Last year, Allwinner published an updated roadmap for tablet processors that included A100, A200, and A300 SoC’s. None of those have been launched yet, but I’ve just noticed the Allwinner A133 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor showed up on the company’s website.
That’s yet another entry-level processor coupled with a PowerVR GE8300 GPU, but you’d get support for Android 10, instead of the older Android 7.1/8.1 SDK provided for the earlier Allwinner A-series tablet processors. This time around, the company also pairs A133 processor with its own wireless chips, either XR829 WiFI 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 chip, or AW859A dual-band 802.11ac WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5 chip.
Allwinner A133 specifications:
- CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.6GHz with 32KB L1 I-cache + 32KB L1 D-cache per core, 512KB L2 cache, and CoolFlex power management architecture
- GPU – Imagination PowerVR GE8300 with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 1.2
- Memory I/F – DDR3/DDR3L/DDR4/LPDDR3/LPDDR4, 32-bit width, up to 4GB
- Storage I/F – eMMC 5.1, 8-bit parallel NAND Flash, SPI NAND flash
- Video Unit
- H.265 video decoder 4K @ 30fps, H.264 video decoder 4K @ 30fps, VP9 video decoder 720p @ 30fps
- H.264 video encoder 1080p @ 60fps
- MJPEG/JPEG Baseline encoder 4K @ 15fps
- Display
- MIPI-DSI interface, dual-link LVDS interface, RGB interface up to 1920 x 1200
- Allwinner SmartColor2.0 post-processing engine
- Camera
- 4 lanes MIPI-CSI @ 1.0Gbps
- 13M @ 10fps or 8M @ 30fps ISP with 3A/2D de-noise/defect pixel correction
- Audio
- 2x DAC and 2x ADC
- LINE-OUT/MIC-IN/Stereo headphone
- 4x I2S, 8-channel DMIC, OWA OUT
- USB – 1x USB Host, 1x USB OTG
- Other Peripherals
- SDIO 3.0
- 3x SPI, 6x UART, 6x I2C/TWI, 5x PWM
- EMAC, GPADC, LRADC, CIR RX&TX
- Package – LFBGA 346balls; 12 x 12 mm body size, 0.5 mm ball pitch, 0.3 mm ball size
It appears the company is now attempting to provide a complete solution mostly comprised of their chips with the main processor (A133), XR829 or AW859A wireless chip/module, and AXP707 PMIC. 
Sometimes I’ve seen the Allwinner-branded memory as well. That means we may see less Allwinner hardware with Ampak wireless module going forward.
AW859A is already used in some Allwinner H616 designs including X96Q MAX TV box, and Shenzhen Xunlong will soon launch an updated version of Orange Pi Zero2 SBC with Allwinner H616 and AW859A module.
Additional details can be found on Allwinner A-series product page. I could not find information about AW859A module, but firmware files can be found on Orange Pi Xunlong’s github repository. XR829 is a bit older and has its own product page on XRadioTech website.
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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So nothing substantially new at all…
It’s basically an A64 with different GPU and the latest iteration of the VPU.
No USB3, no PCIE, no improvement on the cores.
That’s probably why all the use and throw tablets come with MTK SOCs nowadays…
And if the new WLAN chip is working similarly well than the previous, then that means a lot of fun for everyone.
The Allwinner H616 etc tv box SoC get poor reviews for overheating and playback problems. Allwinner have well dropped the ball on quality.
Did they ever have the ball to begin with?
Yes of course when they had A10 and Apple only A8
Hm, seems we don’t know Allwinner business, cause it looks like they are pumping out the same thing over and over for years.
Notable from the block diagram: g2d, iommu, cir-rx and “ledc” (what’s this?)
Maybe USB3/PCIe is not so benefical to a tablet,
But, I really would like to see USB3 Type-C transition/adaption as default and Type-A as legacy.
It was suggested that Allwinner may switched from ARISC AR100 to ARM Cortex-M as coprocessor (CPUS) in its SoCs.
It’s just that nowadays I never see those AW tablets anywhere, so it seems cheap tablet business is also no more completely insensitive to crap.
Wow cortex M3, now that crust fw is working on or1k… What a coincidence…
Let’s see, if Allwinner brings all the driver for this into the mainline kernel. Would be great.
was that the irony? cant tell really 🙂 allwinner isnt really interested in mainline kernel
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-arm-kernel/list/?submitter=192359&archive=both&state=*
No, it wasn’t. I really looking forward to. And they started doing so.
One word: junk
That’s already in the feature list under GPU.
Seems like AW employ the last few people in the world who don’t yet consider the 8-year old A53 as too small for a tablet by 2020. Nowadays most potential customers have already bought or seen a slow tablet and know they don’t want to waste their money on another one. Hint: you know your tablet is too slow when you never know where you’ve put it. Running on A53 and 4GB RAM definitely are limiting factors that will lead to this situation and I strongly doubt they’ll sell many of these.
Low-end Amazon, Samsung, Lenovo, ONN (Walmart), etc. tablets are still being peddled with 2-3 GB of RAM. Maybe even 1-1.5 GB. 4 GB is enough for media consumption and web browsing, even though 8 GB would be nice (RasPi can do it at $75).
What are people doing that needs 8GB? Many Linux OS use 2GB on RPI 4 .
Android TV boxes play games and video with 2 GB . You don’t need 8GB to print, hello world or blink a led on off, for education needs.
Web browsing, torrent seeding, ramdisks, plenty of stuff.
More RAM doesn’t hurt anything but your pocketbook, and not by much.
These things are fine for e-waste tablets you give to the kids to keep them quiet.
It doesn’t look like Allwinner really care about their chips being in top of the range premium products.
But at least over here even in the junk kids pacifier tablets range they got replaced by mediatek, often even with (obsolete) 3G for a similar price like an A33 based they still sold 2 years ago…
Never even seen A64 here.