NEW quad-core SoC now here - Actions ATM7029

No! It is NOT from Allwinner. . . but their Chinese competitor.
(Sorry if that means it is OT, but Jeff has not yet created a generic ARM forum. Nothing much news from AW lately - so this!)

Anyway, new quad-core tablets with this SoC were released in Dec. So far Ainol has a 7" and 10" model, and Ramos has the W31. Notice the name of the Ramos tablet - W31. That would likely indicate that the Ramos tablet was originally destined to use the much-delayed Allwinner A31, which is STILL not available - reportedly due to kernel issues. . .

Anyway here are the published features, direct from Actions website, for this new SoC:

Leopard CPU Subsystem
- ARM Cortex-A9 fimily CPU, Single CPU frequency is up to 1.3GHz.
- Fully comply to ARM cortex V7 instruction.
- A low power and efficient multi-core architecture,effectively provide single-core, dual-core, and quad-core functionality.
- Programmable memory management unit.
- L1 and L2 cache equipped
- Supporting VFP v4(Vector Floating Point v4) architecture and compliant with the IEEE 754 standard for floating-point calculation
- Advanced SIMD technology is equipped for the acceleration of multimedia application performance, such as 3D graphics and high resolution image processing.
- In-order pipeline with dynamic branch prediction equipped
- 256bit E-fuse equipped

Video and Audio Encoding
- H.264 1920x1080@60fps supported
- JPEG baseline, 8192x8192 supported
- Panoramic Image Mosaics supported
- Photographing while video recording supported
- MP3/WMA/WAV/AC3/AAC/dts formats supported (some may be done by the 3rd party applications)

Video and Audio Decoding
- Most popular video format are supported including AVI、WMV、MOV、MKV、RM、RMVB、MP4、M4V、DivX、Xvid、FLV、3GP、DAT、VOB、MPG、MPEG、AVS、 ASF、TP、TRP、TS、M2TS、MTS(some may be done by the 3rd party applications)
- 1920x1080@60fps supported，up to 4K*2K
- Progressive JPEG supported
- Average data rate 60Mbps，Peak rate up to 120Mbps
- MJPEG baseline, 30000x15000 supoorted
- Most popular audio formats are supported including MP3、WMA、CBR、VBROGG、APE、FLAC、WAV、AAC、AudibleRA、AC3、dts、MIDI、AMR、AIFF、MPC (some may be done by the 3rd party applications)

Graphic Process Unit
- 3D : OpenGL ES1.1 and 2.0
- 2D : OpenVG1.1, DirectFB, GDI/DirectDraw
- Full ES2.0 extensions supported except GL_EXT_texture_type_2_10_10_10_REV.
- Full ES2.0 GLSL (Shading Language )supported
- Full featured 3D Graphics pipeline equipped
- Up to 16 ultra-thread unified shader units(SIMD4:transcendental,ctl-flow,tx-load), but limited to per shader per clock. IEEE 32bit floating-point compliant for long shader instructions supporting
- MSAA 4x, FSAA 16x supported
- YUV-to-RGB conversion supported
- Video scaling and format conversion supported.
- 32Kx32K raster 2D coordination system equipped
- IEEE 32bit floating-point compliant. While denorms are set to zero, rounding to zero is supported.
- Up to 256 thread per shader in flight.
- 8k x 8k max texture size supported
- RGB565, 5551, 4444, 8888 Destination color format with dithering supported

Display
- Four layers (1 graphic layers, 3 video layer) supported
- Scaler input size up to 2K*2K
- Simultaneously output to TV and LCD supported
- Alpha blending, color key, dithering and color space conversion，Gamma correction supported
- Flip and Scale supported
- Source format supported: ABGR8888,ABGR1555, ARGB8888, RGB565, YUV 4:2:0 planar format, YUV 4:2:0 semi-planar format

Memory
- High-bandwidth DDR2/3 controller, up to 2GB, 533MHz
- Internal Nand flash controller supporting 1bit/4bit/8bit/12bit/24bit/40bit/60bit ECC, 4CEs，Toggle NAND 1.0&2.0, On-Fi 2.3&3.0，SLC/MLC/TLC NAND Flash
- 3 SD/SDIO controller supported
- EMMC4.4.3 supported

