Month: December 2010

Expectations for CES next week

Posted by Charbax – December 30, 2010

Between January 3rd and 11th, I am going to video-blog from CES 2011, make sure to often refresh my RSS feed and/or subscribe to my YouTube channel, (at last year’s CES I published 75 videos), I’ll try to feature the coolest ARM Powered devices that I can find at the show.

Have you got any scoop or ideas for what I should video-blog at CES? What questions would you like me to ask the representatives of which specific companies? If you read on any other blogs about any interesting products showing at this CES, please post your suggestions for what I should film here in the comments of this post. You can also send me an email: charbax@gmail.com or you can even sms/call me or leave a voicemail between January 3rd and 11th at my US phone number +1 (702) 238 8630 (only active when I am in the USA).

Here are some of the things I am expecting or hoping to video-blog at CES:

- Lots of Froyo, Gingerbread and Honeycomb stuff. Android in everything!

- Several dual-core tablets are rumored. Nvidia’s Tegra2 is rumored could be one of the stars of the show, rumored to be the “reference design” for Honeycomb. Sounds great, but I am also looking forward to all the other upcoming Dual-Core ARM Processor platforms and I am wondering if products featuring these will be shown at this CES already.

- How soon are the Dual-Core smart phones and tablets being released and at what prices? Will LG, Samsung, Motorola or other present phones at CES to beat Nexus S already?

- ARM Powered Chrome OS Laptops and Google TV Set-top-boxes, I will be looking for the first clues of these products.

- Tablets, more tablets? Any new design features to allow tablets to be used more for productivity? Are some Honeycomb designs like Archos without the hardware Android buttons? Designs with foldable/swivel keyboards?

- Pixel Qi 7″, 10.1″, big OEM announcements? Hopefully these LCD screens will be ready for Kindle-LCD, ipad2, samsung galaxy tab2 and more hopefully mass manufactured and everywhere within the next 3 months.

- Texas Instruments next generation nHD pico projector in all kinds of phones, tablets and other devices at CES? Or not to be shown before February at Mobil World Congress? I’d like to see this type of pico projector be used together with sensors to detect when touching in user interfaces projected for example on a table (see my video of a table-pico-projector prototype UI demonstrated at CeBIT 2007), this could turn any ARM Powered device, even pocketable, into a large screen computing device.

- New ARM Powered platforms for cheaper and better smart phones, tablets and laptops? Rockchip may show ARM Cortex-A8 RK29xx, Broadcom may show BCM2157 for sub-$75 Android phones, is it time for VIA and Telechips to show new faster or/and cheaper solutions for new cooler low-cost Tablets, Laptops and Set-top-boxes?

- Are the new ARM Processors capable of full 1080p at up to 60fps with full high profile and full high bitrates of every codecs?

- Nintendo 3DS is coming in February/March, any other manufacturers to mass manufacture products to use that parallax barrier 3D screen from Sharp that doesn’t require 3D glasses?

- Are ARM Powered NAS boxes and Pogoplugs/Sheevaplugs going to be powerful enough to download and seed BitTorrents at full speed, allow for full speed gigabit LAN file sharing even on the cheaper solutions?

- How much is going to be LTE, how soon and are anyone showing anything to do with White Spaces yet? How soon could that be deployed and at which cost and with what range and authentication features?

- I’d like to see Sanyo release a HD3000 with WiFi/Bluetooth and optics and sensors closer to that of a DSLR. Or it will be interesting to see more DSLR type optics and sensors in more video camcorders and see how affordable those setups can become. It seems Sony, Panasonic and all other major camera makers are going in that direction for the next generation of best HD camcorders.

Please post your expecations/hopes in the comments or send me an email!

Rockchip RK2818 and RK29 demonstrated and explained

Posted by Charbax – December 27, 2010

Rockchip released their next generation of ARM9 based processor RK2818 and are teasing their next generation ARM Cortex-A8 RK29 to be shown by CES. RK2818 can be made with up to 1ghz frequency, supports more and faster RAM memory, comes with a fast DSP and GPU core to accelerate graphics and user interfaces. This new Rockchip processor makes it possible to run up to Android 2.1 on cheaper tablets such as the new $149 (possibly $179 with margins) capacitive Archos 7 Home Tablet v2, and have them perform better for web browsing than their previous generation ARM9 RK2808 processor, video playback and other things are also improved. Rockchip’s next gen RK29, to be showcased at CES, they say is ARM Cortex-A8 better than Apple A4, with 1080p encode/decode, 30 million triangles.

Broadcom BCM2157 to enable $75 Android phones within 3-6 months

Posted by Charbax – December 26, 2010

Android robot logo.
Image via Wikipedia

It’s ARM11 at up to 800Mhz, HVGA 480×320 or WQVGA 400×240, 3G integrated on the chip, 65 nm digital CMOS process, support for Android 2.2 and up. That is what is claimed by Broadcom representatives in a Fortune Magazine CNN post.

To be clear, That sub $100 price is not the cost of materials, it is the suggested retail price after the manufacturers (and carriers) have taken their profits.

