Month: March 2011

Top-15 CeBIT 2011 videos

Posted by Charbax – March 8, 2011

Here are my top-15 videos filmed at the CeBIT 2011 in Hannover Germany:

1. Interview with Peter Sunde, co-founder of ThePirateBay.org and Flattr, we talk about politics of filesharing, the European Union, Scandinavia, Sweden’s prime minister (and Ikea), implementation of flattr as a Government policy, the influence of TV networks on democracy and more.

2. Worlds First Honeycomb Laptop, while I had seen the Asus Eee Pad Transformer a couple times at previous conferences. It was awesome to see it run Honeycomb for the first time. The idea of Honeycomb running on ARM Powered tablets is awesome. It would be best if those ARM Powered Honeycomb laptops were cheaper, thinner and lighter. But that will come too.

3. Microsoft and Open Source, an interview with the head of open source activities at Microsoft Germany, about the ways in which Microsoft is being more open towards open source. Does that mean Windows 8 for ARM will be open source and free?

4. Zinwell does ARM Powered $70 Android Set-top-box, Zinwell is one of the leading Realtek based media player makers and are now focusing on designing the ARM Powered set-top-box for Android and Google TV support and they need sufficient processor power to render full web browsing experiences as well as rich user interfaces, even gaming as well as all video codecs and streaming.

5. Asus Eee Pad Memo Tablet and MeMic Bluetooth Phone Remote, cool dual-core Qualcomm MSM8260 based 7″ Android tablet from Asus. It fits nicely in any jacker pocket, and can use a bluetooth remote for voice calls.

6. Yifang M707, Android Tablet with infrared pen input, a cool feature, adding infrared sensor to the side of tablets, to scan in real-time the scribbling on paper.

7. Kinstone $95 7″ ARM Cortex-A9 AmLogic (single core) Tablet, this could be the cheapest ARM Cortex-A9 tablet already, though this AmLogic is a single core design, performance should be great.

8. Shenzhen Ider shows $60 Android Cortex-A8 Set-top-box, one of the cheapest ARM Cortex-A8 set-top-boxes for Android and possibly Google TV that I have heard about.

9. Fun video at Shenzhen AUDE comparing x86 with ARM in tablet design, shows how the ARM Powered tablet is 3x lighter, 3x cheaper, 3x thinner than the design based on x86.

10. ARM Powered Tablets by Shuttle, Shuttle is building tablets (and soon Laptops/Desktops) based on ARM chips from Texas Instruments, Nvidia, VIA and others. Watch for their actual compact ARM Powered motherboards at the end of this video.

11. Gigabyte Tegra2 Tablet GN-TB100, Gigabyte is also joining the fun in making Android based tablets.

12. Mobile Tech shows Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 in new tablets, the new Telechips ARM Cortex-A8 processor is ready for speeding up low cost Android tablets.

13. My first Nintendo 3DS hands-on, it’s pretty awesome. Let’s hope 3D doesn’t hurt.

14. 3Gnet $70 Android Set-top-box, uses Skyviia ARM9 and they plan for a Ziilab ARM Cortex-A8 set-top-box for Android and possibly Google TV as well.

15. Netronix 9.7″ Freescale i.MX51 Android Tablet, same screen, same kind of performance as iPad1, but could retail at $250.

Nuvoton NuMicro Cortex-M0 MCU explained

Posted by Charbax – March 7, 2011

The NuMicro Family is Nuvoton’s new 32-bit Microcontroller product line shown at Embedded World 2011, based on the ARM Cortex-M0 processor with rich peripherals to offer additional features and connectivity capability. Besides the NUC100, NUC120, NUC130 and NUC140 series, the new series the NuMicro M051 series, includes the M052/54/58/516 to supply for the worldwide 8-bit/16-bit microcontroller demand with a higher performance in a 32-bit microcontroller. The Nuvoton Cortex-M0 development kit costs only $20, that sounds cheap for developers to get into experimenting with those kinds of processors.

