RK3566 vs RK3588, which platform for which use case

Rockchip's RK3566 and RK3588 are both Arm-based SoCs, both supported in our Android 11/12/13 reference designs, both ship in production volumes. They are not interchangeable.

RK3566, the workhorse

Quad-core Cortex-A55 at 1.8 GHz, Mali-G52 GPU, 2-port HDMI, 1080p/4K decode, 2 GB DDR4 default. Powers our WM, FS, OD and TS signage lines. It runs Android 11 or Debian 11 with 30+ fps on standard CMS playback. Power draw is 8-12 W at the SoC level.

RK3588, the digital human platform

Octa-core (4× Cortex-A76 + 4× Cortex-A55) at 2.4 GHz, Mali-G610 MC4 GPU, dedicated 6 TOPS NPU, 8 GB DDR4 default. Powers our large-format WT-HC Holobox capsule line. The NPU is the differentiator, on-device avatar lip-sync, intent classification, and TTS run at 30 fps without cloud round-trips. Power draw is 18-25 W.

When to choose RK3588

Choose RK3588 when on-device AI inference is required: avatar animation, real-time speech recognition, computer vision (person detection, demographics), or background segmentation. Anywhere a 6 TOPS NPU is justified vs. a $99/month cloud GPU instance.

When to stay on RK3566

For everything else, content playback, kiosk UI, signage CMS, RK3566 is the right call. The cost delta is meaningful at scale: RK3588 BOM is roughly 2× RK3566.