Telechips TCC898x (Alligator) 64-bit ARM SoC is Designed for High-end 4K Set-Top Boxes

Telechips processors were often found in consumer devices such as Android tablets, mini PCs and TV Sticks a few years ago, but it’s been a while since I have seen a devices based on Telechips. So after seeing an automotive SoC from the company, I decided to visit the company website to check if they were still designing processors for the consumer market, and found TCC898x quad core Cortex A53 processor for “Smart Stick, IP-Client and STB with 4K 60fps decoding” with some interesting features.

Telechips TCC898x SoC specifications:

• CPU- Quad core Cortex A53 processor with NEON, TrustZone, 32KB/32KB L1 cache and 512KB L2 cache
• MCU – Cortex-M4 micro-controller
• GPU
  • 2D – Vivante GC420 composition processing core for 4K user interfaces
  • 3D – ARM Mali-400MP2
• VPU – Multi-format VPU and 4K VPU with HEVC and VP9 support
• Memory I/F – DDR3/4
• Storage I/F – NAND controller (60-bit ECC), SD/eMMC controller
• Peripherals
  • Video Output – Display Controller, LVDS transmitter, HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.x, video composite
  • Video Input – Yes, but no details.
  • Audio – S/PDIF Tx and Rx, 9.1 channels I2S , stereo I2S
  • USB – USB 2.0 host, USB 2.0 OTG, USB 3.0
  • Gigabit Ethernet MAC
  • TS and TS demux (normally used to interface tuners)
  • PCIe interface
  • I2C, UART, GPSB (General Purpose Serial Bus), SDIO
  • Timer/RTC, DMA, IR receiver

The overall concept is pretty similar to their Telechips TCC893x Cortex A9 + Cortex-M3 processor, except most items have been upgraded, except notably the 3D GPU which remains a Mali-400MP2.

Telechips TCC898x supports Linux (with HTML5 interface) and Android operating systems, and contrary to most other Android TV boxes and set-top boxes, devices based on the new processor will support 4K user interfaces too thanks to Vivante GC420 2D GPU.  The chip also support hardware cyphers and conditional access (CAS) for “full compliance with 4K contents security guideline for variable STB applications”. I could not find much more information, and Googling for TCC8980 processor (and others up to TCC8989) did not return anything interesting so far. The last update to Telechips open source page shows the company released Linux 3.4.45 source code in February 2015.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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