I’m on German Radio, DRadio Wissen interviews me at CeBIT about my video-blogging

Posted by Charbax – March 7, 2011

German National Public Radio reporter Moritz Metz interviews me (in English) for 6 and a half-minutes for radio channel DRadio Wissen (pre-ceded by a short bit by Chris Ziegler of Engadget talking about 1-man blogging operations like mine): http://wissen.dradio.de/cebit-blogger-reist-gadgets-hinterher.36.de.html?dram:article_id=8810&dram:audio_id=11295&dram:play=1 (direct mp3 download link)

DRadio Wissen is a science and knowledge National German Radio channel operated by public radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio out of Cologne.

Exciting!

Peter Sunde, co-founder of ThePirateBay.org and Flattr.com, at CeBIT 2011

Posted by Charbax – March 6, 2011

A few years ago, Peter Sunde together with a bunch of cool guys in Sweden started thepiratebay.org, which is kind of a fun site where people can find torrent files for all kinds of things. It has been in the media. There is a chance that you know about that site. Peter Sunde is very much involved in the politics around filesharing on the Internet, the politics of media and content, he has spoken at the european union and RIAA and MPAA have a bunch of lawsuits going after him and his team. He tried to buy a country once to implement freedom of filesharing rules there or to build a server farm there, but instead thepiratebay is hosted around the world and can never be shut down and nobody knows who controls it. Those guys are fun (read their Legal Threats page). What do you think about Copyrights, Piracy and those kinds of things? Write your opinions in the comments.

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Toradex shows Tegra2 computer on SO-DIMM form factor

Posted by Charbax – March 4, 2011

This may be the most compact Tegra2 fully featured box PC computer thus far. They use 256MB RAM DDR2, 1GB flash storage for 99 euros, they’ll also do a slightly higher end version with 512MB RAM and 4GB flash storage version soon. The cheapest board and box could be made for less than 50 euros more. Thus the idea is a sub-150 euro Tegra2 box PC all included and it being slightly larger than a box of playing cards, just big enough to accomodate the connectors.

Seco x86-ARM Cross Platform

Posted by Charbax – March 4, 2011

Seco provides cross platform Q7 platforms where users can swap from x86 to ARM Powered seamlessly, with minimum hardware and software porting. They provide Quadmo747-X/T20 for Tegra2, OMAP4, OMAP3, i.MX51 and i.MX28. This way, customers can have as much choice as possible, going from one processor to the other. All board vendors are joining the Q7 board standard, for interoperability in swapping modules.

QNX talks about the Blackberry Tablet OS on Playbook

Posted by Charbax – March 4, 2011

QNX has been working with RIM for quite some time now to enable full multi-process hardware acceleration. QNX Neutrino OS enables deep hardware and software integration, there has been a collaboration between Texas Instruments, QNX and RIM to make this work. QNX has had SMP utilization since 1997, they were enabling dual discreet parts back then. QNX is used to scaling. The ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core, Quad-core and further processors will enable QNX to deploy their value on the market.

Nvidia Tegra2 enables Cortex-A9 for the Embedded World

Posted by Charbax – March 4, 2011

Nvidia is working in the embedded space for some time, they are supporting long term support, industrialization, temperatures and everything else needed in the embedded market. Nvidia provides the chip and some level of software support to enable them and they are supporting the customizations of the implementations. Nvidia showcases their work with MSC, Seco, Toradex and Trim Slice.

ARM Embedded in Motor Control demo

Posted by Charbax – March 4, 2011

ARM is showing Motor Control comparing two rotating water vessels, one controlled in a conventional manner, the other is controlled in a more advanced algorithm called Field Oriented Control on a STM32 Cortex-M3 processor. This more advanced algorithm allows more efficient operation of the motor, better control of the torque and allows for quieter operation. The idea is to use less power to control motors. This is just the start of their investigation into Field Oriented Control using the Cortex-M3 processor.

Xilinx Zynq 7000 series Cortex-A9 in FPGA at Embedded World 2011

Posted by Charbax – March 4, 2011

Xilinx is the market leader in FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), at Embedded World 2011, they are showing their new implementation consisting of putting a Dual-core Cortex-A9 system, memory controller, and nand controller is put inside of the FPGA system. The Zynq 7010, with a dual-core Cortex-A9 running at 800MHz and 30,000 programmable logic cells, will sell for less than $15 in volume. This solution can be imagined to be found in automative applications such as driver assist applications, medical applications and industrial control applications.

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