Native name 瑞芯微电子股份有限公司 Headquarters Fuzhou Number of employees 500 (2012) | Type Private Founded 2001 | |
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Industry Fabless semiconductor
Consumer electronics Area served Worldwide, but primarily China Key people Min Li (CEO)
Feng Chen (Vice President) Products RK3066, RK3188, RK3126, RK3128 | ||
Rockchip (Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products using semiconductor intellectual property cores licensed from other companies. Due to its evolution from the MP3/MP4 player market, most Rockchip SoCs feature media decoding logic but lack integrated cellular radio basebands.
Contents
- Markets and competition
- Cooperation with Intel
- Early Products
- RK28xx series
- RK29xx series
- RK30xx series
- RK31xx series
- RK32xx series
- Inconsistent information about CPU cores used in RK3288
- RK33xx series
- References
Rockchip is a supplier of SoCs to Chinese white-box tablet manufacturers as well as supplying OEMs such as Asus, HP and Toshiba.
Rockchip uses the ARM architecture licensed from ARM Holdings for the majority of its projects.
However, on 27 May 2014 Intel announced an agreement with Rockchip to adopt the Intel architecture for entry-level tablets.
Markets and competition
In the market for SoCs for tablets, Rockchip faces competition from Allwinner Technology, MediaTek, Intel, Actions Semiconductor, Spreadtrum, Leadcore Technology, Samsung Semiconductor, Qualcomm, Broadcom, VIA Technologies and Amlogic.
After establishing a position early in the developing Chinese tablet SoC market, in 2012 it faced a challenge by Allwinner. In 2012, Rockchip shipped 10.5 million tablet processors, compared to 27.5 million for Allwinner. However, for Q3 2013, Rockchip was forecast to ship 6 million tablet-use application processors in China, compared to 7 million for Allwinner who mainly shipped single-core products. Rockchip was reported to be the number one supplier of tablet-use application processors in China in Q4 2013, Q1 2014 and Q2 2014.
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 or cellular data functionality to their products.
Intel Corporation made investments into the tablet processor market, and was heavily subsidizing its entry into the low-cost tablet market as of 2014.
Cooperation with Intel
In May 2014, Intel announced an agreement with Rockchip to jointly deliver an Intel-branded mobile SoC platform based on Intel's Atom processor and 3G modem technology. Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will deliver an Intel-branded mobile SoC platform. The quad-core platform will be based on an Intel Atom processor core integrated with Intel's 3G modem technology, and is expected to be available in the first half of 2015. Both Intel and Rockchip will sell the new part to OEMs and ODMs, primarily into each company's existing customer base.
As of October 2014, Rockchip was already offering Intel's XMM 6321, for low-end smartphones. It has two chips: a dual-core application processor (either with Intel processor cores or ARM Cortex-A5 cores) with integrated modem (XG632) and an integrated RF chip (AG620) that originates from the cellular chip division of Infineon Technologies (which Intel acquired some time ago). The application processor may also originate from Infineon or Intel. Rockchip has not earlier targeted the smartphone space in a material way.
Early Products
RK26xx series - Released 2006.
RK27xx series - Rockchip was first known for their RK 27xx series that was very efficient at MP3/MP4 decoding and was integrated in many low-cost personal media player (PMP) products.
RK28xx series
The RK2806 was targeted at PMPs.
The RK2808A is an ARM926EJ-S derivative. Along with the ARM core a DSP coprocessor is included. The native clock speed is 560 MHz. ARM rates the performance of the ARM926EJ-S at 1.1 DMIPS/MHz the performance of the Rockchip 2808 when executing ARM instructions is therefore 660 DMIPS roughly 26% the speed of Apple's A4 processor. The DSP coprocessor can support the real-time decoding of 720p video files at bitrates of up to 2.5 Mbit/s. This chip was the core of many Android and Windows Mobile-based mobile internet devices..
The RK2816 was targeted at PMP devices, and MIDs. It has the same specifications as the RK2806 but also includes HDMI output, Android support, and up to 720p hardware video acceleration..
The RK2818 was targeted at MID and E-reader devices. As of 2013, it was targeted at E-readers.
RK29xx series
The Rockchip RK291x is a family of SoCs based on the ARM Cortex-A8 CPU core. They were presented for the first time at CES 2011. The RK292x are single core SoCs based on ARM Cortex-A9 and were first introduced in 2012.
The RK2918 was the first chip to decode Google WebM VP8 in hardware. It uses a dynamically configurable companion core to process various codecs. It encodes and decodes H.264 at 1080p, and can decode many standard video formats including Xvid, H.263, AVS, MPEG4, RV, and WMV. It includes a Vivante GC800 GPU that is compatible with OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG. The RK2918 is compatible with Android Froyo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3), HoneyComb (3.x) and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0). Unofficial support for Ubuntu and other Linux flavours exists. As of 2013, it was targeted at E-readers.
The RK2906 is basically a cost-reduced version of the RK2918, also targeted at E-readers as of 2013.
The Rockchip RK2926 and RK2928 feature a single core ARM Cortex A9 running at a speed up to 1.0 GHz. It replaces the Vivante GC800 GPU of the older RK291x series with an ARM Mali-400 GPU. As of 2013, the RK2926 was targeted at tablets, while the RK2928 was targeted at tablets and Android TV dongles and boxes.
