http://liliputing.com/2013/07/rockchip-working-on-quad-core-arm-cortex-a12-rk...

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/157217-arm-cortex-a12-and-mali-t622-the-...

ARM Cortex-A12 and Mali-T622: The mid-range muscle that ARM desperately needs



ARM has been accused of moving too fast and putting too much room between their generations.   An excellent example of this is the quad core and octa core chipsets that are actually in production right now that do not have any task out there to really utilize all the raw power that they can swing.

Quad core A9s from Rockchip and Qualcomm Kraits are filling that design gap now, and we are glad to have them.   They swing all the power that the current uses can find traction for.

But -- going out into the future these wide performance gaps in the ARM lineup leave some wide product niches for Intel to slip into and ARM's goal is to keep Intel out and on the sidelines fiddling with Microsoft for as long as possible.

So, Rockchip ---- Rockchip has gained themselves some serious street cred with the 28nm A-9 RK3188 and with making a generational improvement in Android by giving Android moveable resizeable windows such as would make a desktop or a large tablet much more useable as a real OS.  

So, of the far east cheapie guys, Rockchip is the one with capital $$$ right now and they have recently decided to be a good open source type company, so they deserve some rewards for that.

Yup, ARM has picked Rockchip to partner with when they production designed this little baby, mainly because it is RIGHT DOWN ROCKCHIP'S ALLEY and it represents the sort of approach Rockchip likes to take on things.   ARM, Rockchip and TSCM have already done the preproduction run offs of the sample chipset production runs.   Samples are out there for product design.   This new chip very directly impinges on Rockchip's breadandbutter RK3188's market share, so giving it to Rockchip to extend the A9 range for a couple of years makes a lot of sense from that aspect, as doing otherwise would cripple Rockchip and punish them for being a good open source contributor.  

Ain't a gonna do that, instead ARM will let Rockchip bust up on Intel's chops a bit with a 1-2 punch in the middle zone .... Intel damage control for free, practically.    And Rockchip is just the company to do that -- FAST, LEAN, seriously competitive.   Rockchip is tasked with filling that gap up tight BEFORE Intel arrives on the scene, leaving absolutely no room for Intel whatsoever.   Watch Rockchip move with lighting speed to do just that.  Punch #1 is ramped up Global Foundries production of the 28nm RK3188 (the current chip) while punch #2 is a rapid ramp up of RK3288 that will go on with TSCM (or Global, as they can make the chip too) to complement the upper end of the mid-blocking range.  

In both cases these will be run on the old, almost out of date 28nm lines, or they will be all old by Q2 of next year.   These will be the cheaper of the Cheapie Chinese chipsets by then, very modest pricing and very large availability (just what a good Intel blocker needs).  

Also note that when 20nm production space becomes available, these  A12 chips can downsize readily to pick up another 20% energy savings and an appreciable processing boost to go with it.

Look at these two articles and read on them a bit, always remembering that ARM is putting an improved A-9 32 bit style replacement nestled inside the gap between 64 bit A53 and 64 bit A57 quite on purpose.   This is the current Cheapie Chinese zone and it needs to be filled with something much better than a quad core A9 or Intel could possibly successfully insert themselves into that gap and gain a foothold in the market.

Enter the new Cortex A12, a brand new high performance 32 bit quad core that interfaces with the 64 bit capable graphics of the Mali 62x and 65x.   A perfect 1-2 year place holder to keep Intel out (since Intel will cost 2-3x as much) without upsetting any of the existing 64 bit licensing arrangements already in place (since it is only a 32 bit core).   However, it can find the same 64 bit addresses, use a 64 bit Mali 62x/65x graphics chip and it can also form big/little parings with either the A53 or the A57 depending on the needs of the product.



Note it extends the A9's existing turf out another 2 years with a 40% better performing chip that uses 20% less energy and it gives the ARM roadmap 2 years of time to recalculate itself correctly down through the 20mn production level into the 18-16nm range and to get to a true sea of 64 bit cores approach using all 100% 64 bit chips with no Intel sized chinks left in between them.


Lesson for Microsoft

Cooperative approach -- you don't throw your partners under the bus for your convenience's sake.   Partners are to be rewarded, not mangled.


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Mediatek has a plan for this same mid performance zone as well --- Octa core A7 comes on line in a few months with Octa core A53 coming on line in about a year.   Mediatek's plans may well cover the same turf, but Rockchip will already be in there, keeping Intel away with rock bottom pricing and a strong product offering.

And they will, they have no real choice not doing it going on out into the future.

They may also opt to make their software an on-line offering too, in which case it doesn't matter what you go to the web site using.  

Android, Ubuntu, Mac, Windog -- the net makes all equal before it.

You buy an access license (or app if you prefer) and you don't have to load anything much on your machine.

This is the net driven app age, boys and girls -- Microchoke doesn't get to tell you how to do your stuff any more.


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Now, a Linux point for Linaro to please take care of correctly so the Rockchip RK 3288 comes out of the gate all Linux ready.

Make them Rockchip boys either leave the stock ARM drivers tee-totally alone or have them put those modified drivers out open source into the Linaro Kernel Store before the first chip shipments are made.

There are going to be a WHOLE WHALE OF A LOT of small cheap linux mini-computers made with this class of chip as it is going to come out of the gate next year just about where the very "best of show" chips are sitting right now ....

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS needs to come out with this chip already totally sussed out and recognized automatically by the installer.

   .... we gots plans for that there little cheap RK3288 linux box, we do.

