Rockchip is perhaps best known for its reasonably priced ARM-based chips targeted at a wide range of devices, including tablets, TV set-top boxes and PC sticks. The company’s current flagship processor? The ARM Cortex-A9 RK3188.
Unsurprisingly, there is more Rockchip silicon action planned for 2014, with the China-based company reportedly designing a quad-core ARM Cortex-A12 chip series known as the RK32xx.
As Liliputing’s Brad Linder notes, ARM’s Cortex-A12 architecture is designed for mid-range smartphones and tablets.
“[True], it’s not as fast as the Cortex-A15 technology used in chips like the NVIDIA Tegra 4 or Samsung Exynos 5 Octa,” Linder explained. “But the new chip should be faster than anything Rockchip currently offers.”
As expected, the new 28nm chip is slated to support 4K video decoding, 1080p video encoding and DirectX 11 graphics, as well as OpenCL, OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0. In addition, the processor is powered by a 1.8 GHz quad-core processor paired with ARM Mali-T624 graphics.
Devices equipped with the first RK32xx chips are expected to hit the streets during the second quarter of 2014.
