New Amlogic Soc

New Amlogic S922 review :

Today we present our comparative and benchmarks of the new Amlogic S922X SoC’s against the all of current SoC in the market installed in the TV-Boxes. This new SoC is a Hexa Core model big.LITTLE with 4 ARM Cortex-A73 processors + 2 RAM processors Cortex-A53 and ARM GPU Mali-G52 MP6, at VPU level we have native support for H.265 video and VP9 up to 4K@75fps with latest generation HDR support. A chip destined for the high-end TV-Box within its sector that faces against the options of Allwinner, Rockchip, Hisilicon or Realtek.




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SPECIFICATIONS AMLOGIC S922X

General specifications
The Amlogic S922X SoC is the most powerful chip that comes to replace the current S912, this SoC has a Hexa Core configuration with four Cortex-A73 cores and two other Cortex-A53 low consumption, in the graphical section we have a powerful Mali-G52 MP6 GPU. It has native connections for HDMI 2.1 that reaches up to 4K@75fps compatible with multiple DRM security systems, USB 3.0 support, internal storage up to eMMC 5.0, Gigabit Ethernet and audio capacity up to 8 channels of audio input and output.

In the graphical section we have an important jump in the GPU since now it is integrated a Mali-G52 MP6 up to 800MHz manufactured in 16nm that far exceeds the previous Mali-T820 MP3 of the S912. In the video section on your VPU we now have an image processor called Advanced Video Engine Gen10 that allows us to decode the most modern video formats with advanced HDR support.

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CPU
The new Amlogic S922X Hexa Core SoC has four ARM Cortex-A73 cores capable of reaching 1.8Ghz with 1MB L2 cache + 2 Cortex-A53 RAM processors with 256k L2 cache, the theoretical maximum speed is 1.9Ghz. This cores are manufactured in 12nm which gives us improvements in performance by lowering the consumption and thermals. As always in this type of products, the theoretical maximum speed can be limited and in our tests on this test model we reached 1.8 GHz as the maximum peak.

  • As we see the system supports only ABI armeabi-v7a which limits us to install applications in 32bit.
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GPU
For the graphical section we have a Mali-G52 MP6 GPU with a maximum speed of 850Mhz and performance up to 6.8Gpix / s (2.6 Gpix in the Mali-820 of SoC S912). It has hardware support for OpenGL ES 3.2 and also Vulkan 1.0 but this is not activated in the firmware, this GPU is made in 16nm. We also have support OpenCL 2.0 FP, Render Script, support L2 Cache up to 512KB and bus AMBA 4 ACE-LITE. With this GPU we can play powerful titles like PUBG in medium / high settings.

mali-g52-specs-n01.jpg


VPU
In this SoC we find the Advanced Video Engine Gen10 for decoding that supports h.265 and VP9 codecs, compatible with HDR, Dolby Vision, Advanced HDR10, HDR10 +, HLG, PRIME HDR formats and support for REC709 / BT2020 profiles. This system allows us to take video up to UHD 4K@75fps resolutions without problems thanks to its HDMI 2.1 video output that theoretically can be compatible with automatic refresh refresh synchronization, but this will depend on the implementation in the firmware and the technology of our TV.

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Android system
The system that we find in this first Box that we are going to review is based on Android 9 Pie (API 28), the kernel that controls the system is the kernel 4.9.113 with date of compilation 2019-05-08, a very modern version that Take the advantages of this type of kernel. As we said before due to limitations of the API, we can only install 32bit Android apps, perhaps to avoid incompatibility problems.



PERFORMANCE TEST
We perform several performance tests with the Amlogic S922X SoC’s, we make a VS against Soch Rockchip RK3328, RK3399, Nvidia Tegra X1, Realtek RTD1296, Amlogic S912, S905X, S905X2, Himedia Hi3798CV200 and the Allwinner H6.

Antutu
Possibly the best known test, we use version 7 because the data from 6 do not seem correct, unfortunately this test is not compatible with older GPUs such as ARM-Mali 450. With this test we get an idea of the overall performance of the device and We can buy it with others. This test is greatly influenced by the internal storage and other values of general performance, as we can see in the results this new SoC exceeds S912 and RK3399.

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Geekbench
A test that gives us some very interesting values of the raw power of the CPU in mono core and in multi core in addition to computing by GPU. As we see in the results indicate a substantial improvement at all levels and approaches the Tegra X1 less at the level of multicore as is logical.

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3DMark
The graphical performance test par excellence with a fairly solid continuity in terms of results which helps us when comparing the performance of GPUs historically. As we see the GPU Mali-G52 MP6 defends well and leaves behind the previous S912, the S905X2 and also the RK3399.

