Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 will soon power some 8K TV boxes running Android TV from SDMC and others, and we now have detailed specifications as a “Quick Reference Manual” dropped in my inbox last night.
While like most Amlogic processors, the S928X is designed for TV boxes, the penta-core SoC may end up in affordable yet powerful single board computers with features such as HDMI 2.1a, Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe 2.0 or USB 3.0.
Amlogic S928X specifications:
- CPU sub-system
- 1x Arm Cortex-A76 core and 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores in big.LITTLE configuration
- NEON and Crypto extensions
- Private L2 cache and unified system L3 cache
- Build-in RISC-V core for system control processing
- GPUs
- Arm Mali-G57 MC2 3D GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, and OpenCL 2.0
- 2.5D graphics processor for scaling, alpha, rotation, and color space conversion operations
- VPU
- Amlogic Video Engine (AVE) with dedicated hardware decoders and encoders
- Decoding
- AV1 MP-10 @ L6.1 up to 8Kp60
- VP9 Profile-2 @ 6.1 up to 8Kp60
- H.265 HEVC MP-10 @ L6.1 up to 8Kp60
- AVS3 Phase 1 up to 8Kp60
- AVS2-P2 Profile up to 8Kp60
- H.264 AVC HP @ L5.2 up to 4Kp60
- MPEG-4, WMV/VC-1, AVS, MPEG-2, MPEG-1 up to 1080p60
- MJPEG and JPEG unlimited pixel resolution decoding (ISO/IEC-10918)
- Support multi-video decoder up to 4x 4Kp60
- Encoding
- JPEG image encoding up to 4Kp60
- H.265 video encoding up to 4Kp60 with low latency
- H.264 video encoding up to 4Kp60 with low latency
- 8th Generation Advanced Amlogic TruLife Image Engine with support for Dolby Vision (optional), HDR10+, HDR10, HLG, and HDR Vivid processing
- AI accelerator – Up to 3.2 TOPS Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) with Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) architecture, supports TensorFlow and Caffe
- Memory and Storage Interface
- Up to 8GB RAM DDR4-3200/LPDDR4/4X-4266 SDRAM
- SDSC/SDHC/SDXC card and SDIO interface with 1-bit and 4-bit data bus width supporting spec version 2.x/3.x/4.x DS/HS modes up to UHS-I SDR104
- eMMC and MMC card interface with 1/4/8-bit data bus width fully supporting spec version 5.1 HS400 with HW CQ
- Video Output – HDMI 2.1a transmitter including both controller and PHY supporting CEC, Dynamic HDR, and HDCP 2.2/2.3, up to 8Kp60 max resolution output with support for eARC, VRR, QMS, QFT, ALLM, DSC & SBTM (Source-Based Tone Mapping)
- Audio
- Support for MP3, AAC, WMA, RM, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, SRS Truvolume, Dolby Audio (optional), DTS (optional), and programmable with 7.1/5.1 down-mixing
- Low-power VAD
- Built-in SPDIF input/output up to 192KHz 16/24/32bit stereo
- 3x built-in TDM/PCM/I2S ports with TDM/PCM mode up to 48kHz x 32bits x 32ch or 192kHz x 16bits x 16ch and I2S mode up to 384kHz x 32bits x 16ch
- Digital microphone PDM input with programmable CIC, LPF, HPF, support up to 8 DMICs
- Built-in stereo audio DAC
- Digital Television Interface
- 4x serial transport stream (TS) or 2x serial and 1x parallel TS input interface with built-in demux processor for connecting to external digital TV tuner/demodulator
- Built-in PWM, I2C, and SPI interfaces to control tuner and demodulator
- Integrated ISO 7816 smart card controller
Integrated I/O Controllers and Interfaces
- Networking
- Integrated IEEE 802.3 10/100/1000M Ethernet MAC with RGMII interface
- WiFi and Bluetooth via PCIe/SDIO/USB/UART/PCM
- Network interface optimized for mixed WIFI and BT traffic
- USB – 1x USB XHCI OTG 2.0, 2x USB 2.0 host, 1x USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) multiplexed with PCIe 2.0
- PCIe – 1x PCIE 2.0 up to 5Gbps (multiplexed with USB 3.0)
- Other peripherals
- Multiple PWM, UART, I2C, and SPI interfaces with slave select
- Programmable IR remote input/output controllers
- 10-bit SAR ADC with 4 input channels
- GPIOs
- Misc
- General-purpose timers, counters, DMA controllers
- 24 MHz crystal input
- Embedded debug interface using ICE/JTAG
- Integrated Power On Reset(POR) module
- Security
- Trustzone-based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)
- Secure boot
- Crypto Engine
- AES/block cipher with 128/256-bit keys, standard 16 bytes block size and streaming ECB, CBC, and CTR modes
- TDES block cipher with ECB and CBC modes supporting 64-bit keys for DES and 192-bit keys for 3DES.
- SM4 block cipher with ECB, CBC, CTR modes
- RSA block cipher with 4K-bit keys
- Hardware crypto key-ladder operation and for transport stream encryption
- Built-in hardware True Random Number Generator (TRNG), CRC, and SHA-1/SHA-2/HMAC SHA engine
- Hardware ECC
- TS descrambler/scrambler and TS demux
- Built-in 4k bits One-Time-Programming memory for key storage
- Pre-region/ID memory security control and electric fence
- Hardware-based Trusted Video Path (TVP), video watermarking, and secured contents (needs SecureOS software)
- Secured IO and secured clock
- Package – 17 x 16 mm, FCBGA
The block diagram is a little confusing with regard to USB 3.0, and the rest of the document makes it clear it’s either USB 3.0 or PCIe 2.1, and there’s no extra dedicated USB 3.0 port. The Amlogic S928X processor also has IP blocks for artificial intelligence and machine learning with a 3.2 TOPS and a VAD. It won’t be suitable for smart displays though since the only video output interface shown in the document is the HDMI 2.1 port, and there isn’t any camera port either.
As far as software support is concerned, we are just told about a standard development environment utilizing a GNU/GCC Android toolchain, but we already know S928X will support Android 13 from the previous announcements. It does not look like Linux will be supported, at least not by Amlogic themselves, since it’s not the target market. For some specific use cases, It could still be a potential Rockchip RK3566 competitor with fewer interfaces, but an additional big Cortex-A76 core, 8K support, and a faster AI accelerator.
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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