MediaTek has introduced the Genio platform for AIoT devices, and unveiled the first chip of the Genio family with the Genio 1200 Octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 processor with a 4.8 TOPS NPU, 4K video support, and designed for premium AIoT products.
The chip is manufactured with a 6nm processor, is said to consume less than 8W, supports dual 4Kp60 video output and up to 48MP @ 30 fps video capture, and WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and 5G connectivity can be added through add-in chips. Targets applications include Smart Home appliances, HMI, industrial IoT, robotics, and more.
MediaTek Genio 1200 key features and specifications:
- CPU – Octa-core processor with four Cortex-A78 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores
- GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC5 GPU
- VPU
- Encoding up to 4Kp60 with H.265/HEVC
- Decoding up to 4Kp90, AV1, VP9, HEVC, H.264 codecs supported
- AI accelerator – Dual-core Mediatek AI processor (APU) with INT8, INT16, FP16 support, up to 4.8 TOPS
- DSP – HiFi 4 audio DSP
- System Memory – Up to 16GB LPDDR4X-4266
- Video I/F
- Dual display up to 4Kp60 + 4Kp60
- HDMI 2.0 Rx
- 48MP @ 30 fps single camera or 16MP + 16MP @ 30fps dual camera
- Ethernet – GbE MAC
- Wireless – Support for WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.2 and/or 5G modem modules
- USB – USB 3.1 and USB 2.0
- PCIe – PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0
- Integrated PMIC
- Power consumption – < 8 Watts
- Process – 6nm
The NPU is best suited for AI workloads such as face recognition, object identification, scene analysis, OCR (optical character recognition), etc… MediaTek will provide Android and Ubuntu operating systems for the Genio 1200 platform, as well as support for the Yocto Project, and the company’s NeuroPilot SDK. Resources for software development can be found on the developer’s website.
Besides the high-end Genio 1200 premium processor, MediaTek also lists three other Genio processors:
- Genio 500 octa-core (4x Cortex-A73 + 4x Cortex-A53) processor for retail and commercial IoT applications that require high-performance edge processing and advanced multimedia capabilities.
- Genio 350 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor for hubs in portable and home environments that require lighter vision and voice edge processing.
- Genio 130 Arm Cortex-M33 MCU for thin-OS and cloud-supported voice assistant devices that require an audio and microphone-orientated platform.
I suspect those will supersede earlier MediaTek AIoT SoCs such as the MediaTek i350 and i500.
MediaTek Genio 1200 will be available starting in H2 2022, but the company did not provide any ETA for Genio 500/300/130. More details may be found on the product page and press release.
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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Any idea why there isn’t any SBC with Mediatek SOC ?
Is it that expensive ?
There used to be some, by MediaTek themselves and third parties.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/07/17/getting-started-with-mediatek-x20-android-development-board/
https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/12/30/pumpkin-i500-sbc-uses-mediatek-i500-aiot-soc-for-computer-vision-and-ai-edge-computing/
But none has gotten any traction, probably because of the price.
Boards without SATA connectors and without PCIe/mPCIe connectors aren’t much interesting; one can simply just purchase a Raspberry Pi, which people now trust more in than “unknown boards”. -Besides, one of those boards had only 10/100Mbit Ethernet, which is completely off. This Genio 1200 does sound quite interesting. Cortex-A78 runs the majority of ARM architectures natively and it’s the most energy efficient and fastest of the A7x family. In addition, it has PCIe 2.0 (fine for mPCIe) and PCIe 3.0. It has a GPU, which makes it great for an optimized POV ray-tracer. The NPU could be used for other… Read more »
Unfortunately all of them have an AI accelerator… except the Genio 130 MCU part. Would’ve been interesting to see a MediaTek MCU with that feature.
This could make a nice Pi-class SBC.
Can be a true PC-Class Linux SBC.
The question is, will they sell this in small quantities via distribution, as it’s almost impossible to buy anything MTK. Also, will they provide software support?
The answer is always no.
BTW, this looks equivalent to the MT8195 aka Kompanio 1200. Same 8-core Cortex-A78/A55 on 6nm, and “1200” in the name.
Try here https://www.mediatek.com/products/aiot/mediatek-genio-1200
Woow! A78/A55. Much faster than even RK3588.
But you will never see it running Linux on an affordable SBC or mini PC.
Do you count Chromebooks/Chromeboxes?
No. And even in Chromebooks it seems like they will push the MT8195 as premium, with MT8192 and MT8186 being cheaper.
Yes. There’s a good possibility for it not to be affordable/cheap. Hope it’ll not priced too high though.
Great specs, but this chip is going to cost $40 or more. SBCs will be $200.
Agree that $200 is a bit too expensive. But i could tolerate somewhere around $150.
Btw, how much is the the estimated cost for RK3588?
$200 could be acceptable for an ARM SBC… if it offers a lot of performance and I/O, and can go head-to-head with low-end x86.
People are paying no less than $500 for the Mac Mini with M1 that can run Asahi Linux, but without GPU acceleration and other features. And there are various options in the $100 to $300 range for x86.