz
- NPU – 1.0TOPS with support for INT8/ INT16
- Memory – 32-bit DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3/DDR4/LPDDR4
- Storage – eMMC 4.51, Serial NOR Flash with fast booting support, SD card via SDIO interface
- Display – MIPI-DSI/RGB interface up to 1080p @ 60 FPS
- Audio – 8-ch I2S with TDM/PCM, 2-ch I2S
- Multi-Media
- 13M ISP 2.0 with 3F HDR(Line-based/Frame-based/DCG)
- 2xMIPI CSI, LVDS, sub-LVDS
- 4K H.264/H.265 video encoder: 3840 x 2160 @ 30 fps + 720p @ 30 fps encoding
- 4K H.264/H.265 30fps video decoder
- 3840 x 2160 @ 30 fps encoding + 3840 x 2160 @ 30 fps decoding support
- DVP interface with BT.656/BT.1120
- Networking – RGMII interface with TSO network acceleration
- USB – USB 2.0 OTG and USB 2.0 host
- Other Peripherals
- Dual SDIO 3.0 interface for Wi-Fi and SD card
- I2C/UART/SPI interface
- Process/Package – 14nm FinFET, FCCSP 0.65
Rockchip RV1109 should already be available (launch in Q4 2019), and found in vision/AI applications such as IP cameras.
Rockchip RK3588
The new roadmap document does no provide much more info about RK3588, but the high-end processor from the company that was initially expected in Q1 2020 has apparently been delayed to Q3/Q4 2020.
Key features for RK3588:
- CPU – 4x Cortex-A76 and 4x Cortex-A55 cores in dynamIQ configuration
- GPU – Arm “Natt” GPU
- NPU 2.0 (Neural Processing Unit)
- Multimedia – 8K video decoding support, 4K encoding support
- Display – 4K video output, dual-display support
- Processor – 8nm LP
Natt is a goddess from Norse mythology, so it must be a new unannounced architecture for Arm Mali GPU. The last unknown Arm GPU architecture is Valhall found in Mali-G77 for example.
Support for Automotive & Industrial Temperature Ranges
Rockchip processors also support wider temperature range from the usual consumer temperature range, to the extended “commercial grade” found in “K” variants such as RK3399K, and now there are some processors supporting automotive/industrial temperature range (-40 to 85°C) as well.
RK3358M/J processor was launched in 2019 for IoT and automotive applications and comes with four Arm Cortex-A35 cores, and an Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU.
Rockchip Modules
There are also a bunch of modules but I’m not convinced they are based on Rockchip IP, as for the 4G module at least, they probably went with either a Qualcomm, UNISOC or MediaTek solution.
Rockchip RM310 4G module supports download rate of up to 100 Mbps and upload rates of up 50 Mbps.
Rockchip RMSL201 3D structured light module should be designed for computer vision applications for face recognition, robotics, or virtual reality applications.
We highlighted some of the most interesting details in this post, but you may find more details in the roadmap (PDF).
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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rk3358 looks promising as an rk3399 replacement with huge jump in performance.
Sure but I wouldn’t bet on seeing it on a board before the end of the year. When you see so few details present on their graphic chart (they didn’t even mention the number of cores nor lithography) while they already planned to have it for the end of the year, that’s a sign of very limited progress on it. I guess that as usual, Rockchip will finally produce a nice CPU but far too late to be relevant compared to x86 equivalents. I hope to be wrong.
allwinner and rockchip are playing catch up to Amlogic
And with the new s922X J the other SoC makers fall more behind.
And keep in mind it is labeled as IOT , VISION/AI . I don’t see the RK3358 having the TV box mass market sales to drive the SoC price lower for purchase.
It’s rather annoying seeing the 3368 marketing myth of ‘1.5GHz octa-core’ being perpetuated to this day — in reality it was a quad 1.5GHz + quad 1.1GHz, with asymmetrical L2 setup, to boot.
Maximum memory RAM in RK3588? Who knows?:)
Any word on whether they are still working with Google on the OP processors? Sounds like this new one might make an ok OP2.
Where is AV1 support on these new SoC’s ?
No new SoCs for “TV Box” Does this mean Rockchip has given up on the STB market?
Given that this domain is already saturated by Amlogic with boxes of extremely low cost, I doubt’s there’s still enough room to expect generating revenue there. I even suspect some chips are sold with no margin as a marketing effort to engrave the vendor’s name in everyone’s head.
The latest two Rockchip TV SoC are terrible , the RK3228A struggles to play Kodi ! Even the old RK3066 could play Kodi.
Amlogic use clever design and manufacturing to lower costs. They listened to some good suggested spec advice, which gave them the lead.
In addition they release often so that we speak about them often, even though they can only write 5 numbers out of 3 digits (805,905,912,922,311) and are forced to append whatever combination of letters and digits behind to help distinguish them :-/
You seem very down on them Willy, why so? Have you had many bad experiences?
Not particularly, it’s just that it’s very hard to figure in advance what *really* is in a box with their absurd naming because even the vendors manage to often get it wrong (when they indicate the most important trailing letters/digits at all). It probably is the only vendor in the world where a compatibility matrix has to be defined by reading from right-to-left instead of left-to-right! Calling everything S905 with totally different stuff inside is already not smart, mixing armv7 and armv8 in the S805 series is even worse. At least their competitors do not create this confusion. When you… Read more »
https://sns.widora.io/topic/724/rk3566a
Rock chip Edge and Amlogic SBC board of khadas brand is awesome ?