Amlogic S912 Processor Specifications
April 6th, 2016cnxsoftLeave a commentGo to comments
Amlogic plans to launch at least three new processors for OTT boxes and set-
top boxes this year: Amlogic S905X, Amlogic S912, and Amlogic S905D. We
already knew Amlogic S905 specifications, but I’ve recently received a
document with some more details about Amlogic S912 revealing Mali-T820 GPU,
a lack of USB 3.0 support, but still some interesting features such as HDMI
2.0a, 4K VP9, 10-bit H.265, Gigabit Ethernet Mac, and so on.
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Amlogic S912 specifications with highlights in bold showing differences with
Amlogic S905X:
CPU Sub-system – Octa core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU up to 2 GHz (DVFS) with two
CPU clusters one optimized for high performance (big) and the other for low
power (LITTLE)
3D Graphics Processing Unit –ARM Mali-T820MP3 GPU up to 750MHz (DVFS) with
3 shader engines supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.03.1, DirectX 11 FL9_3, OpenCL 1
.1/1.2 full profile and RenderScript.
2.5D Graphics Processor – Fast bitblt engine with dual inputs and single
output, programmable raster operations (ROP) and polyphase scaling filter,
etc..
Crypto Engine – AES/AES-XTS block cipher with 128/192/256 bits keys, DES/
TDES block cipher, hardware crypto key-ladder operation and DVB-CSA for
transport stream encryption, built-in hardware True Random Number Generator
(TRNG), CRC and SHA-1/SHA-2/HMAC SHA engine
Video/Picture CODEC
Amlogic Video Engine (AVE-10) with dedicated hardware decoders and encoders
Supports multiple “secured” video decoding sessions and simultaneous
decoding and encoding
Video/Picture Decoding
VP9-10 Profile-2 up to [email protected]/* */
H.265 HEVC [email protected]/* */ up to [email protected]/* */
H.264 AVC [email protected]/* */ up to [email protected]/* */, H.264 MVC up to 1080p @60fps
MPEG-4 [email protected]/* */ up to [email protected]/* */ (ISO-14496)
WMV/VC-1 SP/MP/AP up to [email protected]/* */
AVS-P16(AVS+) /AVS-P2 JiZhun Profile up to [email protected]/* */
MPEG-2 MP/HL up to [email protected]/* */ (ISO-13818)
MPEG-1 MP/HL up to [email protected]/* */ (ISO-11172)
RealVideo 8/9/10 up to [email protected]/* */
WebM up to VGA
MJPEG and JPEG unlimited pixel resolution decoding (ISO/IEC-10918)
Supports JPEG thumbnail, scaling, rotation and transition effects
Video/Picture Encoding
Independent JPEG and H.264 encoder with configurable performance/bit-rate
JPEG image encoding
H.264 video encoding up to [email protected]/* */ with low latency
Video Post-Processing Engine – Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG HDR processing,
motion adaptive 3D noise reduction filter, advanced motion adaptive edge
enhancing de-interlacing engine, 3:2 pull-down support, deblocking filters,
etc..
Video Output
Built-in HDMI 2.0a transmitter including both controller and PHY with 3D,
CEC, HDR and HDCP 2.2, [email protected]/* */ max resolution output
CVBS 480i/576i standard definition output
RGB888 TTL interface up to 1920×1080
Camera Interface – ITU 601/656 parallel video input with down-scalar,
supports camera input as YUV422, RGB565,16bit RGB or JPEG
Audio Decoder and Input/Output
Supports MP3, AAC, WMA, RM, FLAC, Ogg and programmable with 7.1/5.1 down-
mixing
I2S audio interface supporting 8-channel (7.1) input and output
Built-in serial digital audio SPDIF/IEC958 output and PCM input/output
Built-in stereo audio DAC
Dual-channel digital microphone PDM input
Supports concurrent dual audio stereo channel output with combination of
analog+PCM or I2S+PCM
Memory and Storage Interface
16/32-bit SDRAM memory interface running up to DDR2400
Supports up to 2GB DDR3/4, DDR3L, LPDDR2, LPDDR3 with dual ranks
Supports SLC/MLC/TLC NAND Flash with 60-bit ECC
SDSC/SDHC/SDXC card and SDIO interface with 1-bit and 4-bit data bus width
supporting up to UHS-I SDR104
eMMC and MMC card interface with 1/4/8-bit data bus width fully supporting
spec version 5.0 HS400
Supports serial 1, 2 or 4-bit NOR Flash via SPI interface
Built-in 4k bits One-Time-Programming memory for key storage (That must be
where DRM / HDCP keys are programmed)
Network
Integrated IEEE 802.3 10/100/1000M Gigabit Ethernet MAC controller with
RGMII interface
Integrated 10/100M PHY interface
Supports Energy Efficiency Ethernet (EEE) mode
Digital Television Interface
Transport stream (TS) input interface with built-in demux processor for
connecting to external digital TV tuner/demodulator and one output TS
interface
Built-in PWM, I2C and SPI interfaces to control tuner and demodulator
Integrated CI+ port and ISO 7816 smart card controller
Integrated I/O Controllers and Interfaces
3x USB 2.0 high-speed USB I/O, 2x USB Host and one USB OTG
Multiple UART, I2C and SPI interface with slave select
Multiple PWMs
Programmable IR remote input/output controllers
Built-in 10bit SAR ADC with 2 input channels
General Purpose IOs with built-in pull up and pull down
System, Peripherals and Misc. Interfaces
Integrated general purpose timers, counters, DMA controllers
24 MHz crystal input
Embedded debug interface using ICE/JTAG
Power Management
Multiple external power domains controlled by PMIC, and internal ones
controlled by software
Multiple sleep modes for CPU, system, DRAM, etc.
Multiple internal PLLs for DVFS operation
Multi-voltage I/O design for 1.8V and 3.3V
Power management auxiliary processor in a dedicated always-on (AO) power
domain that can communicate with an external PMIC
Security
Trustzone based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)
Secured boot, encrypted OTP, encrypted DRAM with memory integrity checker,
hardware key ladder and internal control buses and storage
Protected memory regions and electric fence data partition
Hardware based Trusted Video Path (TVP) , video watermarking and secured
contents (requires SecureOS software)
Secured IO and secured clock
Package – LFBGA 15 x 15 mm, 0.65 ball pitch, RoHS compliant
That means Amlogic S905X and S912 have the exact same video playback
capabilities, although S912 will also support Dolby Vision HDR standard. The
main differences are the eight Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.0 GHz (instead
of 4x A53 @ 1.5 GHz), and the more power ful Mali-T820MP3 GPU, as well as
support for LCD panel (e.g. for tablets) thanks to an extra RGB interface.
Finally S912 has three USB interfaces, instead of just two for S905X.
Amlogic 2016 roadmap shows S905X is scheduled for Q1 2016, and S912 for Q2
2016, but it’s likely we need to add one or two more quarters before we
get any Android 6.0 devices based on the new processors.