[LVL]

This is it people, the next BIG chip who will beat about every other chip on the market.
The rockchip RK3188 sounds exciting, but because they don't reveal much about the gpu inside the chip, I can not put any confidence in the RK3188.
I have a feeling they are hiding something...

Anyways, finally, the right specs of the Allwinner A31!

CPU
- ARM Cortex-A7 Quad-Core
- 256KB L1-Cache
- 1MB L2-Cache

GPU
- POWER VR SGX 544
- Eight logic cores
- Comply with Open GL ES2.0, Open CL1.x, DX 9_3

Video
- UHD H.264 4K ×2K @30fps video decoding
- Full HD video decoding
- BD Directory, BD ISO and BD m2ts video decoding
- H.264 High Profile 1080P@60fps encoding
- 3840x1080@30fps 3D decoding
- Comply with RTSP, HTTP, HLS, RTMP, MMS streaming media protocol

Display
- Dual-Channel LVDS 1920 ×1080@60fps
- 4-lane MIPI DSI 1920 × 1200@ 60fps
- Dual-Channel RGB/CPU 2048 ×1536@60fps
- Integrated HDMI 1.4 4K ×2K@ 30fps

Camera
- Integrated Parallel & MIPI I/F sensor
- Integrated Powerful ISP, supporting Raw Data CMOS sensor
- 5M/8M/12M CMOS Sensor supported
- 8/10/12-bit RGB Bayer sensor supported

Memory
- Dual-Channel LPDDR2/DDR3/DDR3L Controller
- Dual-Channel NAND FLASH Controller
- 64-bit ECC

PMIC
- A31exclusively tailor-made PMIC AXP221
- 21-CH power output and 2.2A Flash charging
- Comply with USB 3.0 power supply standard

Audio
- Integrated HI-FI 100dB Audio Codec
- Three MIC
- One MIC with Noise cancellation

OS
- Support Android 4.2 or up
- Support Microsoft Windows 8



Official link: Official Allwinner A31 specs

I just bought a HDMI stick based on the RK3066, and I bet it is going to give me lots of fun. But my next tablet is (almost) without any doubt based on this amazing SOC.

The most exciting stuff is:

The cortex-A7 based cpu. You might think, why are you so exciting? Well that's simple. While it doesn't have all the advantages of the A9 and A15, it is incredibly power efficient. The cortex-A9 might be more powerful per clockcycle, but definately not more power efficient. With 4 of these A7 cores, this is without a doubt still a very, very powerful combination.

The GPU, an 8-core SGX544 is powerful, very, very powerful. But beware! If these 8 cores run at a very low frequency, you would still have a mali400 like performance...
Multicore is the future, because it is more power efficient. A single core will get way, way hotter than a 8 core. Hot means waisted energy!

The already amazing video capabilities are still with the Allwinner A31 as it was already present in the Allwinner A10. Only this time I hope they will support surround sound, since the A10 could decode 4K or 3D video, but couldn't send surround sound via HDMI. A bit sad actually...

USB3.0 power standard, still doesn't say much about actual USB3.0 ports...

It might have input for 3 microphones, I don't see chinese tablet manufacturers actually implementing 3 of these mics.

The most exciting is Android 4.2 and Windows 8 support. I can already see a HDMI stick with this chip running both Android and Windows.

So, what do you think of this SOC?

There are still some unanswered questions:
- Will it support USB3.0?
- Will it support 4K/3D video output and/or surround sound via HDMI?
- Will it be produced on 28nm or 40nm?
- What frequency will the Cortex-A7 and SGX544 run on?
- ......

If it will be produced on 40nm and if the chip will run at low speeds, Rockchip might hold a big part of the market share with their still very powerful RK3066.

This post has been edited by LVL: 07 December 2012 - 05:48 PM

[denovo]

There's also the dual core A20, which seems destined for lower-end products. It would be good to list devices that use these processors somewhere, as they're announced...

[max1001]

CPU wise, Quad core A7 is roughly the same power as Dual core A9 meaning it's about as powerful as a rk3066.
Also, there's no way you will see a Window 8 on these unless MS approves it. It's not impossible but highly unlikely.

[LVL]

max1001, on 10 December 2012 - 02:20 PM, said:

CPU wise, Quad core A7 is roughly the same power as Dual core A9 meaning it's about as powerful as a rk3066.
Also, there's no way you will see a Window 8 on these unless MS approves it. It's not impossible but highly unlikely.

That is not completely true. Even a dual core A9 is not the same as a dual core A9. A cortex-A5 can be stronger than a cortex-A15. This strongly depends on the cpu frequency, cpu core, number of floating point units, frequency of the RAM, delay of the RAM, chip architecture, core optimizations, drivers, pcb design, screen resolution etc.
We can not underestimate/overestimate the power of a SOC unless we see true benchmarks! Benchmarks of the allwinner A31 on the Teclast P88 show a score of 12836, so it seems quite powerful....
A bit of googling shows a score of about 7000-8000 on the RK3066.

You are completely right about windows 8. I don't see it happening either since the tablet would need a rather expensive windows licence...