This could enable Android to accelerate into first position in worldwide Smartphone sales by next year in front of Symbian even, generating most of possibly as many as 500 million smartphones to be sold next year (up from 269 million smartphones sold in 2010 and 173 million in 2009).

Thus as Android might have been activating 30 thousand smartphones per day (less than 1 million per month) back on 1st January 2010 and has officially been announced to be activating 300’000 smartphones per day (9 million per month) by 1st January 2011 (900% growth rate year over year), if Android expansion accelerates as can be expected with this type of platform to reach sub-$100 and sub-$75 unlocked sales prices to reach China, India and other developing markets during 2011, it may reach an activation rate of closer to 1 million units per day by 1st January 2012 yet another 300% growth rate in a year.

Within a year, the smartphone could thus become the dominant fastest selling device to access the Internet in front of the laptop. While cheaper Android devices means the developing world can finally afford access to smartphones (better than Symbian stuff), it also means carriers in rich countries may have to come up with new tricks if they want to continue making huge profits on wireless phone services. As sub-$100 Android phones can be bought, consumers in rich countries will also decide to buy those with pre-pay services, more and more data centric, and that could trigger the disruption of the “carrier-subsidized” Android super phone carrier model. Which model is not as much about a carrier “subsidizing” a phone than it is about a consumer over-paying on 2-year contracts on a phone device presented as overpriced if bought unlocked.

If you thought Android’s huge growth was impressive while most phones are bought with 2-year $2500 contracts, just wait for Android’s continued growth once most of them will be bought below $100 without any contracts needed.

Source: broadcom.com
Found via: cnn.com

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Salim Ismail, Executive Director of the Singularity University at LeWeb 2010

Posted by Charbax – December 26, 2010

At the Singularity University in Silicon Valley, 80 students in 2010 (picked out of 1600 worldwide applicants) study futures, law, finance, networks, biotechnology, nanotechnology, medicine, robotics, energy and space to prepare for that point of singularity when artificial intelligence meets human intelligence.

Find out exactly what is going on at the Singularity University at http://youtube.com/singularityu and http://singularityu.org you can also watch Salim Ismail presentation at LeWeb here.

John Ham, Founder of Ustream.tv at LeWeb 2010

Posted by Charbax – December 26, 2010

John Ham discusses interactivity for live video streaming, infrastructure scaling for high quality video streaming and other upcoming features of http://ustream.tv such as pay-per-view.

Joe Green, Co-Founder and President of Causes.com at LeWeb 2010

Posted by Charbax – December 25, 2010

Joe Green co-founded Causes.com with Sean Parker who founded Napster, the guy played by Justin Timberlake in the recent Facebook movie “The Social Network”. Causes.com allows anyone to use their Facebook and Twitter friends and followers to raise funds for any kinds of organizations. You can also watch his presentation of causes.com on stage at LeWeb with Loic LeMeur.

Marvell CEO talks about ARM Powered Windows

Posted by Charbax – December 24, 2010

xconomy.com is posting an extensive interview with Marvell CEO Sehat Sutardja after the Holidays, of which they have posted an excerpt talking about what he thinks on Windows for ARM, he says it’s inevitable.

They have said publicly that they were going to support it; the question is when. I remember I went to an ARM forum at Microsoft four or five years ago, where they invited basically everybody in the industry. It was not a secret.

100 percent of cell phone devices and more and more electronics will use ARM, as a byproduct of the investment people have put into cell phones and mobile devices. Once you’ve written software for the handset, the same software can run in a TV, in a digital picture frame, in washing machines, in toys.

If it’s true that they are going to introduce Windows on ARM, it’s going to be better for ARM, it’s going to be better for Microsoft themselves. It’s better for everybody. But if not, in a year or two they will be there anyway.

Here are more of my speculation for what I think the Microsoft Windows ARM announcement at CES could be about:

- Windows 7 version for ARM in 2011

- Windows 8 version for ARM in 2012

- Tweaking of Windows Phone 7 for Tablets

- Tweaking of Windows CE 7 for Laptops and Tablets

- XboX 720 could be ARM Powered, in the form of a pocketable tablet style product with gaming controls, with HDMI output thus doubling as portable and home console. The most modern ARM processors of 2011 will have graphics processing in the range of 200 million triangles per second, thus equaling the graphics capabilities of the XboX360 and PS3 in a battery powered pocketable product.

- Microsoft could be investing billions of dollars in tweaking their own ARM Processor designs in the style of Marvell or Qualcomm in cooperation with some specific ARM Processor designers and foundries. Their tweaks could be aimed specifically at powering future ARM Windows Laptops, Tablets, Desktops and Servers.

What do you think Microsoft will be announcing at CES that they have been doing with their ARM licence? Post in the comments.

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The Dual-Core ARM Powered products are coming

Posted by Charbax – December 22, 2010

Buy a Gingerbread Nexus S now or wait for Dual-Core Android? That is the question early adopters have.

