Rockchip licenses wide range of ARM IP for turnkey solution

CHINA: Rockchip, a leading Chinese fabless semiconductor company and mobile Internet System-on-Chip (SoC) solution provider, announced its next generation RK30xx platform, targeting the mass market, cost-effective Android tablets.

The new platform is based on wide range of ARM Intellectual Property (IP) that Rockchip has licensed, including dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processors, ARM quad-core Mali-400 MP Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and an ARM Artisan Physical IP Process Optimization Pack (POP) for the Cortex-A9 processor. The RK30xx platform is a turnkey solution that reduces design complexity and enables faster time-to-market for Android tablet manufacturers, enabling them to address fast changing consumer demands.

The combination of Rockchip’s market-leading design experience for mobile Internet devices and high-performance, energy-efficient processor and GPU technologies from ARM has resulted in a platform that delivers captivating 3D gaming experiences and fluent HD video playback, as well featuring a rich set of memory interfaces and peripherals.

“The tablet market is growing rapidly, and putting greater demands on semiconductor companies to deliver cost-effective solutions that can sustain an ever-increasing level of graphics, video and gaming performance, while still being energy-efficient,” said Feng Chen, CMO, Rockchip. “The partnership enables us to use proven mobile Internet technologies from ARM and provide a high-performance, low-cost and easy-to-design platform. This turnkey solution is ideal for customers to quickly adopt for their Android-based tablet devices. The combination of the ARM Cortex-A9 processor and the POP has enabled the highest performance with the lowest power in the fastest time possible. Rockchip has been able to deliver a highly efficient processor implementation on a 40nm LP process.”

“ARM is committed to providing advanced processor, GPU and physical IP technologies to our Partners. This enables them to innovate for complex, smart system applications, such as mobile Internet,” said Mike Inglis, executive VP and GM, processor division, ARM. “We are pleased that Rockchip, whose solutions are already being used in many mobile Internet products, has chosen a range of ARM IP for their innovative, next generation RK30xx platform. We look forward to their continued success in the Android tablet market.”