The 468Mhz ST-Ericsson U6715 ARM9 processor includes current support for Android 2.1, to be upgradable to Android 2.2 in around a month, they use tricks like a Virtualization layers on top of Android to speed some things up for the user experience on this low end hardware. Yet, the experience is very impressive considering the potential $100 unlocked retail price for these Android smartphone devices such as the K-Touch W606, Acer beTouch E130, Coolpad W711 and the GHT Maestro, they can all include 3G support and good battery runtime.
ST-Ericsson U8500 can capture 720p 3D at 30fps and 1080p 2D at 30fps. Here’s a demo of the 3D effect captured using 2 cameras and displayed on a 3D HDTV.
ST-Ericsson are showcasing their performance for augmented reality, tracking at 30fps and rendering at 60fps. There are more and more applications for augmented reality and the new ARM Cortex-A9 processors such as the ST-Ericsson U8500 that includes Mali-400 graphics make this even more usable.
The idea is to provide better than Nexus One like performance early 2012 in low cost Android smartphones that could be sold by then for as little as below $200 even at below the $100 price point. ST-Ericsson U4500 is a single core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, that could be clocked at around 600mhz to achieve a similar performance to the 1Ghz Nexus One that was released early 2010. The idea is to bring that level of performance to potentially hundreds of millions of more people. Also check out my video on the ST-Ericsson A9500 development board to be released around May this year.
This is the SKY-S9500-ULP-CXX aka SNOWBALL, the ST-Ericsson ARM Cortex-A9 development board, they put in there all the memory and everything needed to hack together end user products. It will be sold for about $200 from around April or May, it runs Android, Ubuntu and Meego thus far. You can find more information at http://igloocommunity.org
Check out the Meego OS running on this nice new super powerful ARM Cortex-A9 processor and some talk with a representative about the performance and potential of this processor platform.
The ARM Eagle platform is to be clalled ARM Cortex A15, targetted to be found in products to ship by 2013, will enable Mobile Computing, Smart phones and Tablets that are to be 10 times more powerful than current ones on the market while still achieving low power consumption and cost effective hardware designs. Texas Instruments, ST Ericsson and Samsung are announcing that they are building such processor designs.
The launch of the Cortex A-15 processor marks an exciting milestone for ARM, it brings together more than 20 years of ARMs expertise in low power design with new leading edge technologies. Together, these will enable further opportunities for ARM Partners to develop the consumer products for the next generation of connected computing.
For now, on this site, we are going to have a lot more fun with the ARM Cortex A8 that are on the market and being released and ARM Cortex A9 products to be released soon. But we are also looking forward to even more powerful yet low power and low enough cost ARM processors to achieve even more in terms of bringing ARM architechture up further from the smart phone, up to tablets, laptops, desktops and even to power the future of servers doing all the cloud computing.
How powerful do you think ARM Cortex A15 is going to be? You can discuss in the comments.
This STMicroelectronics STi7108 development platform demonstrates what the future of set top box user interfaces will look like, with support for multiple live video views and pretty advanced 720p or even 1080p playing on the HDTV of 3D games like Quake 3.
I was interviewed by Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane on the Twit show! See it here!
At CES 2012, E Ink talks about E Ink On Every Smart Surface featuring the Triton color display, SURF display, 11.5 inch 300DPI eDocument reader, Ectaco color eReader, new E Ink watches from Phosphor and Seiko, Eton Rukus music player and more.