Nearly a year ago, Nvidia unveiled its awesome Tegra 2 platform at CES, I was there and I filmed it (2), (3). It took a while for Nvidia and its manufacturing partners to start bringing actual products with Nvidia’s Tegra 2 ARM Cortex-A9 processor onto the market. Possible delays may have been due to manufacturing problems or a wait for stabilized software, new versions of Android and Flash to support this new type of Dual-Core processor.

Other Dual-Core processors are about to reach products in the market as well:
- Texas Instruments OMAP4430 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 based products will be introduced in products to the market soon.
- Qualcomm MSM8660 or faster Dual-Core Snapdragon platform may be imminent.
- Marvell Armada 628 Tri-Core platform available in products soon offers upwards 200 million triangles per second.
- Samsung Orion with Mali-400 was unveiled last month (2), will probably show in products within months. Although some rumors also say Samsung may be using the Tegra 2 platform for some products to be shown even earlier.
- ST-Ericsson is working with Nokia to release some Dual-Core Meego devices probably soon.
- Nufront are releasing their Nufront ARM Cortex-A9 for Laptops and Desktops.

Google may focus on Tegra 2 for Honeycomb as some rumors are saying, just as Google prioritized their “Reference designs” like this:
Eclair + Froyo: Snapdragon (Nexus One)
Gingerbread: Hummingbird (Nexus S)
Honeycomb: Tegra 2 (Motorola’s upcoming Tablet)

A “reference design” to Google basically means the actual development hardware Google engineers work on to get their new software released. Though I expect Google and the Open Handset Alliance to bring-up Gingerbread and Honeycomb about as fast on all other Single-Core and Dual-Core platforms as well, just as Froyo got ready on all the other platforms relatively fast.

Dual-Core ARM Processors are probably also what we need for Chrome OS and Ubuntu powered Laptops and Google TV Powered set-top-boxes.

Microsoft to unveil Windows 8 for ARM at CES?

Posted by Charbax – December 22, 2010

There are rumors that Microsoft will be showcasing some kind of Windows for ARM at CES January 6-9th, but also, it’s rumored that actual release may be “an early demo” because of the need for “ARM Drivers”?

What kind of drivers can possibly be needed to be ported for Windows or the like to work on ARM Powered systems?

Webcams? Those are in the SoC anyways aren’t they? Printers? Cloud printing solutions such as the one from Google or Apple’s AirPrint should solve that shouldn’t it?

Since all the main features of an ARM Powered laptop or desktop design are in the SoC, I have a hard time trying to imagine what kind of delay Microsoft would want to argue needs to be brought by hardware makers for their ARM Powered Windows OS to be ready for the market.

More likely Microsoft is working on an ARM compatible applications platform for Windows.

I think that the more likely situation is that Microsoft does not want to make its long time partner Intel think that Microsoft is doing anything to precipitate things away from x86 onto ARM platforms. I believe that Microsoft’s main goal is to prepare a Windows for ARM just in case the upcoming ARM Powered laptops and desktops become a huge trend and thus Microsoft would rather not leave that market segment exclusively to embedded Linux OSes like Chrome OS for ARM, Ubuntu for ARM and other optimized Linux OS.

Also likely Microsoft wants to have a strong ARM Powered Tablet oriented Windows OS. Thus the UI for Tablet use could be similar to Windows Phone 7.

Logically, to be competitive, the licencing price of Windows 8 for ARM should be at most half the price of same licencing on Intel.

Source: bloomberg.com
Via: ubuntuforecast.com

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iWave launches iW-i.MX51 SOM

Posted by iwavesystems – December 22, 2010

Bangalore based embedded design house iWave Systems Technologies has recently released High end, low cost, Low power SOM (70mm x 70mm) based on Freescale’s i.MX51 (Cortex-A8 ) Multimedia application processor. This Platform runs Win CE 6.0 R3, Android2.1 and Linux 2.6.28 Operating Systems.

This integrated, high performance, Low power module can be used for a wide range of applications in Industrial, Medical, Security/surveillance, Digital Signage and Automotive. The key features of this module are i.MX51/800MHz processor, on board 128MB/512MB RAM, 128MB/2GB NAND Flash, Micro SD with Edge and Expansion connectors for supporting Dual LCD/Camera, Multiple USB/SD/SDIO, TV, SPI, I2C etc interfaces. Any product development can be developed in about 10 weeks time.

Features/Specification:
1. i.MX51 Processor, PMIC, 512MB DDR2, 2GB Nand Flash, MicroSD,
2. 230 pin edge connector: Ethernet MII interface, Two MMC4.0/SD Mem 2.0/SDIO1.2, TwoI2C Interfaces, Two USB2.0 Host, Two UART Interfaces, SPI interface, SSI (Audio) Interface, CSI Interface-1, Display Interface-1, One Wire interface, TV-OUT, GPIOs, Power,
3. Expansion Connectors: NAND Flash (Expansion), Processor EIM Bus (16 bit multiplexed bus), 4×4 Keypad interface, CSI interface-2, Display Interface-2.

Contact: mktg@iwavesystems.com
More info: iwavesystems.com

This post was submitted by iwavesystems.