Chinese chip maker Allwinner announced plans in January to build a 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 processor that would sell for just $5.
Now the company says mass production of the Allwinner A64 chip is set to begin in June which means we could see low-cost devices powered by this processor in the second half of 2015.
The chip may be cheap, but it’s a reasonably powerful quad-core processor with ARM Mali-400 MP2 graphics, support for H.265 video playback and eMMC 5.0 storage. Allwinner says the processor supports Android 5.1.
Allwinner processors are already in some pretty low-cost tablets, TV boxes, and other devices. But some of the company’s higher-performance chips like the Allwinner A80 Octa are actually pretty decent performers. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of performance we can expect from that chip’s low-cost cousin.
It’ll also be interesting to see just how inexpensive tablets and TV boxes with the chip will be. You can already find plenty of Allwinner-powered devices for under $50.
via GizmoChina and AndroidPC.es
Now they have a part that is priced like their other stuff performs.
Allwinner makes weak stuff and doesn’t pay nice with the Linux folks, thereby insuring more e-waste as the unsuspecting masses purchase the rapidly discard their products.
Mali graphics means no open source graphics drivers. And that equals a pain for boards with this chip that might be used with Linux to drive a display.
The Allwinner A64 is a powerful quadcore with a small price.
Allwinner is the best for Budget devices, the A64 will be on many tablets and entertainment devices.
if allwinner starts playing nicely with the GPL and support is good enough for inclusion into the mainline kernel then this should get traction. if its business as usual it’s going to suck as usual.
“latest 3.10”, bite me. 4.x or the take a hike!
Wow, mali400mp2.
It looks like the GPU is still unknown on the Allwinner A64. I hope it will be better than that!
Just what I’ve always wanted,a device with a $5 processor
So far the Intel Sofia wins IMO $50 for a 3g tablet is a great deal I might get that instead of the ZenFone 2 since I don’t really need the best performance
It will also be interesting to see how power efficient the chip is going to be. Cheap is great (even cheap with middle of the road performance), but if you only get 3-4 hours of battery it isn’t of much use.
for the target audience and device, it’s probably not a big deal