We previously discussed Allwinner business units where each can share the same silicon (with different a name) but maintains its own software stacks for different target applications. Allwinner A-Series is the most well-known as Allwinner A10 & A20 were very popular SoC for tablets and TV boxes many years ago.
CNX Software received two slides that originated from Allwinner this morning. The first one shows the different Allwinner processor families, and the second provides a roadmap for A-Series processors for tablets with A33E, A100, and A200 coming this year and next.
Let’s go through the Allwinner processor families first and their main use case:
- R-Series and MR-Series – Smart home applications
- A-Series – Tablets
- VR-Series – Virtual reality
- H-Series and F-Series- High-performance applications like multimedia (TV boxes)
- T-Series- Automotive, I suppose mostly infotainment
- V-Series – Camera SoCs
- XR/XIN-Series – Wireless chips like the infamous XR819 WiFi chip.
- AXP – PMIC (Power Management IC) accompanying the company’s Arm SoCs
The second slide shows A33D, A100, and A200 processor coming in 2020-2021. We already mentioned the last time in an earlier roadmap, but there was a dearth of information with only marketing speaking describing A100 with “Experience the leap, flat-panel” and A200 with “AI blessing, computational power”.
Allwinner A33E SoC is an upgrade of Allwinner A33 designed for low-end tablets with the following key features:
- CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A7 processor
- VPU – 4K decode/1080p encode
- Display I/F – MIPI DSI, LVDS, and RGB
- Camera – ISP, MIPI CSI
- Audio codec
- Arm Trustzone
They did not bother including the GPU, but hopefully, Mali-400MP2 has been replaced with a more recent Mali-G31 GPU. The main improve I see is support for 4K video decoding.
Allwinner A100 specifications:
- CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor
- GPU – Imagination PowerVR GE8300
- Memory I/F – DDR3/4/LPDDR3/4 32-bit
- VPU – 4K decode/1080p encode
- Display I/F – MIPI DSI, LVDS, and RGB up to 1080p
- Camera – ISP, 2x MIPI CSI
- Audio codec
- Arm Trustzone
Allwinner A100 should be for mid-range tablets, and potentially offer an update path to Allwinner A64 designs.
Allwinner A200 specifications:
- CPU – big.LITTLE design (AFAIK, only the second such processor from the company after Allwinner A80)
- AI Accelerator – 3TOPS NPU
- VPU – 8K decode, 4K encode
- Display I/F – V-by-One, eDP, dual MIPI DSI
- High speed I/O – USB 3.1 and PCIe 3.0
V-by-One is often used in televisions and has two versions the older V-by-One HS supporting 8Kp60 resolution via 32 pairs @ 4 Gbps, or the newer V-by-One US standard capable of handing 8Kp60 with 8 pairs @ 16 Gbps. It’s unclear which version A200 supports. This will be Allwinner’s most powerful processor so far by a wide margin since all their previous 64-bit Arm designs were based on low power Cortex-A53 cores.
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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