Rockchip

Rockchip was founded in Fuzhou in 2001 and started out making chips for MP3 players, then for cheap Android tablets. Its Western breakthrough came with the RK3288, which Google picked for several Chromebooks around 2015, and the RK3399, found in the Pinebook Pro among others. The eight-core RK3588 (2022) turned Rockchip boards into a credible alternative to the Raspberry Pi.

What set it apart from rival Allwinner was less raw performance than upstream work. The Chromebook deals required working drivers in mainline Linux, and Google, Collabora and Rockchip itself put them there. Buy a Rockchip board today and you are more likely to be able to run an ordinary distribution instead of an ancient vendor kernel.