Rockchip's 8nm octa-core RK3588 set to debut in Q1 of 2020

Rockchip is a lesser-known SoC manufacturer that is regularly seen in lower-specced laptops like Chromebooks. However, the company has a decent foothold in the mobile market, and that may increase next year thanks to the RK3588, an 8nm octa-core ARM-based chip.

The RK3588 was announced at Rockchip’s annual event in China yesterday. The SoC will be comprised of four ARM Cortex-A55 cores and four ARM Cortex-A76 cores coupled with a Mali G52 GPU. The RK3588 will also bring support for 8K 60 fps video decoding and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU 2.0, to be exact).

The biggest feature of the RK3588 will be its 8nm manufacturing process, which Rockchip claims will increase performance between 20-30% while decreasing power consumption by 40%.

Does that mean the RK3588 will take the mobile world by storm? Not likely. Competition among mobile SoC manufacturers is fiercer than ever. Huawei, MediaTek, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Apple all have vastly larger market shares, and the RK3588 won’t match up to older offering from these companies.

However, the RK3588 may be a good choice for companies looking to sell low-powered computers or embedded devices at budget-tier prices. The RK3588 looks like it will be a capable SoC, and if Rockchip prices the silicon competitively, they could make a splash in the budget end of the mobile market.