Rockchip (Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese

fabless 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 ...

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...

company based in Fuzhou,

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its c ...

province. Rockchip has been providing SoC products for tablets & PCs, streaming media TV boxes, AI audio & vision, IoT hardware since founded in 2001. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

(SoC) products, using 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, configure ...

licensed from

ARM Holdings Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England. Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, Real ...

for the majority of its projects. Rockchip was one of the top 50 fabless C suppliers in 2018. The company established cooperation with Google, Microsoft and Intel. On 27 May 2014,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

announced an agreement with Rockchip to adopt the Intel architecture for entry-level tablets. Rockchip is a supplier of SoCs to Chinese white-box tablet manufacturers as well as supplying OEMs such as Asus, HP, Samsung and

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems ...

Products

Featured Products

RK3399 is the flagship SoC of Rockchip, Dual Cortex-A72 and Quad Cortex-A53 and Mali-T860MP4 GPU, providing high computing and multi-media performance, rich interfaces and peripherals. And software supports multiple APIs: OpenGL ES 3.2,

Vulkan Vulkan is a low- overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher perform ...

1.0, OpenCL 1.1/1.2, OpenVX 1.0, AI interfaces support TensorFlow Lite/AndroidNN API. RK3399 Linux source code and hardware documents are on GitHub and Wiki opensource website. RK3566 is a successor to the RK3288 and outperforms it significantly, with quad core Arm A55 CPUs and an Arm Mali G52 GPU. Boards based on it are expected to be on sale in early 2021 from manufacturers like Pine64. RK3288 is a high performance IoT platform, Quad-core Cortex-A17 CPU and Mali-T760MP4 GPU, 4K video decoding and 4K display out. It is applied to products of various industries including Vending Machine, Commercial Display, Medical Equipment, Gaming, Intelligent POS, Interactive Printer, Robot and Industrial Computer. RK3288 Linux source code and hardware documents are on GitHub and Wiki opensource website. LEC-PX30-F (cropped) Rockchip PX30

RK3326 and PX30 were announced in 2018, marketed for AI. PX30 is a variant of RK3326 targeting IoT market, supporting dual VOP. They use Arm's CPU Cortex-A35 and GPU G31. RK3308 is an entry-level product line for mainstream devices. The chip has multiple audio input interfaces, and greater energy efficiency, featuring embedded voice activation detection). The announcement of RV1108 indicated Rockchip's move to AI/computer vision territory. With CEVA DSP embedded, RV1108 powers smart cameras including 360° Video Camera, IPC, Drone, Car Camcoder, Sport DV, VR, etc. It also has been deployed for new retail and intelligent marketing applications with integrated algorithms.

Early Products

RK26xx series - Released 2006. RK27xx series - Rockchip was first known for their RK27xx series that was very efficient at

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

/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

bitrate In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction w ...

s of up to 2.5 Mbit/s. This chip was the core of many

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

and

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

-based

mobile internet device A mobile Internet device (MID) is a multimedia capable mobile device providing wireless Internet access. They are designed to provide entertainment, information and location-based services for personal or business use. They allow 2-way communicati ...

s. The RK2816 was targeted at PMP devices, and MIDs. It has the same specifications as the RK2806 but also includes HDMI output,

support, and up to 720p hardware video acceleration. RK29xx series The Rockchip RK291x is a family of SoCs based on the

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 Corte ...

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 WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponso ...

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 OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...

ES 2.0 and

OpenVG OpenVG is an API designed for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics. Its primary platforms are mobile phones, gaming & media consoles and consumer electronic devices. It was designed to help manufacturers create more attractive user interfac ...

. The RK2918 is compatible with

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 The Mali series of graphics processing units (GPUs) and multimedia processors are semiconductor intellectual property cores produced by Arm Holdings for licensing in various ASIC designs by Arm partners. Mali GPUs were developed by Falanx Micros ...

GPU. As of 2013, the RK2926 was targeted at tablets, while the RK2928 was targeted at tablets and Android TV dongles and boxes. 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. * 28 nm HKMG process at

GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD ...

* Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9, up to 1.6 GHz * 512 KB L2 cache * Mali-400 MP4 GPU, up to 600 MHz (typically 533 MHz) supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0, Open G 1.1 * High performance dedicated 2D processor * DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR2 support * Dual-panel display up to 2048x1536 resolution 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. * 40 nm process * Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7, up to 1.3 GHz * Mali-400 MP2 GPU * High performance dedicated 2D processor * DDR3, DDR3L memory interface * 1080p multi-format video decoding and 1080p video encoding for H.264 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. * 28 nm HKMG process. * Quad-core ARM Cortex-A17, up to 1.8 GHz * Quad-core ARM Mali-T760 MP4 (also incorrectly called Mali-T764) GPU clocked at 600 MHz supporting

OpenGL ES OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-ac ...

1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1,

OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-prog ...

1.1, Renderscript,

Direct3D Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware ...

11.1 * High performance dedicated 2D processor * 1080P video encoding for H.264 and VP8, MVC * 4K H.264 and 10 bits H.265 video decode, 1080p multi-video decode * Supports 4Kx2K H.265 resolution * Dual-channel DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR2, LPDDR3 * Up to 3840x2160 display output,

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controll ...

