Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments on Amlogic A113L Dual-Core Cortex-A35 Processor Targets Smart Audio and IoT Applications

Amlogic A113L Dual-Core Cortex-A35 Processor Targets Smart Audio and IoT Applications

Over two years ago, we reported about Amlogic A111, A112, A113 processors designed for audio applications such as smart speakers. A111 features four Cortex-A5 32-bit core, while A112 and A113D/A113X processors come with four Cortex-A53 cores instead. We have not heard much about those since then, but all those processors are still listed on Amlogic website, A112 is supposedly used in Xiaomi AI smart speaker, and Amlogic A113X1 Far-Field Dev Kit is still listed on Amazon’s list of devkits for Alexa voice service, but currently out of stock. Amlogic has been working on a more cost-efficient processor for smart audio and IoT applications with Amlogic A113L dual-core Cortex-A35 processor shown as Meson A1 in the Linux source code. It was just added in Linux 5.5. We don’t have much information about it, but it’s interesting as it’s the first Cortex-A35 processor from the company, and it targets the same smart audio application as Rockchip RK3308 quad-core Cortex-A35 SoC found in […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments on CNX Software is 10 Years Old – Top 10 Posts of the Last Decade

CNX Software is 10 Years Old – Top 10 Posts of the Last Decade

Around 10 years ago, I decided it might be a good idea to have an online presence. At the time, I just thought I would write from time to time, and I had no idea it would eventually become my main activity. My very first post was on February 14, 2010 about software development tools such as CVS and Bugzilla. That means today is the 10th anniversary of CNX Software website! So I thought it might be fun to look at the most popular posts of the last ten years. I only installed Google Analytics sometimes in 2011, but it should not affect the results since I did not have many readers at the time, and the post that really started to bring more visitors, and made me switch from a $1 monthly hosting plan to a VPS, was “74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC” published in May 2012. So with any further delay, here are the top […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments on Amlogic S805X2, S905X4, and S908X AV1 Full HD/4K/8K Media Processors to Launch in 2020

Amlogic S805X2, S905X4, and S908X AV1 Full HD/4K/8K Media Processors to Launch in 2020

AOMedia AV1 open, royalty-free video codec has come a long way since it was first introduced in 2016, and we’ve recently seen AV1 hardware video decoding integrated into higher-end STB SoCs such as Broadcom BCM7218X or Realtek RTD1311/RTD1319 processors. But AV1 codec is also coming to lower-cost media processors as shown by Amlogic 2020 roadmap below. We should expect at least three new AV1 capable processors in 2020. Amlogic S905X4 Specifications: CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor GPU Arm Mali-G31MP2 Video 4Kp75 H.265, VP9, AVS2 4Kp120 AV1 HDR support Smart Audio Voice Activity Detector (VAD) Asynchronous Sample Rate conversion (ASRC) Equalizer (EQ) Dynamic Range Compression (DRC) 2x DSP for audio front end (AFE) and wake word engine (WWE) Amlogic S905X4 looks like an update to Amlogic S905X3  with AV1 codec support, and maybe extra audio features. Amlogic S908X We’ve previously seen Rockchip RK3588 with Cortex-A76 / A55 cores, 8K video output and decoding support, as well as 4K encoding, is […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 54 Comments on Amlogic S912 vs Amlogic A311D/S922X-B Benchmarks Comparison

Amlogic S912 vs Amlogic A311D/S922X-B Benchmarks Comparison

S922X-B vs S912

A few days ago we compared Amlogic A311D to Rockchip RK3399 since both the top of the line processors from Amlogic and Rockchip that are currently available. Rockchip RK3588 will even be faster, but we need to wait until Q1 2020 at least before it becomes available, and delays are not unheard of, so I’d expect it may take about one year before I can get my hands on a sample. Another comparison is against Amlogic S912, the previous high-end processor from the company. Amlogic A311D and S922X-B are newer and will be faster but it’s interesting to find out just how much. Note the Amlogic S922X found in ODROID-N2 is clocked at a lower speed compare to A311D/S922X-B, so performance will be somewhat lower. Since I recently benchmarked Khadas VIM3 with Amlogic A311D processor, I decided to dust off my old Khadas VIM2 Amlogic S912 development board, fit it a large heatsink, install the latest Android 7.1 firmware for […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments on Amlogic A311D vs Rockchip RK3399 Benchmarks Comparison

