Rockchip RK32xx Category - Page 19 of 28 - CNX Software

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Linux 3D GPU Acceleration Demo on Rockchip RK3288 based Firefly Board

Several devices and development boards based on Rockchip RK3288 processor already support Linux, usually with images based on Ubuntu, including Ugoos UM3 / UT3, Open Hour Chameleon, and Firefly-RK3288 among others. What these images lack however, is support for 2D and 3D graphics acceleration with the GPU, and hardware video decoding/encoding with the VPU. But Jas-hacks has made some progress with 3D graphics support. He has managed to add GPU acceleration via EGL/OpenGL ES bringing 3D acceleration to the platform, but 2D support is not there yet, meaning X11 still heavily relies on software rendering. But the implementation is still good enough to run the usual es2gears and glmark2-es2 benchmarks. as well as some WebGL demos in Chromium. Performance is currently underwhelming, with 50 points in glmark-es2, even a bit lower than the score (54 points) I got with ODROID-X board powered by Exynos 4412 SoC with a Mali-400MP4 GPU, […]

January 25, 2015January 9, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

All HDMI 2.0 Implementations Are not Equal

One of the key changes between HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 is support for up to 4K @ 60Hz instead of just 4K @ 30Hz, and at first, I thought an HDMI 2.0 capable device would be compatible with HDMI 2.0 TV, and it did not need to look into details. I was wrong. There’s a nice table in Wikipedia that explains the main differences between HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 and older versions. Other features include YCbCr 4:2:0 (That’s the important bit), Rec. 2020 color space, 32 channel audio, 21:9 aspect ratio, and more. By the way, there’s no such thing as an HDMI 2.0 cable (Source: straight from the horse’s mouth), so if you have a cable that support 4K30, it will work with 4K60 as well. Does HDMI 2.0 require new cables? No, HDMI 2.0 features will work with existing HDMI cables. Higher bandwidth features, such as […]

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Ugoos UT3S is an Update to UT3 Android & Ubuntu TV Box with a Fan

Many people like ARM based media player because most of them run Android providing access too many apps available via Google Play Store, a similar experience to what they got used with phones and tablets, and also because they are small, inexpensive, and fanless. However, the latest ARM processors such as Rockchip RK3288, can get really hot, so most of the time CPU frequency needs to be limited to avoid overheating and stability, which reduces performance. Which may be why, Ugoos decided to launch UT3S mini PC, an upgrade to UT3 mini PC with a mini Fan placed on top of a larger heatsink. Ugoos UT3S specifications and look remain very similar to the original model: SoC – Rockchip RK3288 quad core CortexA17 @ 1.80 GHz + Mali-T764 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 /3.0, and OpenCL 1.1 System Memory – 2GB to 4GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB or […]

January 21, 2015April 25, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Antutu Benchmark – Rockchip RK3288 (ARM) vs Intel Atom Z3735F

Most ARM mini PCs run Android, while mini PCs based on Intel Atom Z3735F currently all ship with Windows 8.1, so it makes comparison difficult. But since Linuxium posted triple boot instructions (Ubuntu, Android, Windows 10) for MeegoPad T01, he’s also run Antutu 5.6 on the platform, so we’ve got a comparison point. The Android image used in the Intel platform is Android-x86, and may not have been optimized for Bay Trail yet, so even though the comparison may not be perfect, it could still be interesting to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the Intel processor, against one of the fastest ARM processor found in mini PCs: Rockchip RK3288. I’ll use the Antutu 5.3 score I got with Open Hour Chameleon as a reference point. Rockchip RK3288 Intel Atom Z3735F Delta CPU Quad core Cortex A17 @ 2.0 GHz Quad core @ 1.33 GHz (Burst 1.83GHz) GPU ARM […]

January 20, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Independent Dual Display Support on Firefly-RK3288 Development Board (Video)

From time to time, I’m being asked which platform can support dual independent displays, and although I noticed Mele A1000 (Allwinner A10) did support dual displays in Linux, I never really investigated how well it handles it, so I normally recommend to have a look at x86 platforms with AMD or Intel processor that specifically claim support for dual independent display. But today, I’ve noticed a developer working for T-Chip posted a nice demo on T-Firefly forums with two displays connected via HDMI and VGA. The demo shows Firefly-RK3288 development board running Android with two displays in three configurations: Display Mirroring – The same content is shown on both display. Especially useful for digital signage application, where one board can drive two displays with the same content Extended Desktop – The user interface is extended on both monitors. It’s like having a single large monitor with a 32:9 aspect ratio […]

January 2, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Linux Benchmarks – Rockchip RK3288 vs Exynos 5422 vs AllWinner A80 vs Intel Atom Z3735F

With all these Intel Atom Z3735F been released right now at a price similar to ARM based mini PCs, many people, including myself, are wondering about the performance of the low cost Intel processor against their ARM competitors. Ian Morrison just published some results from Phoronix Test Suite comparing the performance of Firefly-RK3288 (Rockchip RK3288), ODROID-XU3 Lite (Samsung Exynos 5422 BIN2), and A80 OptimusBoard (Allwinner A80) in Linux (Ununtu 12.04.5), against the performance of MeegoPad T01 (Intel Atom Z3735F) running Linux from a Live CD on a USB drive. Some of the benchmarks failed because Phoronix Test Suite got apparently confused with the file systems located on a USB drive, but at least we’ve got a comparison point, and the results are a bit confusing, as they’re no clear winner. In some tests like FFmpeg, the Intel SoC really crushed the ARM competition being at least twice as fast as […]

December 31, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Best Android Mini PCs Awards of 2014

I’ve reviewed quite a few Android media players this year, and as 2014 comes to an end, I thought it might be worth writing a best of 2014. But it’s difficult to announce an overall winner since all have some flaws one way or another, I’ll classified by categories: Best Ethernet, Best Internal Storage, … a bit like for “Oscars ceremony awards, based mostly on objective results from my tests. However, and somewhat oddly for a media player, I won’t select any TV boxes based on their video playback capabilities, as so far I haven’t found one that can play most 4K / H.265 videos reasonably well in Kodi, and video playback tests are also subjective. This is obviously a flawed contest as they all are, because in order to be nominated, the media player must have been reviewed on CNX Software. But it should be fun anyway, so let’s […]

Category: Rockchip RK32xx