The Orient is going smart phone crazy right now.   So is Brazil and India and Indochina.  The Orient does not have 4G LTE they have older style simpler slower cell phone systems.   Oriental cell phones tend to be very modest by American or European standards, almost 3 years back in features and technology.

But they will sell more of these "beginner Android phones" in the next few years than all the superphones in America or Europe added together.  By a factor of 3-4 times.   This is a big big big huge business -- well worth being at the center of and investing all sorts of time and effort into.

Firefox and Mediatek are forming up a functional phone group right now that is dirt cheap and actually not all that bad.  

These cell phones will show up here in Verizon stores this fall, as starter phones for kids or "feature phones" if you will.  Go take a look at one when they get here, they are actually pretty clever and the battery will last for days and days instead of just the part of one day that a superphone currently gets on a charge.

No, they don't do everything an Android phone can do.   No, the app store is still sparse and most things are done on line using web sites for the horsepower.  The good news is they are FAST and since a lot of the work is being done on line, the battery lasts and lasts.

Quad core Allwinner A-7 and quad core Mediatek A-7 are the oriental chips of choice in this new expansion zone.

Watch Allwinner and Mediatek duke it out for chip sales in this hotly contested but HUGE low end market.  Allwinner is going to drop the very fancy VR chipset out of their quad core systems and go with quad core Mali.   Ditto for Mediatek, they don't need the ritz VR chipsets any more because the low end tablet market is now going to Rockchip RK3199 with quad core Mali graphics for the improved raw power it represents (and the better price on the chips doesn't hurt, either).

These guys are going to go traipsing off into the octa core A7 and octa core A53 landscape before long and if they stick with stock Mali quad core GPUs we will likely have some appreciably quite quick, powerful and very energy conscious Linux-ready chipsets out there in a year or so to go into hobby boards and mini-supercomputers and all sorts tv boxes and little Ubuntu computers.

Demand for Chinese phones is so great entire ARM foundaries are being built (in China for the Chinese, Taiwan for everybody else) and run at full speed to make enough chips.   These newest ones are 18-20nm plants.



MIPS

Also look for MIPS China as a "People's National Industry" to try again with their own totally owned MIPS production system to make a chip that meets Chinese needs.   Pack you up a not quite worn out 28nm line, take you an old MIPS mainframe chip design, the Godson-2, and die shrink it from 185nm down to 28nm and suddenly it rocks again -- significant speed and throughput at very slight energy usage -- plus there is a world of software that will run on it box stock (including versions of Linux and Android).   It is still has a larger footprint compared to modern ARM chipsets, but it plays in the same ball park energy and power-wise  (just way out in left field).

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The old Godson-2  (8 core)  MIPS chips now at 28nm -- that hits my sense of appropriately ironic, actually.   Alias the very best of the 185nm Sun Spark Workstation chipset family ....  my my my that brings back some memories.  

Bad assed CAD workstation chipsets in other words.

Remember 5-6 years ago when Chinese National Industry MIPS chips were at one time a strong competitor to the A8 single core ARM chipsets?  Do you remember that period any?   Little bitty flimsy plastic $69.00  7" netbooks on Ebay running Android?    Sure you do.   Drugstores would sell them in bubble packs to give to the kids to play with.  

That was the Loongson MIPS chipset, a single core MIPS chipset at 135nm.   Not much of a chipset, but neither was the A8 at the time either.

What you may have forgotten is that MIPS was actually invented at Stanford University and RISC was invented at Berkley back in the early 1980's and they duked it out in the very first small mainframe computers to see who would win.   Both had adherents and both were victorious for short periods of time until IBM and Microsoft changed the game with CISC computing and the Personal Computer.   Sun carried on with MIPS for a long time in their workstation business, as did Steve Jobs in his NEXT computer system.  

MIPS were the premium power user chipsets back when Intel was a puppy and DOS still fit on a single floppy, right on up through Windows 3.1 era.

China bought MIPS from MIPS, Inc for a song years & years after MIPS went bankrupt and some of what they bought were the old historical designs for EMP hardened MIPS chipsets that were developed for the US Miltary during the cold war.   MIPS could be EMP hardened much easier than CISC chips while RISC was then currently ACORN based out of England back then so it wasn't available to be directed down that military pathway.

China's military still 100% uses domestically designed and produced EMP hardened MIPS chipsets in all their military applications.  They will always keep MIPS rolling along in China by Central Committee decree.   Meanwhile the USA is still producing USA Intel and USA RISC chips for our military uses in our own secure facilities.

China and the USA military still get into each others shorts all the time electronically, and mebbe you can remember Bill Gates having to go to China to answer questions about "back doors" found in the Windows XP operating system that allowed the US to spy on the Chinese using intentional security holes in Intel chipsets and the Windows Explorer browser system .....

China bought the dead shell of MIPS, Inc for a song shortly after Gates visit.   They had been making their own version of hardened MIPS military chips for years and years at that time illegally, so buying MIPS was a legalization effort for something they were already doing.   How did they get the tech for EMP hardened MIPS chips originally?  Espionage.   The Chinese are very good spies.   I dare say they bought some old lithography lines from Silicon Valley through third parties back in the day too.

If you see MIPS chips make any sort of comeback in phones or tablets, it should make your sense of wonder tingle a bit.   Stanford University's brainchild coming home again, a full loop 30+ years later, a SUN Spark 8 core workstation chipset having been shrunk from 185nm down to 28nm by the power of cell phone technology.  

And I bet each & every one of them has a back door somewhere in them so the Chinese can spy on us ..... yup, jest returning the Bill Gates favor after all these years.