Final specifications of the new SoC Amlogic S905X2 and S905Y2

Amlogic few weeks ago has presented their new S905X2 and S905Y2 SoC’s and today we have the final specifications of these two chips, from powerful model S922X only know data not yet official. In these new mid-range SoC we have the new Mali-G31 GPU and a needed USB 3.0 interface, those TV-Box seems to be about to reach the real market. On this occasion Amlogic has also shown at least reference base plates based on Android TV 9 Pie, a system that Amlogic wants to implement in all its current SoC’s, including the popular S905X.

The new Amlogic S905X2 and S905Y2 are going to live with us for a long time since they are the substitutes of the popular S905X, these SoC maintain the four original ARM Cortex-A53 processors but their GPU is updated to the ARM Mali-G31 MP2 model which is much more powerful than the ARM Mali-450. As seen in the specifications table, these SoCs are manufactured in a 12nm process, which reduces the size of the processor and improves its energy efficiency.

We also have support for memories LPDDR3/4 up to 4GB with speeds up to 3200 MHz, in the storage section we have support for SLC NAND. At the ports level, the most noticeable change is the inclusion of USB 3.0 / PCIe Gen2 and Gigabit Ethernet support, much-needed points in this hardware. As a novelty, it should also be noted that an MCU circuit is now integrated that allows the device to be switched on with voice commands from a standby mode.

In the section of video playback we now have HDMI 2.1 video output that allows resolutions 4K@70fps and theoretically dynamic HDR or automatic refresh synchronization (although it depends on the chosen implementation). In the picture quality side we have the new 8th Gen TruLife image engine that surely improves substantially compared to the previous one that was very basic. As other news we also have support for HDR systems with Dolby Vision and TCH Prime decoding. In the audio section we also have improvements when moving to 8x I2S input and 8x PDM as digital converters, an aspect that we will see in the audio input process oriented to intelligent microphones for Google Assistant.

The basic difference of these two models is that the S905X2 SoC is designed primarily for the TV-Box sector and as we see it has Gigabit Ethernet support, CVBS output and DVP video input for cameras, on the other hand the S905Y2 SoC does no have these connections to simplify circuits that are not necessary in the TV-Stick. Although as we have seen in the products that are already coming onto the market with these two SoCs, the use of S905Y2 is also addressed to the low-cost TV-Box sector. The first models have Android 8.1 but it is expected to jump soon to Android 9 P, both Android TV version as in classic version depending on the interests of the developer. Undoubtedly a very interesting products that we hope to review shortly.