Allwinner Technology

Allwinner A23 Dual-Core in a Chinese Tablet

A series processors are used for mobile applications, mainly referring to tablet application.[10]

In 2011, the company became an ARM processor licensee,[11] and subsequently announced a series of ARM Cortex-A8 powered mobile application processors, including A10, A13, A10s and A12, which were used in numerous tablets, and also in PC-on-a-stick and media center devices. They have also been adopted in free hardware projects like the Cubieboard development board.

In December 2012, Allwinner announced the availability of two ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore powered products, the dual-core Allwinner A20 and quad-core Allwinner A31. Production of the A31 started in September 2012 and end products, mostly high-end tablets from Chinese manufacturers, appeared on the market in early 2013, including the Onda V972. Allwinner was the first to make this ARM processor core available in mass production.

In March 2013, Allwinner launched its quad-core Phablet processor A31s. Based on quad-core cortex-A7 CPU architecture, this processor allows 3G, 2G, LTE, WIFI, BT, FM, GPS, AGPS and NFC using a minimum of external components.

In October, 2013, Allwinner released its second dual-core A23, touted to be "The most efficient dual core processor" for tablets.[12] The A23's CPU frequency was intended to run up to 1.5 GHz.[13]

In June, 2014, Allwinner announced the A33 quad-core SoC that is pin compatible with Allwinner's A23. The new SoC features four Cortex-A7 cores with 256 KB L1 cache, 512 KB L2 cache and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU. A new feature is the support of the OpenMAX API.[14] Allwinner has positioned the A33 for entry-level tablets, targeting quad-core tablets priced from $30 to $60, and in July 2014 announced that it has started mass production of the chip, which will sell for as low as $4 per unit.[15]

In April 2019, Allwinner announced the A50 28 nm quad-core SoC.[16] The A50 features four Cortex-A7 cores running up to 1.8 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache and a Mali-400 MP2 GPU.

In June 2017, Allwinner announced the A63 28 nm quad-core SoC at APC 2017 Conference.[17] The A63 features four Cortex-A53 cores running up to 1.8 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache and a Mali-T760 MP2 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2 support. VPU with 4K/6K VP9, H.265, and H.264 4K @ 30fps video decoder and H.264 HP encoder 1080P@30fps

In October 2013, Allwinner disclosed its upcoming octa-core A80 SoC, featuring four high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 and four efficient ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores in a big.LITTLE configuration.[18]

On June 30, 2014, Chinese brand Onda officially released its octa-core Onda V989 tablet, which is based on Allwinner A80. This is the first Allwinner A80-based tablet that is available to consumers, priced at CNY 1099 (~US$177).[19]

In September 2014, Allwinner announced the Allwinner A83T, an octa-core tablet processor that packs eight highly energy-efficient Cortex-A7 cores that can run simultaneously at up to around 2.0 GHz. It also includes a PowerVR GPU. The first tablet with the chip was expected to hit the market in Q4 2014.[20]

In April 2019, Allwinner announced their roadmap for 2019 to 2020 feature the A100, A200, A300 and A301 SoC.[16] The Allwinner A200 was described as “AI blessing, computational power”.

F series are processors based on Allwinner's melis OS, mainly used in smart video radios, video MP5, etc.[10]

From 2007 to 2011, Allwinner introduced its F-series processors, including the F10, F13, F18, F20, F1E200, F1C100, and F20. This series runs Allwinner's in-house operating system Melis2.0, which is now mainly used in vehicle multimedia systems, E-ink readers, video intercom systems, and so on.

Sega's Game Gear Micro uses the F1C200S as main CPU.

The H-series, introduced in 2014, are integrated application processors primarily targeted at OTT set-top box applications e.g. HDMI mini PCs, gaming boxes, etc.;[10]

Allwinner has launched the A80 octa-core OTT box solution, targeting at high-end OTT box market, and launched the Allwinner H8 octa-core processor for mid-range OTT boxes, and most recently launched the quad-core Allwinner H3 targeting the US$35 - $50 OTT box market.[21]

The R (“Real-Time") Series Chip is designed for low power applications where timing is critical and must be done at the edge rather than in the fog or cloud.[22] The chip also has built in redundancies to meet industrial and automotive standards for processing.[23]

The R Series Chip has been applicable to a number of different industries including Industrial Automation, Safe PLCs, Power Generation and Distribution, Healthcare and Automotive Technology.[23] The technology, specifically the R16 Chip, has also been utilised for robotic vacuums, Nintendo Classic Mini systems and smart speakers resulting from a longterm partnership with the Cogobuy Group's subsidiary IngDan (硬蛋).[24]

Cogobuy's preparatory K-system was used as the basis to add integrated SLAM modules with Allwinner chip's.[25] The technical advantages and patents Cogobuy held allowed for chip localisation of edge computing required for the AI room mapping and cleaning.[26] The R40 and R16 technology has been implemented on a number of Banana Pi models.[27][28] The R8 Chip was also used for “The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer” Kickstarter project in 2015.[29]

Allwinner Product Roadmap 20131010

The V-Series are video encoding processor targeting applications such as smart DVR, IP camera and smart home applications. It is similar to the A series SoC, but adds support for functions such as digital watermarking, motion detection and video scaling, as well as a CBR/VBR bit rate control mode.[30]

The A-series are integrated application processors primarily targeting tablets as well as targeting mini PCs, development boards and TV boxes.[2]

The H-series, introduced in 2014, are primarily targeted at OTT set-top box applications.

In December 2014, Allwinner released its Android 5.0 SDK for Allwinner A33 quad-core solution.[71]

Allwinner has been accused multiple times[72] of violating the GPL license by not providing Linux/Android kernel source code or U-Boot source, and by using LGPL-licensed code within their binary blobs, etc.[73]

Allwinner has also been accused of including a backdoor in its published version of the Linux kernel.[74][75] The backdoor allows any installed app to have full root access to the system. While this may be a remnant of debugging during the development process, it presents a significant security risk to all devices using the Allwinner provided kernel.