This Allwinner A31 is going to be a good competitor I believe, the Allwinner A10 is still a very good SOC considering it's pricing, community, video decoding capability and ubuntu capability.
I really hope Allwinner will again release most of their sources so developers can build another android version and ubuntu version. Dualboot please
It's not always about the power, it's also about the software and the great community that makes good software possible!

This post has been edited by LVL: 10 December 2012 - 05:16 PM

[sukanime]

I hope it have Audio 5.1 or 7.1 over HDMI.
And it will be great if it can Dual Boot Android and GNU/Linux.
XBMC in this SoC based tablet will be great.

[LVL]

sukanime, on 11 December 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

I hope it have Audio 5.1 or 7.1 over HDMI.
And it will be great if it can Dual Boot Android and GNU/Linux.
XBMC in this SoC based tablet will be great.

That is definately one of my wishes! XMBC already works great on the Allwinner A10, let's hope it will work great on the Allwinner A31!

[max1001]

It will still be more powerful but not by much. Doesn't really matter since gpu matter more. Ipad are prove of that.

Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 4G using Tapatalk 2

[sukanime]

Here some news, Ainol gonna relese Tablet using this Allwinner A31.
Ainol Novo9 FireWire , price is 239,90 dollar , link http://www.ainol-nov...et-pc-16gb.html
Spec:
- 9,7" Retina Display , IPS, Capacitive Touchscreen, 2048*1536 High-resolution Screen, Screen PPI: 264
- 2GB RAM DDR3
- Allwinner A31 Quad Core
- Power VR SGX544MP2 8 Core
- 16GB Internal Storage
- Dual Camera, 5Mp Back, and 0,3Mp Front
- TF Card Up to 32GB
- HDMI
- WIFI: 802.11b/802.11g / 802.11n
- Battery : 10.000 mAh

To bad, it doesn't have BlueTooth and GPS BuiltIn.

[LVL]

It's nice to see some Allwinner A31 tablets popping up!
I am really waiting for some of it's benchmarks and it's effect on batterylife.
I am looking for a 7" tablet with this beast of a SOC.
I just want this:

- 7" with 1024x600 or 1280x800 either AFFS or IPS screen.
- 1GB RAM or more
- a GOOD battery, not one that lasts just 1-2 hours or so
- HDMI output
- OTG usb port
- 2 camera's, don't care much about quality since they have always been bad
- 5 points touchscreen or more
- Bluetooth if possible

I know this tablet will come out and since I was very pleased with my ICOO D90W(better than the Onda VI40 IMO)

[79bass]

LVL, on 18 December 2012 - 03:44 AM, said:

It's nice to see some Allwinner A31 tablets popping up!
I am really waiting for some of it's benchmarks and it's effect on batterylife.
I am looking for a 7" tablet with this beast of a SOC.
I just want this:

- 7" with 1024x600 or 1280x800 either AFFS or IPS screen.
- 1GB RAM or more
- a GOOD battery, not one that lasts just 1-2 hours or so
- HDMI output
- OTG usb port
- 2 camera's, don't care much about quality since they have always been bad
- 5 points touchscreen or more
- Bluetooth if possible

I know this tablet will come out and since I was very pleased with my ICOO D90W(better than the Onda VI40 IMO)

Yeah.. I'm please too of my D90W... I'm planning to try install gnome-shell on that ... I'm slowly compiling an optimised system for it (on qemu, hard-float... it takes forever)
I was wondering if the were already selling the A20 chip... apparently is pin-compatible with the A10.. so virtually it might be possible to open and upgrade directly (nasty soldering problem) the D90W to use the A20...

The question is... does Cortex-A7 understand code compiled for Cortex-A8?
EDIT: yes it does ...

This post has been edited by 79bass: 19 December 2012 - 06:11 AM

[Tablet_Collector]

Looks like an interesting SoC and actual tablets may be out before RK3188 ones. Just spotted this Ployer momo20 on pre sale at meromobiles :

http://www.merimobil..._p/meri7298.htm

Not retina but still a nice spec and should consume less battery than retina.

Jez

[doomah]

The thing I dont understand is many sites are reporting the gpu to be a sgx 544mp2(similar gpu found in the ipad series) but still call it eight cores despite it clearly says MP2(dual core).I think they call it 8 core because each core has 4 usse2 shader pipelines.So its kinda false advertisement.

[sukanime]

Tablet_Collector, on 19 December 2012 - 06:25 AM, said:

Looks like an interesting SoC and actual tablets may be out before RK3188 ones. Just spotted this Ployer momo20 on pre sale at meromobiles :

http://www.merimobil..._p/meri7298.htm

Not retina but still a nice spec and should consume less battery than retina.

Jez

Hmm, nice info.
But the price is 269 dollar with just HD Display, and no information about the battery.
That price to high for me, i rather go to Ainol Novo9 FireWire.

[Nickos-V]

doomah, on 19 December 2012 - 07:56 AM, said:

The thing I dont understand is many sites are reporting the gpu to be a sgx 544mp2(similar gpu found in the ipad series) but still call it eight cores despite it clearly says MP2(dual core).

