
Amlogic

Amlogic Inc. (sometimes stylized AMLogic) is an American technology company that was founded on March 14, 1995 in Santa Clara, California and is predominantly focused on designing and selling system on a chip integrated circuits. Like most fabless companies in the industry, the company outsources the actual manufacturing of its chips to third-party independent chip manufacturers such as TSMC. Its main target applications are entertainment devices such as Android TV-based devices and IPTV/OTT set-top boxes, media dongles, smart TVs and tablets. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Santa Clara, California.
It developed Video CD player chips and later chips for DVD players and other applications involving MPEG2 decoding. Amlogic was involved in the creation of the HVD (High-Definition Versatile Disc) standard promoted in China as an alternative to DVD video disks used in DVD players. The company was a player in the developing Chinese tablet processor market since 2010–2013.
Amlogic is an ARM licensee and uses the ARM architecture in the majority of its products . According to a joint press release with ARM in 2013, it was the first company to use ARM's Mali-450 GPU in a configuration with six cores or more.
Products.
Tablet computer SoC.
M8 family (announced 2013).
The M801/802 uses a new version of ARM's Cortex-A9 core (A9r4) that theoretically allows for higher clock speeds and lower power consumption compared to older versions of the Cortex A9 core such as the A9r3 used in Rockchip's RK3188.
Originally scheduled to be in production as early as the middle of 2013 in the form of the AML8726-M8, , only one tablet (Onda V975M) has been announced using a chip from the M8 family.
A few manufacturers have shown Android TV boxes using the M802 (Shenzhen Tomato Technology, Tronsmart, Eny Technology and GeniaTech). It has been noted that some devices using the M802 may run hot and use a heatsink for cooling. This is common among other popular OTT set top boxes such as the Amazon FireTV which uses a metal shell to disperse heat, much like a heatsink would.
Media player SoCs (S8 family).
Amlogic also offers SoC products (S802, S805, and S812) specifically targeting Android TV boxes and OTT set-top boxes (which are variations of similar SoCs in the M series targeting tablets).
S8**-H models include Dolby/DTS licenses.
Media player SoCs (S9 family).
First 64-bit Amlogic Products lineup.
S9**(*)-H models include Dolby/DTS licenses.
Devices based on them are already in the market running Android 5.1 to 7.1, they are usually paired with 1 GB, 2 GB or 3 GB RAM, 8 GB to 64 GB flash memory, they have features such as a Gigabit Lan and Dual band 2.4G/5G A/C WiFi.
S905X was scheduled to be released in Q1 2016 while S905D and S912 were scheduled for Q2 2016. All three of the SoCs have Android Marshmallow and Buildroot Linux SDKs released.
Media player SoCs (S9 family gen 2).
At IBC 2018 Amlogic showed to the public for the first time their second generation SoCs for media players on reference boards running Android TV 9.
Media player SoCs (S8 & S9 family gen 4).
According to a leaked roadmap, Amlogic was to launch its next generation of media processors starting from Q4 2019. The main new feature is support of AV1 video decoding in hardware. Three new SoCs are in development:
Smart speakers and audio applications SoCs.
In Q3 2017 Amlogic released new SoCs targeting smart speakers and audio applications.
Other products.
The Amlogic MX, S802 and S805 SoCs are also targeted at media dongles.
Amlogic also offers SoCs targeting smart TVs and projectors, including M6L, M6C, M6D, T826, T828, T866, T868, T962, T966 and T968.
Markets and sales.
Amlogic does not publish sales or financial information on its website.
The company is listed as a client of several venture capital firms.
In the market for SoCs targeting Chinese tablet manufacturers and manufacturers of Android media players, TV boxes and media dongles, it faces competition primarily from Rockchip, Allwinner Technology, Actions Semiconductor, MediaTek, Intel and Realtek. Amlogic was reported to be fourth largest application processor supplier for Chinese tablets in 2012. For Q2 2014, Amlogic was reported to be the fifth largest supplier, after Rockchip, MediaTek, Allwinner and Actions Semiconductor.
Chinese SoC suppliers that do not have cellular baseband technology are at a disadvantage compared to companies such as MediaTek that also supply the smartphone market as white-box tablet makers increasingly add phone functionality to their products.
In 2011, the AML8726-M was selected as one of the "hottest" processors by EE Times China, while in 2012, the AML8726-MX won EE Times-China's Processor of the Year award.
Open source commitment.
Amlogic maintains a website dedicated to providing source code for the Linux kernel and Android SDK supporting Amlogic chips and reference designs. The Linux kernel source code is freely available, and has recently (as of April 2014) been updated to support certain chips in the M8 family as well as the older MX family, with Android versions up to 4.4 (KitKat) being supported (based on Linux kernel version 3.10.x). However, the Android SDK requires a NDA and is only available to business partners. The source code includes Linux kernel 3.10.10, U-Boot, Realtek and Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers, NAND drivers, "TVIN" drivers, and kernel space GPU drivers for the Mali-400/450 GPU. XBMC/Kodi Amlogic S805 / M805 / S806 / M806 / S812 Android video decoding compatibility list: http://kodi.wiki/view/Android_hardware#Compatible_chipsets
However an effort to push Linux upstream support for the GX ARM64 lineup is ongoing on http://linux-meson.com/. Currently only the AML8726MX, S802, S805 and S905 SoC are booting headless on Linux 4.8. But S905X, S905D and S912 Headless support is expected for Linux 4.10.