Rockchip RK36xx Category - CNX Software

December 30, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Rockchip RK1820/RK1828 SO-DIMM and M.2 LLM/VLM AI accelerator modules, devkits, and benchmarks

Rockchip RK1820/RK1828 SO-DIMM module development board

Rockchip unveiled two RK182X LLM/VLM accelerators at its developer conference last July, namely the RK1820 with 2.5GB RAM for 3B parameter models, and the RK1828 with 5GB RAM for 7B parameter models. A few months have passed, and we have a few more details since a development kit based on Rockchip RK1820/RK1828 SO-DIMM module is now available, some basic documentation has been released, and the RK1828 has been benchmarked against the Rockchip RK3588’s NPU. I was also told that M.2 modules are coming soon. Firefly RK182X 3D RAM Stacking Development Kit The “RK182X 3D RAM Stacking Development Kit” is based on the AIO-GS1N2 carrier board, previously offered with a Rockchip RK3576 or RK3588(s) and with a NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano or NX AI module. Specifications: Main module (now only RK3588 variant for sale as part of the RK182x kit) Core-3588JD4 – Rockchip RK3588 with 6 TOPS NPU, 4GB to 32GB […]

July 18, 2025July 23, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 65 Comments

Rockchip unveils RK3668 10-core Arm Cortex-A730/Cortex-A530 SoC with 16 TOPS NPU, RK182X LLM/VLM co-processor

The Rockchip Developer Conference 2025 (RKDC!2025) is now taking place in Fuzhou, China, with some interesting announcements such as the Rockchip RK3668 10-core Arm Cortex-A730/A530 processor with a 16 TOPS NPU and the RK182X RISC-V co-processor with support for up to 7B parameters LLM (large Language Model)or VLM (Vision Language Model). Rochchip RK3668 10-core Armv9 SoC Let’s have a look at the Rockchip RK3668 SoC, which looks quite similar to the RK3688 SoC unveiled last year, but with some differences. Preliminary Rockchip RK3668 specifications: CPU – 4x Cortex-A730 + 6x Cortex-A530 Armv9.3 cores delivering around 200K DMIPS; note: neither core has been announced by Arm yet GPU – Arm Magni GPU delivering up to 1-1.5 TFLOPS of performance AI accelerator – 16 TOPS RKNN-P3 NPU VPU – 8K 60 FPS video decoder ISP – AI-enhanced ISP supporting up to 8K @ 30 FPS Memory – LPDDR5/5x/6 up to 100 GB/s […]

December 31, 2024January 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

CNX Software’s 2024 Year in review, website statistics, and what to expect in 2025

That’s it! 2024 is almost over, and it’s time to reflect on what happened during the year. So I’ll look at the highlights of 2024, share some CNX Software website traffic statistics, and speculate on what may be ahead of us in 2025. Looking back at 2024 Raspberry Pi was super active this year with 22 product launches that included boards and modules like the Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM, Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico 2 W, Raspberry Pi CM5, expansion modules like the Raspberry Pi AI camera, AI HAT+, and M.2 HAT+, new accessories such as the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 and the Raspberry Pi Monitor, and the new Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC among others. As usual, there was also plenty of announcement of accessories from third parties, and some boards with the new Raspberry Pi RP2350 Arm/RISC-V microcontroller. There weren’t any ground-breaking Arm processors […]

October 4, 2024October 5, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Upcoming Rockchip RK3688 Armv9.3 AIoT processor to feature a 16 TOPS NPU, UFS 4.0 interface

Rockchip has unveiled the RK3688 AIoT SoC with Armv9.3 Cortex-A7xx cores delivering up to 250K DMIPS (RK3588 delivers 93K DMIPS), a 1 TFLOPS GPU, and a 16 TOPS NPU. The new processor succeeds the Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 first announced in 2019, and also features a 128-bit LPDDR4/4x/5 memory interface, and a UFS 4.0 storage interface. That’s about all we know about the RK3688 right now, but we can also deduct it’s probably based on a new, yet-to-be-announced Arm Cortex-A7xx core, possibly named Cortex-A730 or Cortex-A735, because no Arm cores have been announced with the Armv9.3 architectures. The Arm Cortex-A725 CPU core unveiled last May still relies on Armv9.2, and I’d expect new Arm cores to be introduced within the next few months unless Rockchip made a mistake in the presentation slide above. Two other platforms were also announced at the same time starting with a new entry-level/mid-range RK35XX octa-core […]