Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd is a

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

that designs

mixed-signal A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die.systems on a chip (SoC). The company is headquartered in

Zhuhai Zhuhai (, ; Yale: ''Jyūhói''), also known as Chuhai is a prefecture-level city located on the west bank of Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern Guangdong province, People's Republic of China, on the southeastern edge of Pearl ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It has a sales and technical support office in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

, Guangdong, and logistics operations in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. Since its founding in 2007, Allwinner has released over fifteen SoC processors for use in Android-based tablets, as well as in

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s, over-the-air OTT boxes, video camera systems,

car DVR A dashboard camera or simply dashcam, also known as car digital video recorder (car DVR), driving recorder, or event data recorder (EDR), is an onboard camera that continuously records the view through a vehicle's front windscreen and sometime ...

s, and car media players. In 2012 and 2013, Allwinner was the number one supplier in terms of unit shipments of application processors for Android tablets worldwide. According to

DigiTimes DigiTimes () is a daily newspaper for semiconductor, electronics, computer and communications industries in Taiwan and the Greater China region. It was established in 1998. The company is based in Taipei, Taiwan and currently has a daily newsp ...

, in Q4 2013 Allwinner lost its number one position in terms of unit shipments to the Chinese market to

Rockchip Rockchip (Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. Rockchip has been providing SoC products for tablets & PCs, streaming media TV boxes, AI audio & vision, IoT hardware ...

. For Q2 2014, Allwinner was reported by DigiTimes to be the third largest supplier to the Chinese market after

and

MediaTek MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia pr ...

. DigiTimes has also projected that Allwinner will fall to the number four position in Q4 2014, being passed by Intel, as Allwinner's unit shipments continue to decline.

Product Lines

A-Series

A series processors are used for mobile applications, mainly referring to tablet application.

A1x family

In 2011, the company became an ARM processor licensee,ARM processor licensee
on ARM.com and subsequently announced a series of

ARM Cortex-A8 The ARM Cortex-A8 is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. Compared to the ARM11, the Cortex-A8 is a dual-issue superscalar design, achieving roughly twice the instructions per cycle. The Cort ...

powered mobile application processors, including A10, A13, A10s and A12, which were used in numerous tablets, and also in

PC-on-a-stick A stick PC or PC on a stick is a single-board computer in a small elongated casing resembling a stick, that can usually be plugged directly (without an HDMI cable) into an HDMI video port. A stick PC is a device which has independent CPUs or proce ...

and media center devices. They have also been adopted in free hardware projects like the

Cubieboard Cubieboard is a single-board computer, made in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. The first short run of prototype boards were sold internationally in September 2012, and the production version started to be sold in October 2012. It can run Android 4 ICS ...

development board.

A2x and A3x family

In December 2012, Allwinner announced the availability of two

ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore The ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore is a 32-bit microprocessor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture announced in 2011. Overview It has two target applications; firstly as a smaller, simpler, and more power-efficient succes ...

powered products, the dual-core Allwinner A20 and quad-core Allwinner A31. Production of the A31 started in September 2012 and end products, mostly high-end tablets from Chinese manufacturers, appeared on the market in early 2013, including the Onda V972. Allwinner was the first to make this ARM processor core available in mass production. In March 2013, Allwinner launched its quad-core Phablet processor A31s. Based on quad-core cortex-A7 CPU architecture, this processor allows 3G, 2G, LTE, WIFI, BT, FM, GPS, AGPS and NFC using a minimum of external components. In October, 2013, Allwinner released its second dual-core A23, touted to be "The most efficient dual core processor" for tablets. The A23's CPU frequency was intended to run up to 1.5 GHz. In June, 2014, Allwinner announced the A33 quad-core SoC that is pin compatible with Allwinner's A23. The new SoC features four Cortex-A7 cores with 256 KB L1 cache, 512 KB L2 cache and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU. A new feature is the support of the

OpenMAX OpenMAX (Open Media Acceleration), often shortened as "OMX", is a non-proprietary and royalty-free cross-platform set of C-language programming interfaces. It provides abstractions for routines that are especially useful for processing of audio, ...

API. Allwinner has positioned the A33 for entry-level tablets, targeting quad-core tablets priced from $30 to $60, and in July 2014 announced that it has started mass production of the chip, which will sell for as low as $4 per unit.

A5x family

In April 2019, Allwinner announced the A50 28 nm quad-core SoC. The A50 features four Cortex-A7 cores running up to 1.8 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU.