8 cores refers to total or logical cores. It is 2 GPU cores + 6 shader units. This is no different than with Mali400-MP4 which is 1 GPU core + 3 shader units. PowerVR uses MP2 because they only count GPU cores and not shader units.

GPU cores improve performance in everything. Shader units improve 3D performance in complex games. ie. NeoCore & Nenamark1 do not benefit from shaders but GLBenchmark really does. So, will Gameloft & other graphic intense 3D games.

PS, this is no different than how Nvidia says Tegra3 has a 12 core GPU. 8 of those cores are pixel shader units. The other 4 are GPU and/or vertex shaders.
http://www.nvidia.co...-processor.html

The GPU in Tegra 3 is an evolution of the Tegra 2 GPU, with twice the number of pixel shader units (8 compared to 4) and higher clock frequency.
http://en.wikipedia..../Tegra3#Tegra_3


PPS, embedded graphics should really have used MP2+6 for A31 and MP1+3 for RK3066 because now you either exclude shader units, like PowerVR, or you include them, like ARM (Mali GPUs). Neither way is accurate but including all cores is better because the total matters more than just the actual GPU cores. At least by using MP2+6, everyone would know how many GPU cores and how many shader cores there were. MP2+6 or MP2-6 or MP2 S6 would have worked.

sukanime, on 19 December 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

But the price is 269 dollar with just HD Display, and no information about the battery.
That price to high for me, i rather go to Ainol Novo9 FireWire.

Some pre-sellers will start off with high prices because difficult for them to get stock early on. They will then bring prices down in 1-2 months after release. Merimobiles always does it this way. That's why better to search AliExpress instead for best deal, avoid pre-sells and wait 2-3 months before buying a new tablet release to let prices reach their lowest. ie. to buy tablet for price that is 5-10% higher than what it sells for in China

[mrsburnout]

New Cortex A7 Category set up here: http://www.slatedroi.../476-cortex-a7/
Suggestion posted here for an A31 forum - http://www.slatedroi...er-a31-section/

Moving this topic to the Allwinner A31 CPU Devices forum here: http://www.slatedroi...31-cpu-devices/
Please reply to the original suggestion topic (linked above) or Tablet_Collector's topic here: http://www.slatedroi...ng-a31-tablets/ - for specific manufacturer subforums as needed.

Have fun!

This post has been edited by mrsburnout: 21 December 2012 - 12:02 PM
Reason for edit: added link

[gsprings44]

wonder what the generic prices will look like

[LVL]

79bass, on 19 December 2012 - 06:05 AM, said:

Yeah.. I'm please too of my D90W... I'm planning to try install gnome-shell on that ... I'm slowly compiling an optimised system for it (on qemu, hard-float... it takes forever)
I was wondering if the were already selling the A20 chip... apparently is pin-compatible with the A10.. so virtually it might be possible to open and upgrade directly (nasty soldering problem) the D90W to use the A20...

The question is... does Cortex-A7 understand code compiled for Cortex-A8?
EDIT: yes it does ...

Offtopic:
*****
I own a UG802 RK3066 based android tv stick. I installed ubuntu on it and I am quite amazed about the speed!
I tried to get it working via a microsd card on the D90W, but I couldn't get it to work.

It's a nice thought that you could switch the SoC, BUT that isn't possible for us.
Pin compatible just means that manufacturers can use the same PCB. You still need to program bootloaders and would need other drivers of course.
And yes, it would be a NASTY soldering job, but not impossible. You could probably reflow the PCB and change the SOC, but that's just a thought!
*****

Ontopic:
As Nickos-V said, pre-sells don't have good prices. Since Exynos 4412 based tablets are the same price, and probably more powerful, I wouldn't go for the Allwinner A31 for the same price.
I am still waiting for a 7" tablet with this SOC to reach the market at a nice price...

This post has been edited by LVL: 21 December 2012 - 08:33 AM

[Icaruz]

anyone knows if this a7 cortex is based on 28nm?

[Nickos-V]

Icaruz, on 24 December 2012 - 02:43 AM, said:

anyone knows if this a7 cortex is based on 28nm?

No, 40nm. Just like Tegra3, RK3066 & other recent ARM chips. RK3188 & Tegra4 are 28nm.

Onda V972 (A31) says quad core A7 @ 1.3 GHz.

RK3188 is quad core A9 with very likely speed of 1.6 GHz. CPU clock speed is unconfirmed and best guess from what I have heard. Actual speed will likely be one of 1.6, 1.7 or 1.8 GHz.

[Icaruz]

Nickos-V, on 24 December 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

No, 40nm. Just like Tegra3, RK3066 & other recent ARM chips. RK3188 & Tegra4 are 28nm.

Onda V972 (A31) says quad core A7 @ 1.3 GHz.

RK3188 is quad core A9 with very likely speed of 1.6 GHz. CPU clock speed is unconfirmed and best guess from what I have heard. Actual speed will likely be one of 1.6, 1.7 or 1.8 GHz.

Thanks for the info. Now have to wait what GPU is in RK3188.