2.0

RK3288 controversy

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

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 architecture 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 RK3368, 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. * 64bits Octa-Core Cortex-A53, up to 1.5 GHz * High-performance PowerVR SGX6110 GPU with support for OpenGL 3.1 and OpenGL ES 3.0 * 4Kx2K H.264/H.265 real-time video playback * HDMI 2.0 with 4Kx2K @ 60 fps display output The RK3399, also known as OP1 announced by ARM at Mobile World Congress in February 2016, features six 64 bit CPUs, including 2 Cortex-A72 and 4 Cortex-A53. The RK3399 is used for the development of the open source Panfrost driver for ARM Mali GPU Midgard series. Consumer devices include Asus Chromebook Flip C101PA-DB02, Asus Chromebook Tablet CT100, Samsung Chromebook Plus, and Pine64 Pinebook Pro. SBCs include 96Boards RK1808, Boardcon EM3399, Firefly RK3399, Khadas Edge, Lenovo Leez LP710, NanoPi M4B, Rock Pi 4, Pine64 RockPro64, Orange Pi 4, and Zidoo M9. SOMs include BeiQi RK3399Pro AIoT (Compatible 96boards), Boardcon PICO3399 SO-DIMM, and Geniatech SOM3399 RK3399 (Compatible 96boards). The RK3399Pro is a version of the RK3399 that includes a 2.4 TOPS NPU. SBCs include Rock Pi N10, Toybrick RK3399Pro, and VMARC RK3399Pro SoM Ficus2 Evaluation Board. SOM example is VMARC RK3399Pro SoM.

RK35xx series

The RK3566 is expected to be available in Q2 2020, with the following specifications: * CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz * GPU – Arm Mali-G52 2EE * NPU – 0.5 TOPS with support for INT8/ INT16 * Multi-Media ** 8M ISP 2.0 with 3F HDR (Line-based/Frame-based/DCG) ** Support MIPI-CSI2,4-lane ** 1080p60 H.265, H.264 encoding ** 4K H.264/H.265/VP9 60fps video decoder ** DVP interface with BT.656/BT.1120 * Memory – 32-bit DDR3L/LPDDR3/DDR4/LPDDR4/LPDDR4X * Storage – eMMC 4.51, NAND Flash, SFC NOR flash, SATA 3.0, SD card via SDIO * Display ** Support Dual Display ** MIPI-DSI/RGB interface ** LVDS/eDP/DP ** HDMI 2.0 * Audio – 2x 8-ch I2S, 2x 2-ch I2S, PDM, TDM, SPDIF * Networking – 2x RGMII interfaces (Gigabit Ethernet) with TSO (TCP segmentation offload ) network acceleration * USB – USB 2.0 OTG and USB 2.0 host; USB3.0 HOST * Other peripherals ** PCIe ** 3x SDIO 3.0 interface for Wi-Fi and SD card ** 6x I2C, 10x UART, 4x SPI, 8x PWM, 2xCAN interface RK3566-based SBC example is Pine64 Quartz64. RK3568-based SBC example is Firefly Station P2, and SOM example is Core-3568J AI Core Board. The RK3588 succeeds the RK3399Pro as flagship SoC. It's expected to be available in Q3/Q4 2020. * CPU – 4x Cortex-A76 and 4x Cortex-A55 cores in dynamIQ configuration * GPU – Arm "Natt" GPU * NPU 2.0 (Neural Processing Unit) * Multimedia – 8K video decoding support, 4K encoding support * Display – 4K video output, dual-display support * Process – 8 nm LP

Open-source commitment

Rockchip provides open source software on GitHub and maintains a wiki Linux SDK website. To offer free downloads of SoC hardware documents and software development resources as well as third-party development kits info. The chipsets available are RK3399, RK3288, RK3328 and RK3036.

Markets and competition

In the market for SoCs for tablets, Rockchip faces competition with

Allwinner Technology 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, Guangdon ...

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 p ...

, Actions Semiconductor, Spreadtrum, Leadcore Technology,

Samsung Semiconductor Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, acco ...

, Qualcomm,

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies Inc. (), is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA ...

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 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 ...

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,

announced an agreement with Rockchip to jointly deliver an Intel-branded mobile SoC platform based on Intel's

Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas ...

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

s. 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 Infineon Technologies AG is a German semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1999, when the semiconductor operations of the former parent company Siemens AG were spun off. Infineon has about 50,280 employees and is one of the ten largest semico ...

(which Intel acquired some time ago). The application processor may also originate from Infineon or Intel.

List of Rockchip SoCs

ARMv7-A processors

ARMv8-A processors

Tablet processors with integrated modem

References

External links

Rockchip Wiki Linux SDKGithub Rockchip-linux Website

Rockchip Korea Company website

Rockchip Korea Company website

RK3288 SoC specification
22 February 2014
RK3368 SoC specification
19 April 2015 {{Electronics industry in China Fabless semiconductor companies Semiconductor companies of China ARM architecture Embedded microprocessors System on a chip Companies based in Fuzhou Computer companies established in 2001 Privately held companies of China Chinese brands Microprocessors made in China Chinese companies established in 2001 Electronics companies established in 2001