8227L Processor information

(including all the ALPS DEMO Processors)

The MTK8227L. MT8227L and the AC8227L processors are all effectively the same cores found in a huge number of android headunits.

There are questions that should be asked before buying an android headunit…..

Some of them are answered here.

8227L Questions

No. The 8227L is a not a good processor. The very old design is only suited to running very old versions of android. The 8227L performs very poorly with modern apps and android versions.

No. The 8227L is a very slow processor by modern standards and uses.

No. The 8227L_ALPS_DEMO head unit is not considered a good buy. They are very slow and not good for modern in car uses. There are much faster android head units available.

Yes. The 8227L is a quadcore processor. It has only 4 cores.

No, you can not add more RAM to an android head unit.

The 8227L

The 8227L has to be the highest selling and most installed SoC processor in an android headunit. From 2014 these quad-cores are still selling today. That’s coming up to 10 years.

How is it sill so popular?

The cost.

The cost of production is very, very low compared with buying say UIS7862 chips. The designs are cheap, usually the cheapest components go into a 8227L_Demo head unit. Very cheap head units can be produced based on the 8227L platform and cheap Chinese head units, even if obsolete, sell well.

Specifications of the 8227L Processor

The 8227L is a highly Integrated In-Vehicle Infotainment SoC based on a Quad Core architecture.

The 4 cores are made up of 4 ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore.

8227L SoC has an operating speed of up to 1.3GHz

A multi-standard video-accelerator is included in the chip to assist 2D and video playback along with the ARM NEON multimedia processing engine with SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data, parallel processing commands) and VFP (Floating Point co-processor) all help bring out the most performance from the 4 1.3Ghz cores.

8227L RAM

The 8227L processor databus is 32 bits wide meaning it can address a maximum of 2Gb RAM.
RAM type supported is DDR3/L.

Early days

Early 8227L based boards and the real bargain basement android headunits of today may only be fitted with 1Gb RAM chip. This is a cost saving too far now that RAM price is low. The 1Gb RAM was often faked to show 2Gb RAM. This was to mislead the buyer and ensure obsolete stock was moved to the unsuspecting customers.

8227L USB

The 8227L SoC has USB2 support. One of the main features for connecting virtually every addon to an android headunit is via USB.

The USB2.0 is high-speed dual mode and supporting just 8 Tx (Transmission) and 8 Rx (Reception) endpoints.

Screen Output and Graphics

AC8227L includes a LVDS (Low-voltage Differential Signalling) Tx single link up to a resolution of 1280*800
Support for CVBS_IN and CVBS_OUT

OpenGL ES1.1/2.0 and Mali 450 Quad Core

OpenVG 1.1 vector graphic accelerator

History of the DEMO

8227L Demo reference designs were produced and a number of demo boards were made to promote and sell the new 8227L use for and android head unit. Providing reference designs, demo software and working demo hardware is used by system manufacturers to ease system builders into using their products. The barrier to entry is very low when a working design exists. Along with all the firmware that just requires a few branding adjustments and a plastic case sourced then it is time to go to market.

Why re-invent the (demo) wheel? There was no need to change the demo software that actually functioned in the final production devices. There was no need to rewrite any of the code because android was easily customised, the MCU and SoC just did it’s job, well. 8227L_ALPS_DEMO and 8227L_DEMO are just throwbacks from the early demo boards that were used to draw the system builders to use the designs which needed those chips.