A6x family

In June 2017, Allwinner announced the A63 28 nm quad-core SoC at APC 2017 Conference. The A63 features four Cortex-A53 cores running up to 1.8 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache and a Mali-T760 MP2 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2 support. VPU with 4K/6K VP9, H.265, and H.264 4K @ 30fps video decoder and H.264 HP encoder 1080P@30fps

A8x family

In October 2013, Allwinner disclosed its upcoming octa-core A80 SoC, featuring four high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 and four efficient ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores in a

big.LITTLE ARM big.LITTLE is a heterogeneous computing architecture developed by ARM Holdings, coupling relatively battery-saving and slower processor cores (''LITTLE'') with relatively more powerful and power-hungry ones (''big''). Typically, only one "s ...

configuration. On June 30, 2014, Chinese brand Onda officially released its octa-core Onda V989 tablet, which is based on Allwinner A80. This is the first Allwinner A80-based tablet that is available to consumers, priced at CNY 1099 (~US$177). In September 2014, Allwinner announced the

Allwinner A83T Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd is a fabless semiconductor company that designs mixed-signal systems on a chip (SoC). The company is headquartered in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. It has a sales and technical support office in Shenzhen, Guangdong, an ...

, an octa-core tablet processor that packs eight highly energy-efficient Cortex-A7 cores that can run simultaneously at up to around 2.0 GHz. It also includes a PowerVR GPU. The first tablet with the chip was expected to hit the market in Q4 2014.

A10x/20x/30x family

In April 2019, Allwinner announced their roadmap for 2019 to 2020 feature the A100, A200, A300 and A301 SoC. The Allwinner A200 was described as “AI blessing, computational power”.

F-Series

F series are processors based on Allwinner's melis OS, mainly used in smart video radios, video MP5, etc. From 2007 to 2011, Allwinner introduced its F-series processors, including the F10, F13, F18, F20, F1E200, F1C100, and F20. This series runs Allwinner's in-house operating system Melis2.0, which is now mainly used in vehicle multimedia systems, E-ink readers, video intercom systems, and so on.

Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

Game Gear Micro The is an 8-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation handheld game console released by Sega on October 6, 1990, in Japan, in April 1991 throughout North America and Europe, and during 1992 in Australia. The Game Gear pri ...

uses the F1C200S as main CPU.

H-Series

The H-series, introduced in 2014, are integrated application processors primarily targeted at OTT set-top box applications e.g. HDMI mini PCs, gaming boxes, etc.; Allwinner has launched the A80 octa-core OTT box solution, targeting at high-end OTT box market, and launched the Allwinner H8 octa-core processor for mid-range OTT boxes, and most recently launched the quad-core Allwinner H3 targeting the US$35 - $50 OTT box market.

R-Series

The R (“

Real-Time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

") Series Chip is designed for low power applications where timing is critical and must be done at the

edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

rather than in the

fog Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influ ...

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...

. The chip also has built in redundancies to meet industrial and automotive standards for processing. The R Series Chip has been applicable to a number of different industries including

Industrial Automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

, Safe PLCs,

Power Generation Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its delivery ( transmission, distribution, etc.) to end users or its stor ...

and

Distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations * Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

Healthcare Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

and Automotive Technology. The technology, specifically the R16 Chip, has also been utilised for robotic vacuums, Nintendo Classic Mini systems and smart speakers resulting from a longterm

partnership A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments o ...

with the Cogobuy Group's subsidiary IngDan (). Cogobuy's preparatory K-system was used as the basis to add integrated

SLAM Slam, SLAM or SLAMS may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional elements * S.L.A.M. (Strategic Long-Range Artillery Machine), a fictional weapon in the ''G.I. Joe'' universe * SLAMS (Space-Land-Air Missile Shield), a fictional anti-ball ...

modules with Allwinner chip's. The technical advantages and

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

s Cogobuy held allowed for chip localisation of edge computing required for the AI room mapping and cleaning. The R40 and R16 technology has been implemented on a number of

Banana Pi )Guangdong BiPai Technology Co., Ltd. ( zh, 广东比派科技有限公司) , marketing_target = Global , price = , soc = , cpu = , graphics = , storage = , memory = , os = Linux (incBananian Raspberry Pi OS, Armbian, Lubuntu, Fed ...

models. The R8 Chip was also used for “The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer”

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

project in 2015. Allwinner Product Roadmap 20131010

V-Series

The V-Series are

video encoding In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

processor targeting applications such as smart DVR,

IP camera An Internet Protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera that receives control data and sends image data via an IP network. They are commonly used for surveillance, but, unlike analog closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, ...

and smart home applications. It is similar to the A series SoC, but adds support for functions such as digital watermarking, motion detection and video scaling, as well as a CBR/VBR bit rate control mode.