RK30xx series
The RK3066 is a high performance dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 mobile processor similar to the Samsung Exynos 4 Dual Core chip. In terms of performance, the RK3066 is between the Samsung Exynos 4210 and the Samsung Exynos 4212. As of 2013, it was targeted at tablets and Android TV dongles and boxes. It has been a popular choice for both tablets and other devices since 2012.
The RK3068 is a version of the RK3066 specifically targeted at Android TV dongles and boxes. Its package is much smaller than the RK3066.
The RK3028 is a low-cost dual-core ARM Cortex-A9-based processor clocked at 1.0 GHz with ARM Mali-400 GPU. It is pin-compatible with the RK2928. It is used in a few kids tablets and low-cost Android HDMI TV dongles.
The RK3026 is an updated ultra-low-end dual-core ARM Cortex-A9-based tablet processor clocked at 1.0 GHz with ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU. Manufactured at 40 nm, it is pin-compatible with the RK2926. It features 1080p H.264 video encoding and 1080p decoding in multiple formats. Supporting Android 4.4, it has been adopted for low-end tablets in 2014.
The RK3036 is a low-cost dual-core ARM Cortex-A7-based processor released in Q4 2014 for smart set-top boxes with support for H.265 video decoding.
RK31xx series
The RK3188 was the first product in the RK31xx series, announced for production in the 2nd quarter of 2013. The RK3188 features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 clocked up to 1.6 GHz frequency. It is targeted at tablets and Android TV dongles and boxes, and has been a popular choice for both tablets and other devices requiring good performance.
The RK3188T is a lower-clocked version of the RK3188, with the CPU cores running at a maximum speed of 1.4 GHz instead of 1.6 GHz. The Mali-400MP4 GPU is also clocked at a lower speed. As of early 2014, many devices advertised as using a RK3188 with a maximum clock speed of 1.6 GHz actually have a RK3188T with clock speed limited to 1.4 GHz. Operating system ROMs specifically made for the RK3188 may not work correctly with a RK3188T.
The RK3168, first shown in April 2013, is a dual-core Cortex A9-based CPU, also manufactured using the 28 nm process. It is targeted at low-end tablets. The chip has seen only limited use as of May 2014.
The RK3126 is an entry-level tablet processor introduced in Q4 2014. Manufactured using a 40 nm process, it features a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU up to 1.3 GHz and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU. It is pin-compatible with RK3026 and RK2926.
The RK3128 is a higher-end variant of RK3126, also to be introduced in Q4 2014, that features more integrated external interfaces, including CVBS, HDMI, Ethernet MAC, S/PDIF, Audio DAC, and USB. It targets more fully featured tablets and set-top boxes.
RK32xx series
Rockchip has announced the RK3288 for production in the second quarter of 2014. Recent information suggests that the chip uses a quad-core ARM Cortex-A17 CPU, although technically ARM Cortex-A12, which as of October 1, 2014, ARM has decided to also refer to as Cortex-A17 because the latest production version of Cortex-A12 performs at a similar performance level as Cortex-A17.
Inconsistent information about CPU cores used in RK3288
Early reports including Rockchip first suggested in summer 2013 that the RK3288 was originally designed using a quad-core ARM Cortex-A12 configuration. Rockchip's primary foundry partner GlobalFoundries announced a partnership with ARM to optimize the ARM Cortex-A12 for their 28 nm-SLP process. This is the same process used for earlier Rockchip chips such as the RK3188, and matches the choice of Cortex-A12 cores in the design of the RK3288.
In January 2014, official marketing materials listed the CPU cores as ARM Cortex-A17. At the CES electronics show in January 2014, someone apparently corrected the CPU specification as being ARM Cortex-A12 instead of Cortex-A17 on one of the panels of their show booth. However, since then, official specifications from Rockchip's website and marketing materials as well specifications used by device manufacturers have continued to describe the CPU as a quad-core ARM Cortex-A17.
Recent testing of early RK3288-based TV boxes (August/September 2014) provided evidence that the RK3288 technically contains Cortex-A12 cores, since the "ARM 0xc0d" CPU archtitecture reported by CPU-Z for Android is the reference for Cortex-A12, while the original Cortex-A17 is referred to as "ARM 0xc0e".
However, on the ARM community website, ARM clarified the situation on October 1, 2014, saying that Cortex-A12, for which Rockchip is one of the few known customers, will be called Cortex-A17 from now on, and that all references to Cortex-A12 have been removed from ARM's website. ARM explained that the latest production revision of Cortex-A12 now performs close to the level of Cortex-A17 because the improvements of the Cortex-A17 now also have been applied to the latest version of Cortex-A12. In this way, Rockchip now gets the official blessing from ARM for listing the cores inside the RK3288 as Cortex-A17.
The first Android TV stick based on RK3288 was launched in November 2014 ("ZERO Devices Z5C Thinko").
RK33xx series
Rockchip announced the first member of the RK33xx family at the CES show in January 2015. The RK3368 is a SoC targeting tablets and media boxes featuring a 64-bit octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU and an OpenGL ES 3.1-class GPU.
The RK3399 announced by ARM at Mobile World Congress in February 2016, features six 64 bit CPUs, including 2 Cortex-A72 and 4 Cortex-A53.