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PCMark
This test gives us an idea of the performance level for desktop applications of this hardware performing tasks such as video editing, managing text or audio files, something that is increasingly used in Android. The result is a sum of all those aspects and is influenced by the general hardware components. The results are quite good and far exceeds the rest of SoC in its same sector.

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Power consumption and thermals
We also make a comparison of consumption and thermal at a general level, then we will see it in detail in the review of each device. As we can see the maximum consumption remains in only 7.7W as a result of the jump of manufacturing process of the CPU from 28nm to 12nm, although the GPU remains at 16nm. An excellent values that affects the temperatures much lower than the previous S912 or its direct rival RK3399 that had serious problems in that regard.

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VPU and Sound
We passed a series of performance tests at the video playback level in the Amlogic S922X to test all the formats supported by the VPU and the Advanced Video Engine Gen10 processor, as we can see the results are very good in both h.265 and in VP9 P2 in formats of 10bit of color and with HDR, only the 8K videos are resisted.

  • Image quality: Good colors and acceptable processing.
  • HDR compatibility: Dolby Vision, Advanced HDR10, HDR10 +, HLG, PRIME HDR and support for REC709 / BT2020 profiles.
  • HDMI-CEC: Works with the firmware Android 9. It depends on each model.
  • Auto framerate: By default it does NOT included in the options menu. It depends on each model and brand.
  • Sound: In this firmware we have supports up to DD and DTS 5.1. See review of the concrete model.
H.264 / VC-1ResultBBB – H.264 8bit – Simple@L1 – 1080p@25fps – 7 Mbps OK
Samsung Oceanic Life – H.264 8bit – High@L5.1 – 1080p@30fps – 40 Mbps OK
Timelapse – H.264 8bit – High@L5.1 – 4K@24fps – 43 Mbps OK
Anime – H.264 10bit – High 10@L5.1 – 1080p@24fps – 10 MbpsOKMKV – VC-1 – Advance@L3 – 1080p@24fps – 17 Mbps OK

H.265 / VP9 SDRTears of steel – HVEC 8bit – Main@L6.2@Main – 1080p@24fps – 17 Mbps OK
Samsung UHD Dubai – HVEC 10bit – Main 10@L5.2@Main – 4K@24fps – 51 Mbps OK
Anime – HVEC 10bit – Main 10@L4@Main – 1080p@24fps – 21 Mbps OK
Eye of the Storm – VP9 – 4K@24fps – 14 Mbps OK

H.265 / VP9 HDR
Life of Pi HDR10 – HVEC 10bit – Main 10@L5.1@High – 4K@24fps – 45 Mbps OK
LG Demo – Dolby Vision – HVEC 12bit – Main 10@L5@Main – 4K@24fps – 30 Mbps OK
Planet Earth II – HDR HLG 10bit – Main 10@L5@High – 4K@25fps – 31 Mbps OK
The world in HDR – VP9 Profile 2 10bit – 4K@60fps – 20 Mbps OK
Peru 8K HDR – VP9 Profile 2 10bit – 8K@60fps – 20 Mbps Frameskip

MAX BITRATE
Jellyfish – HVEC 10bit – Main 10@L6.1@High – 4K@30fps – Test up to 400 Mbps100 Mbps = 12,5 MB/s



CONCLUSIONS

As we have seen in our comparison, the new Amlogic S922X Hexa core SoC represents a considerable jump in performance compared to the previous S912 Octa Core. The raw performance is much higher thanks to the Cortex-A73 cores, in general the efficiency has improved at all levels and is noticeable at the user level. Also now we have USB 3.0 support and also HDMI 2.1, we expect more evolutions in the next firmware. At the level of graphic power the Mali-G52 MP6 has good performance and allows gaming even in titles such as PUBG.

With the new Amlogic S922X SoC we have a significant improvement over the S912 with the Advanced Video Engine Gen10 engine that provides colors and processor more sophisticated than the basic in previous SoC, we have support for H.265 and VP9 in addition to all types of HDR until the latest versions. At the audio level we also have interesting improvements in terms of decoding and also in voice recognition, something important with all the Virtual Assistant system we have in the market.

This new Amlogic S922X its a very promising SoC that, based on what we have been able to verify, comes with a good base of firmware based on Android 9 Pie, which, as is logical, should be improved by adding functions.

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@Skynet 8k is one of the next steps, but it is ok because there is few TVS (and expensive) and even less content to test .
(At least in Portugal and Spain - Vigo, in the weekend i went to Vigo and saw the news in techology :))
Very good results :) for the new Amlogic SoC.
 
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