Rockchip RK3399 linux system officially open source, applying to hundreds of industries

Rockchip announced that RK3399 Linux system officially open source. RK3399 is a flagship one of Rockchip with high performance, high expansibility and universal application.

After the source code is opened, the more open RK3399 shall be fit for applications in hundreds of industries such as electronic whiteboard, electronic schoolbag, face recognition equipment, unmanned aerial vehicle, robot, game console, game peripherals, mobile phone hang-up server, household appliances, advertising machine/all-in-one machine, financial POS, vehicle-carried control, thin client (cloud service), VOIP video conference system, education tablet, karaoke entertainment, medical treatment, security/monitoring/police service, industrial control, IoT internet field, VR video and VR.

RK3399 CPU adopts big.LITTLE structure with dual-core Cortex-A72 and quad-core Cortex-A53. Taking the lead in whole performance and power consumption, the GPU adopts Mali-T860, the new generation ARM quad-core high-end image processor which integrates more bandwidth compression techniques to provide excellent whole performance.

Based on RK3399 hardware system frame diagram, there are extremely abundant interfaces:

1. Dual USB3.0 Type-C interface, supporting Type-C Display Port

2. Dual MIPI Camera interface and dual ISP, supporting maximum 13 megapixels for single channel

3. MIPI/eDP/HDMI2.0 interface, supporting 4,096x2,160 display output and dual-screen & differential-display function

4. Built-in PCI-e interface, supporting PCI-e-based high-speed Wi-Fi and storage extension

5. Support 8-way digital microphone array input

6. eMMC5.1 HS400

Based on ARM Mali-T860 high-end image processor, Rockchip also opens various Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) at the same time, including OpenGL ES 1.2, 1.1,2.0, 3.1, 3.2, Vulkan 1.0, OpenCL 1.1, 1.2 and enderScript.

Rockchip has built RK3399 support platform on github and wikidot to provide source code downloading, technical documentation and support service as well as other support services such as hardware design reference and development board.

wikidot：http://rockchip.wikidot.com/

github：https://github.com/rockchip-linux

The high performance, high expansibility and universal application characteristics of RK3399 platform can be found from the two open source terminal product application cases.

Home entertainment terminal products based on RK3399 platform take the lead in multi-display interface, GPU, audio and video decoding, interconnection with multiple terminals as well as human-computer interaction.

Nevertheless, VR head-mounted display based on RK3399 can achieve latency less than 20ms by optimized algorithm and meanwhile achieve 90Hz refresh rate, 4K UHD decoding and ultra HD H.265/H.264 video parsing ability. Type C or HDMI+USB interface and external VR head-mounted display bring the product an immersive virtual reality experience.  

The opening of interface and source system of RK3399 is not only good for terminal equipment manufacturers to achieve global product line layout, rapid mass production, cost control and technology application with one chip, but the open source system can meet the demand of terminal manufacturers for individuation and difference, truly solve pain points in the industry chain and present great value to the development of global intelligent hardware.