Amlogic A311D vs Rockchip RK3399 Benchmarks Comparison

A311D vs RK3399

I’ve run some benchmarks on Khadas VIM3 SBC earlier this morning. The board is powered by the latest Amlogic A311D hexa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor, and I’ve found results to be impressive. But let’s see how it compares to another hexa-core processor, namely the popular Rockchip RK3399 Cortex-A72/A53 processor released in 2016 and found in several Chromebooks, TV boxes, and development boards. To do so, I’ve compared Antutu 7.x, PCMark 10 Work 2.0, and 3Dmark benchmark results in Khadas VIM3 board running Android 9, against an actively-cooled Rockchip RK3399 SBC running Android 8.1. The results for A311D should be the same as for Amlogic S922X-B processor, so this post could also serve as an Amlogic S922X-B vs RK3399 comparison. Amlogic A311D vs Rockchip RK3399 – Key features Amlogic A311D Rockchip RK3399 CPU Quad-core Cortex-A73 @ 2.21 GHz Dual-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz Dual-core Cortex-A72 @ 1.8 GHz Quad-core Cortex A53 @ 1.416 GHz GPU Arm Mali-G52MP4 ARM Mali-T860MP4 NPU Yes (5.0 TOPS) […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on AFRd Auto Frame Rate Daemon Works with 64-bit Amlogic Processors

AFRd Auto Frame Rate Daemon Works with 64-bit Amlogic Processors

AFRd Auto Frame Rate Daemon for Amlogic

Automatic frame rate switching in TV box ensures video output matches the video frame rate in order to avoid skipped frames (judder) from time to time, and makes the videos much smoother to watch, especially to trained eyes. The problem is that the feature is not always implemented, and/or does not work for all apps. AFRd auto frame rate daemon aims to solve this issue by automatically switching video output to match the video framerate – e.g. 23.976 fps or 59.94 fps – on Android TV boxes powered by one of Amlogic 64-bit processors, be it S905, S905X, S905X2, S912, S905W and other more recent Armv8 processors from the company. Developed by Andrey Zabolotny (anpaza), AFRd is Linux daemon can be linked to either bionic for Android, or glibc for Linux operating systems, and the source code can be found on Github. It relies on two techniques to detect the video frame rate, and adequately change video output (HDMI) frame […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments on Amlogic S905X2 vs S905X3 – Features Comparison

Amlogic S905X2 vs S905X3 – Features Comparison

Amlogic S905X2 vs S905X3

Despite Arm claiming Cortex-A55 core would bring some performance improvements, we’ve recently seen actual Amlogic S905X3 benchmarks show the performance compared to Amlogic S905X2 Arm Cortex-A53 is almost identical (3% improvement for S905X3 CPU, 9% for the GPU). So Amlogic S905X3 TV box processor must differentiate itself from its predecessor by its additional features, and while we published the detailed specifications of Amlogic S905X3 processor a few months ago, we did not provide a side-by-side comparison table just yet. So here’s one courtesy of SDMC (with some corrections). SoC Amlogic S905X2 Amlogic S905X3 CPU 4x Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.80 GHz 4x Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.91 GHz Neural Network Accelerator N/A Optional 1.2 TOPS NNA GPU Mali-G31 MP2 with OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0, and OpenCL 2.0 Always-on MCU Cortex-M3 & Cortex-M4 (Optional ) Cortex-M3 & Cortex-M4 DDR DDR3-2133 /DDR3L-2133 / DDR4-2666 /LPDDR3-2133 /LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM up to 4G DDR3-2133 /DDR3L-2133 / DDR4-3200 /LPDDR3-2133 / LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM up to 4G Video Decoding H.265, […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on Amlogic A311D and S922X-B Processors Support 8K VP9 Video Decoding

Amlogic A311D and S922X-B Processors Support 8K VP9 Video Decoding

Amlogic A311D 8K VP9

We’ve already written about future processors that will support 8K video decoding, such as Rockchip RK3588 that is expected to launch in early 2020. But I’ve just read claims that Amlogic A311D and S922X-B processors could also decode VP9 8K at 30 fps. So let’s have a look at Amlogic A311D datasheet first: Amlogic Video Engine (AVE-10) offloads the Cortex-A53 CPUs from all video CODEC processing. It includes dedicated hardware video decoder and encoder. AVE-10 is capable of decoding 4Kx2K resolution video at 75fps with complete Trusted Video Path (TVP) for secure applications and supports full formats including MVC, MPEG-1/2/4, VC-1/WMV, AVS, AVS+, AVS2 RealVideo, MJPEG streams, H.264, H265-10, VP9 and also JPEG pictures with no size limitation. The independent encoder is able to encode in JPEG or H.265/H.264 up to 1080p at 60fps There’s only mention of 4Kx2K decoding at up to 75fps, and further down in the document, we can see VP9 maximum resolution and framerate: VP9 Profile-2 […]

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