In 2019, Rockchip released the RK3588. At that time, the specifications of RK3588 with its four large cores and four small cores were comparable to the flagship processors of smartphones. However, due to various reasons, this chip did not actually ship until the end of 2021 or early 2022. According to Rockchip’s usual practice, they generally release the official EVB board simultaneously. This EVB board exposes all interfaces and is equipped with two screens, making it expensive and generally unaffordable for most developers. Moreover, this development board is also not easy to purchase, as it reportedly requires registration with Rockchip and must go through a dedicated agent process.
Perhaps Rockchip also realized this issue, and later one of their brands, called toybrick, released a development board named TB-RK3588X. This development board is relatively cheaper and has trimmed some functionalities compared to the EVB board. For general developers or small enterprises looking to evaluate the RK3588, this development board is actually more suitable.
Even though the toybrick development board has fewer restrictions, it still needs to be obtained through agents. Currently, Shenzhen Fenghuolun, as a partner of toybrick, has this development board available for sale in their store. You can purchase it directly from the link below without any additional processes.
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=672959094172
This article will briefly introduce the TB-RK3588X from both hardware and software perspectives.
The outer packaging of the development board, with text explaining the positioning of the toybrick brand development board.
The package includes one core board, one base board, a power supply, a Type-C cable, and a heat sink.
The front and back of the base board show that even with the trimmed functionalities on the official full-function version EVB, there are still many interfaces available.
Assemble the base board, core board, and heat sink to form a complete development board.
The main hardware configuration is as follows:
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Rockchip RK3588, featuring quad-core Cortex-A76 and quad-core Cortex-A55, with a maximum frequency of 2.4GHz, Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, and an NPU with 6 TOPs computing power.
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8GB LPDDR4 memory, with the memory chip manufacturer being Samsung, the specification is LPDDR4X 4266 Mbps.
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32GB EMM, with the EMMC chip manufacturer being Kingston, the specification is 5.1 (HS400).
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Supports up to four displays, with a maximum support for 8K output, including HDMI, USB-C DisplayPort, DSI, EDP.
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SATA interface for connecting HDD.
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USB 3.0 Host x1, USB 3.0 Type-C x1, USB2.0 x2, PCIE3.0 x1.
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AP6275S, using PCIE2.0 interface, supports WIFI6 5G/2.5G, BT4.2.
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2x GMAC (10/100/1000M), one using RGMII, the other using PCIE expansion.
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The interface distribution diagram is as follows:
Current price for 8GB memory + 32GB EMMC specification core board + base board is 3299 yuan.
Meanwhile, third-party development boards with similar specifications are around 2000 yuan. However, from a hardware perspective, the TB-RK3588X has several advantages that other third-party development boards cannot match:
1. Hardware is fully open-source, including core board and base board, while some third-party board manufacturers do not disclose all schematics.
2. High-quality materials used in hardware, avoiding mysterious issues during debugging due to cost-cutting on materials.
3. Full-function PCIE3.0 and SATA 3.0, providing sufficient power supply.
Currently, toybrick provides two systems for TB-RK3588X: Android 12.0 and Debian 11.0, where Android 12.0 does not have source code, while Debian 11.0 has kernel and uboot source code, but rootfs source code is not available; rootfs can only be customized after being burned onto the board.
The official wiki for toybrick is https://t.rock-chips.com/wiki/CN/tb-rk3588x/, where relevant software development materials are available.
Here, using Android as an example, let’s introduce its operating system.
First, download its firmware.
After extracting, the following contents are obtained:
The first one is its firmware, and the second is its burning tool.
Press this button, then power on, open the burning tool, and you will see a loader device appear.
The burning tool has been configured with the address; just click execute to start burning.
After burning, the development board will boot into the Android 12 system. Since the board is equipped with a USB-to-serial chip, simply connect a regular USB cable between the PC and the development board to see the boot log.
From the boot process, the RK3588 is similar to previous RK SoCs, starting with the DDR firmware.
The DDR frequency is finally fixed at 2112MHz, which exceeds the 1560MHz of the 3568, making it the highest supported DDR frequency in the RK series chips.
Then it can be seen that its memory is indeed recognized as 16bit x 4 channels, totaling 64 bits.
Next, enter uboot; the RK uboot version is still 2017.9.
The kernel version has been updated to 5.10, and its compiler has also switched to LLVM.
After entering the Android system, you can see its compilation information via getprop.
The UI of Android 12 has also been updated, making it more suitable for horizontal devices.
Using the official development board and the officially released firmware for performance testing will provide a certain level of representativeness, although the TB-RK3588X does not fully unleash the performance of RK3588 in some aspects, such as its DDR using LPDDR4X instead of the faster LPDDR5.
For chips aimed at high-end tablets and high-end boxes, we use 3Dmark LIFE EXTREME for testing, while simultaneously using the command line to monitor load and temperature changes.
After installing 3Dmark, the wild life test project also needs to be installed. Then, find the wild life test project on the homepage and enter the test.
During the test, system information can be viewed using the following commands:
Memory consumption free
Get CPU big core (A76) 0,1 temperature cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone1/temp
Get CPU big core (A76) 2,3 temperature cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone2/temp
Get CPU small core (A55) 0,1,2,3 temperature cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone3/temp
Get GPU temperature cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone5/temp
Get all CPU load information top -n 1
Get CPU small core current working frequency cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_cur_freq
Get CPU small core maximum working frequency cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_max_freq
Get CPU big core current working frequency cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy4/scaling_cur_freq
Get CPU big core maximum working frequency cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy4/scaling_max_freq
Get GPU current working frequency cat /sys/class/devfreq/fb000000.gpu/cur_freq
Get GPU maximum working frequency cat /sys/class/devfreq/fb000000.gpu/max_freq
The final test results are as follows:
The system information during the test and in idle state is as follows:
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CPU big core 0,1 temperature
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CPU big core 2,3 temperature
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CPU small core temperature
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CPU small core working frequency
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CPU small core maximum working frequency
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CPU big core working frequency
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CPU big core maximum working frequency
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Maximum working frequency
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From the scores, the performance of RK3588 can be compared to the MTK platform’s Dimensity 1000+ (1167 points) and Dimensity 1100 (1215 points), and it can also be compared to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 (1116 points), lying between Apple’s A11 and A12. It truly deserves the title of a flagship chip.
It can be seen that when running high graphical load tests like 3Dmark, its big cores and GPU run at maximum frequency, while the small cores do not reach their peak frequency. During idle state, the big cores and GPU hardly run, with temperatures below 50 degrees Celsius, indicating a good balance between performance and power consumption design.
This article first introduced the hardware of TB-RK3588X, then briefly introduced its Android 12 SDK, and finally tested its performance using 3Dmark LIFE EXTREME on Android 12. If you want to evaluate the RK3588 platform from both software and hardware perspectives, then TB-RK3588X is a great choice. It has exposed most of the commonly used interfaces, and the price of TB-RK3588X is relatively cheaper compared to the official EVB board. Currently, it can be directly obtained from the toybrick’s agent Shenzhen Fenghuolun.
As for the RK3588, although its release was delayed by more than a year, this chip still holds strong competitiveness in the tablet and box markets, basically being the strongest in its class among domestic platforms.
