Rockchip RK3399Pro SoC Integrates a 2.4 TOPS Neural Network Processing Unit for Artificial Intelligence Applications

Rockchip RK3399 (aka OP1) SoC was launched in 2016 with an hexa core Arm Cortex A72/A53 processor, Mali-T860MP4 GPU, support for 4K video decoding, and high speed interfaces like USB 3.0 and PCIe, as well as Gigabit Ethernet. The processor is found in Chromebooks, TV boxes, development boards, and other devices.

The company has unveiled an upgraded “Pro” version of the processor at CES 2018. Rockchip RK3399Pro appears to have most of the same features as its predecessor but adds a neural network processing unit (NPU) delivering up to 2.4 TOPS for artificial intelligence and deep learning applications.

The company claims that compared to traditional solution, the computing performance of typical deep neural network Inception V3, ResNet34 and VGG16 models on RK3399Pro is improved by almost one hundred times, and power consumption is less than 1% than A.I. solutions implemented using GPU acceleration.

Based on the information provided in the chart above (source: elDEE on twitter), Rockchip RK3399Pro outperforms other high-end SoCs (for such tasks) including Apple A11, and Huawei Kirin 970, both of which also features an NPU, and even offers better performance than NVIDIA TX2.

RK3399Pro NPU supports 8-bit & 16-bit operations, is compatible with various AI software frameworks and APIs, including OpenVX and TensorFlow Lite/AndroidNN API, and comes with AI software tools capable of handling Caffe/TensorFlow models. An RK3399Pro hardware reference design can also be provided to speed up development, but no details were provided.

Via Liliputing

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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