Chipset specifications

The Allwinner SoC family includes A-series, which is intended for Android OS, and F-series, which is intended for the company's self-developed Melis

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

. The A-Series, including the A10, A20 and A31 SoCs, have a proprietary in-house designed multimedia co-processing DSP (Digital Signal Processing) processor technology for hardware accelerated video, image, and audio decoding, called CedarX (with subprocessing called "CedarV" for video decoding and "CedarA" for audio decoding), able to decode 2160p 2D and 1080p 3D video. The main disadvantages with CedarX technology and associated libraries is that Allwinner's own CedarX proprietary libraries have no clear usage license, so even if the source code for some versions is available the terms-of-use is unknown in open source software, and there is no

glue code Adhesive, also known as glue, cement, mucilage, or paste, is any non-metallic substance applied to one or both surfaces of two separate items that binds them together and resists their separation. The use of adhesives offers certain advant ...

for any other multimedia frameworks on Linux systems that could be used as a middle-ware, like for example

VAAPI Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit ...

A-Series

The A-series are integrated application processors primarily targeting tablets as well as targeting mini PCs, development boards and TV boxes.

H-Series

The H-series, introduced in 2014, are primarily targeted at OTT set-top box applications.

F-Series

R-Series

T-Series

Allwinner processor ecosystem

Allwinner Technology cooperates with around ten independent design houses (IDHs) based in Shenzhen, China, who develop solutions based on Allwinner processors. They include iNet Technology, Worldchip Digital Technology, Sochip Technology, Topwise Communication, ChipHD Technology, Highcharacter Science and Technology, WITS Technology, Ococci Technology, Next Huawen Technology, and Qi Hao Digital Technology. Apart from the white-box market, Allwinner processors can also be found in many brand products, including HP, MSI, ZTE, NOOX, GoTab, Skyworth, MeLE, Polaroid, Micromax, Archos, Texet, Ainol, Onda, Ramos, Teclast, Ployer, Readboy, Noah, RF, Bmorn, Apical, Astro Queo, etc.

Free and open-source software support

Due to the low price of the A10 SoC, the fact that it has a special rescue mode, and the early availability of

U-Boot U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ...

and Linux kernel source (through several device makers), the Allwinner SoCs have been popular among open-source software developers. Since at least 2012 the linux-sunxi community has been one of the most active ARM SoC communities, and the slightly older hardware has only very minimal dependence on firmware or blobs. Since 2014 Allwinner is also an official member of the

Linaro Linaro is an engineering organization that works on free and open-source software such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), QEMU, power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces for the ARM family of instruction sets and i ...

group, a nonprofit engineering consortium aimed at developing open-source software for the

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

. However, it has been noted that most of the contributions that Allwinner has made to the Linaro group has been in the form of binary blobs, which is in clear violation of the

GNU GPL license The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

that the Linux kernel uses.

Android 5.0 Lollipop support

In December 2014, Allwinner released its Android 5.0 SDK for Allwinner A33 quad-core solution.

Linux controversies

GPL controversy

Allwinner has been accused multiple times of violating the

GPL license The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

by not providing Linux/Android kernel source code or U-Boot source, and by using

LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

-licensed code within their binary blobs, etc.

Backdoor controversy

Allwinner has also been accused of including a

backdoor A back door is a door in the rear of a building. Back door may also refer to: Arts and media * Back Door (jazz trio), a British group * Porta dos Fundos (literally “Back Door” in Portuguese) Brazilian comedy YouTube channel. * Works so titl ...

in its published version of the Linux kernel. The backdoor allows any installed app to have full root access to the system. While this may be a remnant of debugging during the development process, it presents a significant security risk to all devices using the Allwinner provided kernel.

References

{{Electronics industry in China

Embedded microprocessors A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

Microprocessors made in China Fabless semiconductor companies Companies based in Zhuhai Semiconductor companies of China Chinese brands Chinese companies established in 2007

Product Lines

A-Series

A1x family

A2x and A3x family

A5x family

A6x family

A8x family

A10x/20x/30x family

F-Series

H-Series

R-Series

V-Series

Chipset specifications

A-Series

H-Series

F-Series

R-Series

T-Series

Allwinner processor ecosystem

Free and open-source software support

Android 5.0 Lollipop support

Linux controversies

GPL controversy

Backdoor controversy

See also

References