Recently, Rockchip announced the open-source of its high-end chip RK3399 system platform, suitable for nearly a hundred industry terminal product applications. This strategy has been hailed by domestic media as a “revolutionary step for domestic chips,” causing a huge stir in the semiconductor industry.
Compared to the high-end RK3399, Rockchip’s previous flagship, positioned in the mid-to-high-end market, the RK3288 is the earliest chip to support open-source with a relatively complete support. RK3288 is open-sourced for hundreds of industries, already has considerable industrial scale, and enjoys a very high market share. Its ecological chain includes numerous giant partners that play a significant role in the technology field.
In terms of performance, RK3288 is based on 28nm HKMG process, and the processor uses a quad-core ARM Cortex-A17, with a frequency of up to 1.8GHz. The DDR controller adopts a dual-channel 64bits DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2 design. The GPU uses a quad-core Mali-T7 series GPU, with a frequency of up to 600MHz. This chip has a built-in 2D/3D graphics GPU accelerator, perfectly supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.1, OpenCL 1.1, and DirectX9.3, showing significant improvements in 3D effects compared to similar products. RK3288 also supports decoding of all mainstream video formats, including H.265 and 4Kx2K resolution video decoding.
In terms of interfaces, RK3288 has various high-speed display output interfaces, such as dual LVDS, dual MIPI-DSI, eDP1.1, HDMI 2.0, etc., and supports embedded 13M ISP dual MIPI-CSI2, offering rich peripheral interface support capabilities.
In terms of support for developers and industry open-source, RK3288 opens all product-level codes. Like RK3399, it also provides immediate technical support from the open-source community. Developers can access the portal on the Rockchip official website.
GitHub portal: https://github.com/rockchip-linux
WikiDot portal: http://rockchip.wikidot.com/
Internationally renowned processor and electronic technology company Phytec has launched the phyCORE-RK3288 ARM CortexTM-A17 System on Module, using RK3288 SOM for industrial control boards. According to Phytec’s website description, the Rockchip RK3288 CPU and GPU are powerful, easily handling full HD video and multitasking, making it very suitable for mobile applications.
According to foreign media reports, earlier this year, ASUS launched a microcomputer Tinker Board equipped with Cortex, which is said to be equipped with a Rockchip RK3288 processor Cortex-A17, with a frequency of 1.8GHz, supporting 4K H.264 video decoding, and Ethernet transmission speeds can reach gigabit levels, priced at 64.9 euros.
At the Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany in March (2017 Embedded World), an industrial robot developed based on the RK3288 platform also attracted considerable attention, with its superb stability and intelligence, low power consumption, and small hardware requirements being its biggest selling points.
Industry insiders analyze that as a well-known domestic chip enterprise, Rockchip’s open-source hardware strategy has a huge influence, positioning the mid-range and high-end RK3288 and RK3399, providing various product possibilities for industry brand merchants and developers, allowing mass-produced terminals to gain greater freedom and creativity in personalization and technological differentiation.