The Amlogic S928X SoC is the chipset that will be featured in the upcoming 8K Android TV Boxes. Recently, there is more and more talk about the S928X SoC, and some manufacturers are revealing new TV Boxes based on Amlogic’s new chip. Besides, recently SDMC company unveiled at MWC 2023, the new DV9286 OTT Box powered by Amlogic S928X SoC.
Amlogic S928X SoC Features
As we wrote earlier, the Amlogic S928X SoC chip integrates a 64-bit ARM Cortex-A76 and quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 CPU, ARM Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, and its own AI processor with up to 3.2 Tops of computing power. Besides, it supports 8Kp60 video processing capability in AV1, H.265, VP9, AVS3, AVS2, and other mainstream video formats. In addition, the chipset supports as HDMI 2.1a (eARC, VRR, ALLM, QMS, QFT, DSC1.2, SBTM), Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe 2.0, USB 2.0/3.0. It also supports HDR10/10+, HLG, Dolby Vision, HDR Vivid, and more.
Besides, the S928X will support Android 13 and higher. In addition to SDMC, SEI Robotics also has an 8K S928X Android TV Box in its portfolio.
Recently, CNX Software released the full specification of the S928X chipset along with a block diagram. It’s worth looking at the details.
Also Read: Amlogic A311D2 vs A311D, Where is the differences?
Chipset Specification
- 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
Jean-Luc Aufranc of CNX Software points out that the S928X could be a potential competitor to the Rockchip RK3566 with fewer interfaces but an additional big Cortex-A76 core, 8K support, and a faster AI accelerator.
We are looking forward to the first S928X 8K Android TV Box available for sale. If there is an offer in a well-known online store, we will let you know immediately.
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