Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Amlogic

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Key people
  
John Zhong (CEO)

Website
  
www.amlogic.com

Number of employees
  
540 (2013)

Products
  
AML8726-MX

Founded
  
1995

Type of business
  
Private

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Industry
  
Fabless semiconductorConsumer electronics

Area served
  
Worldwide, but primarily China

Headquarters
  
Santa Clara, California, United States

Amlogic (sometimes spelled AMLogic) is an American technology company that was founded in the US as Amlogic Inc. and is predominantly focused on designing and selling SoC (System on Chip) integrated circuits. Like most fabless companies in the industry, the company outsources the actual manufacturing of its chips to third-party independent chip manufacturers such as TSMC. Its main target applications as of 2014 are entertainment devices such as Android-based TV and IPTV/OTT set-top boxes, media dongles, smart TVs and tablets. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Santa Clara, California.

Contents

The company was founded in 1995 in Silicon Valley. It developed Video CD player chips and later chips for DVD players and other applications involving MPEG2 decoding. Amlogic was involved in the creation of the HVD (High-Definition Versatile Disc) standard promoted in China as an alternative to DVD video disks used in DVD players. The company was a player in the developing Chinese tablet processor market since 2010-2013.

Amlogic is an ARM licensee and uses the ARM architecture in the majority of its products as of 2014. According to a joint press release with ARM in 2013, it was the first company to use ARM's Mali-450 GPU in a configuration with six cores or more.

AML8726 family

  • Amlogic AML8726-M - Legacy single core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-400 GPU released in 2011, with a 16-bit DRAM interface and manufactured on a 65 nm process.
  • Amlogic AML8726-M3 - Legacy single-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-400 GPU, released in 2012, with a 16-bit DRAM interface and manufactured on a 45 nm process.
  • Amlogic MX (also known as AML8726-M6) - Dual-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU, released in 2012 on a 40 nm process.

    • M8 family (announced 2013)

  • Amlogic M802 (originally called AML8726-M8) - Quad-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-450 MP6 GPU running at 600 MHz. Supports 4GB DRAM and 4K2K display output. 64-bit DRAM interface, manufactured on a 28 nm HPM process.
  • Amlogic M801 - Similar to M802 but with DRAM limited to 2GB and display output limited to 1080p.
  • Amlogic M805 - Quad-core ARM Cortex-A5-based SoC with Mali-450 MP2 GPU in a reduced-size 12mm x 12 mm LFBGA package.

    • The M801/802 uses a new version of ARM's Cortex A9 core (A9r4) that theoretically allows for higher clock speeds and lower power consumption compared to older versions of the Cortex A9 core such as the A9r3 used in Rockchip's RK3188.

    Originally scheduled to be in production as early as the middle of 2013 in the form of the AML8726-M8, as of April 2014 only one tablet (Onda V975M) has been announced using a chip from the M8 family.

    A few manufacturers have shown Android TV boxes using the M802 (Shenzhen Tomato Technology, Tronsmart, Eny Technology and GeniaTech). It has been noted that some devices using the M802 may run hot and use a heatsink for cooling. This is common among other popular OTT set top boxes such as the Amazon FireTV which uses a metal shell to disperse heat, much like a heatsink would.

    Media player SoCs (S8 family)

    Amlogic also offers SoC products (S802, S805, and S812) specifically targeting Android TV boxes and OTT set-top boxes (which are variations of similar SoCs in the M series targeting tablets).

  • Amlogic S802 - Similar to M802, quad-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-450 MP6 GPU.
  • Amlogic S805 - A low cost SoC similar to M805 with quad-core ARM Cortex A5-based SoC with Mali-450 MP2 GPU running at 500 MHz, with hardware support for HEVC/H.265 decoding up to 1080p.
  • Amlogic S812 - Quad-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-450 MP6 GPU running at 600 MHz with hardware support for HEVC/H.265 decoding up to 4K.

    • S8**-H models include Dolby/DTS licenses.

    Media player SoCs (S9 family)

    First 64-bit Amlogic Products lineup.

  • Amlogic S905 - Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 (up to 2.0 GHz) with a Mali 450MP3 GPU, supports hardware decoding up to 4K@60fps for multiple formats including H.265 10-bit, H.264, AVS+.
  • Amlogic S905X - Similar to S905 except it supports up to 4K@60fps VP9 profile-2 hardware decoding, HDR, HDMI 2.0a and having a built-in DAC.
  • Amlogic S905L - Similar to S905X except it supports HDMI 2.0b but lack VP9 decoding, camera interface and TS inputs.
  • Amlogic S905D - Similar to S905X except it supports DVB interface.
  • Amlogic S912 - Octo-core ARM Cortex-A53 (Big.LITTLE configuration 4x2.0 GHz and 4x1.0 GHz) with a Mali T820 MP3 GPU.

    • S9**(*)-H models include Dolby/DTS licenses.

    Devices based on them are already in the market running Android 5.1 or 6.0, they are usually paired with 1GB, 2GB or 3GB RAM, 8GB to 64GB Flash Mem, they have features such as a Gigabit Lan and Dual band 2.4G/5G A/C WiFi.

    S905X was scheduled to be released in Q1 2016 while S905D and S912 were scheduled for Q2 2016. All three of SoCs have Android Marshmallow and Buildroot Linux SDKs released.

    Other products

    The Amlogic MX, S802 and S805 SoCs are also targeted at media dongles.

    Amlogic also offers SoCs targeting smart TVs and projectors, including M6L, M6C, M6D, T826, T828, T866, T868, T966 and T968.

    Markets and sales

    Amlogic does not publish sales or financial information on its website.

    The company is listed as a client of several venture capital firms.

    In the market for SoCs targeting Chinese tablet manufacturers and manufacturers of Android media players, TV boxes and media dongles, it faces competition primarily from Rockchip, Allwinner Technology, Actions Semiconductor, MediaTek, Intel and Realtek. Amlogic was reported to be fourth largest application processor supplier for Chinese tablets in 2012. For Q2 2014, Amlogic was reported to be the fifth largest supplier, after Rockchip, MediaTek, Allwinner and Actions Semiconductor. Chinese SoC suppliers that do not have cellular baseband technology are at a disadvantage compared to companies such as MediaTek that also supply the smartphone market as white-box tablet makers increasingly add phone functionality to their products.

    In 2011, the AML8726-M was selected as one of the "hottest" processors by EE Times China, while in 2012, the AML8726-MX won EE Times-China's Processor of the Year award.

    Open source commitment

    Amlogic maintains a website dedicated to providing source code for the Linux kernel and Android SDK supporting Amlogic chips and reference designs. The Linux kernel source code is freely available, and has recently (as of April 2014) been updated to support certain chips in the M8 family as well as the older MX family, with Android versions up to 4.4 (KitKat) being supported (based on Linux kernel version 3.10.x). However, the Android SDK requires a NDA and is only available to business partners. The source code includes Linux kernel 3.10.10, U-Boot, Realtek and Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers, NAND drivers, “TVIN” drivers, and kernel space GPU drivers for the Mali-400/450 GPU. XBMC/Kodi Amlogic S805 / M805 / S806 / M806 / S812 Android video decoding compatibility list: http://kodi.wiki/view/Android_hardware#Compatible_chipsets

    However an effort to push Linux upstream support for the GX ARM64 linup is ongoing on http://linux-meson.com/. Currently only the AML7826MX S802, S805 and S905 SoC are booting headless on Linux 4.8. But S905X, S905D and S912 Headless support is expected for Linux 4.10.

    References

    Amlogic Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA