Amlogic
Amlogic
Amlogic is an American company
founded in the US. designing and selling SoC (System on Chip) integrated
circuits. Like
most fabless companies in the industry, the company outsources the actual
manufacturing of its chips to third-party independent chip manufacturers such
as TSMC. Its main target applications as of 2014 are entertainment
devices such as Android-based TV and IPTV/OTT set-top boxes, media
dongles, smart TVs and tablets. It has
offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Santa Clara,
California.
The company was
founded in 1995 in Silicon Valley. It
developed Video CD player chips and
later chips for DVD players and other
applications involving MPEG2 decoding. Amlogic was
involved in the creation of the HVD (High-Definition Versatile Disc) standard promoted in
China as an alternative to DVD video disks used in DVD players. The company was
a player in the developing Chinese tablet processor market since 2010-2013.
Amlogic is an ARM licensee and
uses the ARM architecture in the majority of
its products as of 2014. According to a joint press release with ARM in 2013,
it was the first company to use ARM's Mali-450 GPU in a configuration
with six cores or more.
Tablet computer SoC
AML8726 family
·
Amlogic AML8726-M - Legacy single
core ARM
Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-400 GPU released
in 2011, with a 16-bit DRAM interface and manufactured on a 65 nm process.
·
Amlogic AML8726-M3 - Legacy
single-core ARM
Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-400 GPU, released in 2012, with a 16-bit DRAM
interface and manufactured on a 45 nm process.
·
Amlogic MX (also known as AML8726-M6)
- Dual-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU, released in
2012 on a 40 nm process.
M8 family (announced
2013)
·
Amlogic M802 (originally called
AML8726-M8) - Quad-core ARM Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-450 MP6 GPU running at
600 MHz. Supports 4GB DRAM and 4K2K display output. 64-bit DRAM interface,
manufactured on a 28 nm HPM process.
·
Amlogic M801 - Similar to M802
but with DRAM limited to 2GB and display output limited to 1080p.
·
Amlogic M805 - Quad-core ARM Cortex-A5-based
SoC with Mali-450 MP2 GPU in a reduced-size 12mm x 12 mm LFBGA package.
The M801/802 uses a
new version of ARM's Cortex A9 core (A9r4) that theoretically allows for higher
clock speeds and lower power consumption compared to older versions of the
Cortex A9 core such as the A9r3 used in Rockchip's RK3188.
Originally
scheduled to be in production as early as the middle of 2013 in
the form of the AML8726-M8, as of April 2014 only one tablet (Onda V975M) has
been announced using a chip from the M8 family.
A few manufacturers
have shown Android TV boxes using the M802 (Shenzhen Tomato Technology, Tronsmart, Eny Technology[ and GeniaTech). It
has been noted that some devices using the M802 may run hot and use a heatsink
for cooling. This is common among other popular OTT set top boxes such as the
Amazon FireTV which uses a metal shell to disperse heat, much like a heatsink
would.
Media player SoCs (S8
family)
Amlogic also offers
SoC products (S802, S805,
and S812)
specifically targeting Android TV boxes and OTT set-top boxes (which are
variations of similar SoCs in the M series targeting tablets).
·
Amlogic S805 - A low cost SoC
similar to M805 with quad-core ARM Cortex A5-based
SoC with Mali-450 MP2 GPU running
at 500 MHz, with hardware support for HEVC/H.265 decoding up to 1080p.
·
Amlogic S812 - Quad-core ARM
Cortex A9-based SoC with ARM Mali-450 MP6 GPU running at
600 MHz with
hardware support for HEVC/H.265 decoding up to 4K.
S8**-H models include
Dolby/DTS licenses.
Media player SoCs (S9
family)
First 64-bit
Amlogic Products lineup.
·
Amlogic S905 - Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 (up to
2.0 GHz) with a Mali 450MP3 GPU, supports
hardware decoding up to 4K@60fps for multiple formats including H.265 10-bit,
H.264, AVS+.
·
Amlogic S905X - Similar to S905
except it supports up to 4K@60fps VP9 profile-2 hardware decoding, HDR, HDMI
2.0a and having a built-in DAC.
·
Amlogic S905L - Similar to S905X
except it supports HDMI 2.0b but lack VP9 decoding, camera interface and TS
inputs.
·
Amlogic S905D - Similar to S905X
except it supports DVB interface.
·
Amlogic S912 - Octo-core ARM Cortex-A53 (Big.LITTLE
configuration 4x2.0 GHz and 4x1.0 GHz) with a Mali T820 MP3 GPU.
S9**(*)-H models include
Dolby/DTS licenses.
Devices based on
them are already in the market running Android 5.1 or 6.0, they are usually
paired with 1GB, 2GB or 3GB RAM, 8GB to 64GB Flash Mem, they have features such
as a Gigabit Lan and Dual band 2.4G/5G A/C WiFi.
S905X was scheduled
to be released in Q1 2016 while S905D and S912 were scheduled for Q2 2016. All
three of SoCs have Android Marshmallow and Buildroot Linux SDKs
released.
Other products
The Amlogic MX,
S802 and S805 SoCs are also targeted at media dongles.
Amlogic also offers
SoCs targeting smart TVs and projectors, including M6L, M6C, M6D, T826, T828, T866, T868, T966 and T968
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