The datasheets, user manuals, and Linux SDK for the Allwinner A527, T527, and A733 SoCs, found in some SBCs like the Avaota A1, Radxa Cubie A5E, Orange Pi 4A, and upcoming Cubie A7A, are now available on Gitlab without any NDA requirements.
Allwinner SoCs used to be some of the most popular processors for SBCs in the years 2012 to 2015 due to their feature set, low cost, and support by the sunxi-linux community. Since then, interest has plummeted due to a lack of interest in open-source software by Allwinner management and the constant release of new low-cost “Cortex-A7” SoC, and Rockchip RK3566 or RK3588 are now preferred on non-Raspberry Pi SBCs. But we first heard Allwinner say they planned to work on mainline Linux support for the Allwinner A527/T527 at the Orange Pi Developer Conference in March 2024. This was further confirmed by Radxa with the Cubie A5E launch in January 2025. But about six months have passed, and the lack of progress on the software front has some users feeling doubtful about Allwinner’s commitment.
The release of the documentation and SDK is one step in the right direction. Let’s have a look at what’s available on the “Tina5.0_AIOT” account on GitLab.
While some folder names are in Chinese, most of the hardware documentation is in English, and the software documentation is mostly in Chinese. We have resources for A523, A527, T527, A733, and T736, but let’s focus on documentation for the ones used in SBCs.
- A527
- Benchmark – A527_Multimedia_Codec_Benchmark.pdf – 8-page document with limited information…
- Hardware documentation
- 硬件物料清单 – Various compatibility lists for audio codec/amplifier, GPS, camera, WiFi/Bluetooth, etc…
- 硬件设计 – Hardware design files for the reference board, test results.
- 芯片手册 directory is the most interesting:
- A527 English Product brief
- A527 English datasheet (175 pages)
- A527 English user manual (1,811 pages)
- Various documents for compatible PMICs
- T527
- Benchmark – Benchmark results for PCIe, Ethernet, multimedia codec, and awlink (CAN Bus)
- Hardware documentation – Similar to the equivalent A527 section above with a product brief, a datasheet (156 pages), and a user manual (1,823 pages)
- A733 – Hardware documentation
- 硬件设计 – Hardware design files for the reference board, test results.
- 芯片手册
- A733 Product brief
- A733 datasheet (150 pages)
- A733 user manual (1,982 pages)
- Various documents for PMICs
- Software documentation – The Release Note, Software, Tools, and Product folders are all about software documentation (PDF files). It looks quite detailed, but as far as I can tell, everything is in Chinese.
Many of the documents were uploaded a few months ago, but Radxa just announced the release on X as they pushed Allwinner to publicly release documentation.
The AIOT Linux SDK itself will not be upstreamed, and the 2025 and 2026 roadmaps inside the “AIOT Linux Software Development Guide” make it clear with Linux 5.15 (LTS kernel with EOL scheduled for December 2026), U-boot 2018.07, Yocto 5.1, Buildroot 2022.05, and Debian 11 still being targeted in the SDK v1.6 in 2026 for the Allwinner A537.
So upstreaming will have to be a separate endeavor, and at this time, it’s unclear what level of commitment Allwinner is, or whether they mainly count on help from the community, like what happened with the older Allwinner A10 and A20 chips that were popular at the time.
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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So for 1 year since their “Open Source” announce, patches sent:
Allwinner: 0
OrangePi: 0
Radxa: 0
Radxa are pumping so much Rockchip patches, may be the biggest contributor, while claim to “diversify” away into Allwinner.
@TomCubie, please point me to the documentation / source code for the DRAM controller
of your Radxa Cubie boards, which is the biggest issue for mainline Open Source, since EVERYTHING else runs on top of it.
at the moment there is no problem using mainline uboot for all these devices, it hasn’t been a big issue, there is support for lpddr4 and ddr3
DRAM initialisation support *is* a big issue, since it’s very SoC specific, and there is no documentation whatsoever. Mainline U-Boot only supports up to H616, with A133 and A523 support being around the corner, but only thanks to the tireless, educated and persistent reverse engineering efforts by some individuals in the sunxi community. But that took almost a year, which is also the problem for any new SoC like the A733 (or even beyond). The different JEDEC DRAM types are an additional problem, since each of them needs to be enabled separately for each SoC.
So: DRAM is a big problem, and any documentation or source code would help very much – though we have virtually never seen that for any Allwinner SoC in the past. At best there were leaked boot0 object files with debug symbols.