Highly-integration of peripherals
- LVDS interface equipped for connecting bigger size LCD panel
- HDMI Tx(transmitter) equipped for HDMI 1.4a compliant
- USB2.0*2 port equipped for both HOST/Slave supporting
- I2C*3, SPI*4, UART*4, IR*2, I2S, PCM, SPDIF interface equipped
- 24bit LCD controller support
- SDTV CVBS supported
- 4x3 Key matrix supported
- Two joystick suppoted
- 10/100Base ethernet MAC equipped

OS(Operation System)
- Linux
- Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and above

Power
- 3.3V I/O power and 1.0V core power requirred
- Actions’ LPD Gen. II(Low Power Design Generation II) architecture integrated
- Actions’ ADP(Adaptive Dynamic Power) architecture integrated
- Multiple standby state supported

Package
- Type: TFBGA359 compliant with RoHS requirement
- Dimension: 17mm*17mm size
- Ball pitch: 0.8mm

Unfortunately, some details are lacking on the Actions website, such as the GPU used. The GPU is a Vivante GC1000+ which reportedly has a total of five cores. 3D performance is reportedly half that of a GC2000, or about that of the Mali-400MP4. The power usage is very low, and is reportedly half that of A10/A13, or any other quad-core tablet. CPU performance in Antutu is very good with significantly (16%) better performance as a Tegra 3 1.4 GHz, or about four times faster than A10. Android GPU performance is nothing spectacular. But the good news is that the Vivante GPU should have good GNU LInux support.

Kernel sources are due to be released next month.

Prices for the Ainol 7" tablet are as low as $115 on Aliexpress!

According to Ainol it has USB3.0 PHY integration. If USB3 actually works with external drives that would be a definite plus!

Looks like currently these Ainol 7" tablets are one of the hottest items on Aliexpress. . .

it should be interesting to see how A31 stacks against it and if the community can get Linux running on this SoC.


Competition is ALWAYS a good thing :)

If only it had SATA.
From the official spec, no USB3. So unless someone proves the opposite, I would take Aliexpress information with a BIG grain of salt.
And even if it had USB3 physical connection, I won't buy it until some benchmark proves the USB3 links works at 5Gbs (or at least at 3GBps).

The supposed USB3 support information for the SoC certainly did NOT come from AliExpress. It came from the mfr. I am not naive. Even if some people disagree with some of my views I think everyone will agree that I try to quote accurate and pertinent information. The only information that I would post for AliExpress is generic sales links, prices, and sales numbers.

Now whether or not the actual devices actually incorporate that USB3 support is unknown at this point, and I agree that SATA support of any kind would be more desirable. But USB3 support would be nice, and a first for an ARM SoC. I'm not suggesting that this SoC is going to be a replacement for something like i.MX6q or Exynos4/5. But, at least for a low-end tablet device, it is a very competitive SoC. I may even be interested in getting one at the existing reasonable price, as so far it seems to have good performance and better battery life and pricing than the competing Allwinner A31, which is not yet available in the 7" format that I prefer. So, if they actually release the kernel code as was stated, I might consider a tablet, and I am looking forward seeing their future products.

The Actions ATM7029 is not really a Cortex A9 processor. It's a Cortex A5 processor. That's an older generation from ARM.

Philip Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Actions ATM7029 is not really a Cortex A9
> processor. It's a Cortex A5 processor. That's an
> older generation from ARM.

Here there write:
ATM7029

- ARM Cortex-A9 fimily CPU, Single CPU frequency is up to 1.3GHz.

dvl36 Wrote:

> Here there write:
> [url=http://www.actions-semi.com/en/productview.as
> px?cat=98&id=108]ATM7029[/url]
>
> - ARM Cortex-A9 fimily CPU, Single CPU frequency
> is up to 1.3GHz.

Yes, "A9 fimily" (family), whatever that's supposed to mean. A real Cortex-A9 it ain't. The proof is on the same page:
- Supporting VFP v4
- In-order pipeline

A real Cortex-A9 has VFPv3 and an out-of-order pipeline!
Like Philip says, evidence points to it being a Cortex-A5.