Category: Ubuntu

Always Innovating OMAP4 HDMI Dongle

Posted by Charbax – January 12, 2012
Category: Laptops, Set-top-boxes, HDMI Sticks, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, CES, Android, Chrome OS, Google TV, Ubuntu, Windows

Always Innovating fits the Texas Instruments OMAP4 motherboard with all the needed features for a Desktop, Set-top-box and 3D home console into a USB stick sized device that connects to the HDMI port of your HDTV and gets power from USB. It has Bluetooth for Bluetooth keyboards and game controllers. Its USB can do USB host.

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FXI Technologies Cotton Candy, Samsung Exynos 4210 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 with a Mali-400

Posted by Charbax – January 11, 2012
Category: Laptops, Set-top-boxes, HDMI Sticks, Exclusive videos, Samsung, CES, Android, Ubuntu

Here’s a super compact USB Stick sized ARM desktop computer, can be used as Set-top-box also, here demonstrating some advanced 3D gaming on a HDTV. Your next USB stick (HDMI stick) can actually be a computer, set-top-box, home console, all-in-one.

Variscite’s OMAP4460 SoM now supporting Ubuntu Oneiric

Posted by Charbax2 – December 17, 2011
Category: Laptops, Texas Instruments, Ubuntu

Variscite just released Ubunto 11.10 Oneiric support for the VAR-SOM-OM44 System on Module. The SoM is based on TI’s OMAP4460, 1.5GHz Dual-core Cortex-A9.

FXI Cotton Candy, Exynos 4210 computer in a USB stick

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2011
Category: Laptops, HDMI Sticks, Samsung, Android, Ubuntu

Norwegian FXI Technologies is showing their new Exynos 4210 ARM Cortex-A9 based computer in a 21 gram USB stick form factor. It has HDMI output, it powers from USB, has a built-in MicroSD card slot, WiFi and Bluetooth. It’s to be released next year.

Video by: booredatwork.com

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List of my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging:

Posted by Charbax – November 14, 2011
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Wearables, Smart Glass, Reviews, MediaTek, Texas Instruments, Marvell, ARM TechCon, Archos, Pixel Qi, OLPC, Kopin, Android, Ubuntu, Windows

Andy Frame is interviewing me on ARM’s official YouTube Channel about my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging and live video streaming from consumer electronics trade-shows.

List of devices featured in this video:

– Headmounted Display: Kopin Golden-i, OMAP3530 based, provides SVGA screen at eye-level for real-time monitoring of an IRC chat for asking better questions
– Headmounted Logitech c910 Webcam connected to the ARM Powered One Laptop Per Child XO-1.75, Marvell Armada 618 based, live-streaming the webcam video feed to http://ustream.tv (an optimal Headmounted computer, maybe Motorola’s next version, can include the webcam and Android based software to live-stream the video to any live video streaming service built-in)
– Archos 101 G9, OMAP4430/OMAP4460 1Ghz to 1.5Ghz tablet, similar specs as in the Galaxy Nexus but in a 10.1″ tablet form factor. Starts $269 unlocked no contract for 8″. This is probably my favorite high-end tablet at the moment. I’ll post my full video-review of the Archos 101 G9 in the next few days.
– Archos 70 Internet Tablet, OMAP3630 1Ghz single core, released about 13 months ago. I use this tablet every day as 7″ tablets fit in any jacket pocket. Thus I mostly use this for checking emails, web browsing, watching video, playing games, using apps when I am outside. I am looking forward to upgrade this to a dual-core 7″ tablet.
– My $87 FG8 Android Smartphone, it’s my main smartphone for the past 7 months since I found it in Shenzhen China. It supports Dual-SIM cards (so I can use my home and foreign SIM numbers at the same time, or use voice SIM and data SIM at the same time), has a decent 3.5″ capacitive touch screen, uses the wildly popular in China Mediatek MTK6516 ARM9 processor. I’m looking forward upgrading this to a Galaxy Nexus (because I am eager to try Ice Cream Sandwich) or to a newer faster 3G-capable sub-$100 Android phone.
– ZTE MF61 T-Mobile USA 4G HSPA+ Hotspot, $50 for 3GB/month pre-paid, $141 for the device, no contract.

Update on the ST Ericsson SNOWBALL ARM Cortex-A9 development board

Posted by Charbax – October 30, 2011
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, ST-Ericsson, ARM TechCon, Android, Ubuntu

The SKY-S9500-ULP-CXX aka SNOWBALL has been available as a development board for the ST Ericsson ARM Cortex-A9 processor for about 4 months now. Here’s an update on how they are doing. Find more at http://igloocommunity.org

Ubuntu at ARM TechCon 2011

Posted by Charbax – October 27, 2011
Category: Laptops, Servers, Development Boards, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, ARM TechCon, Ubuntu

They are showing Ubuntu 11.10 running on the Toshiba AC100, and Ubuntu 11.10 Server Edition running on the OMAP4 Pandaboard.

Raspberry Pi presents the $25 PC at ARM TechCon 2011

Posted by Charbax – October 27, 2011
Category: Laptops, Development Boards, Exclusive videos, Broadcom, ARM TechCon, Ubuntu

They plan mass production and deliveries by Christmas this year of the $25 ARM Powered PC. It’s basically a Broadcom ARM11 based SoC on a PCB with USB host, Ethernet, SD Card slot and a HDMI output.

Variscite announces OMAP4460 1.5GHz Dual-core System On Module

Posted by Charbax2 – October 11, 2011
Category: Other, Texas Instruments, Android, Ubuntu

Press release:

Variscite announces the first System on Module based on TI’s OMAP4460 smart multicore processor with dual ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCores™ running at up to 1.5GHz each – now the fastest on the market.
Variscite is really speeding things up with the new future-proof and highly integrated VAR-SOM-OM44, responding to the increasing demand for faster processing and cutting-edge multimedia performance. Leveraging Variscite’s known design expertise for proprietary System-on-Chips from Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), this offering is based on TI’s smart multicore OMAP4460 (OMAP 4) mobile processor. The VAR-SOM-OM44 is ideal for a wide range of target markets requiring rich multimedia functionality, advanced graphics and video capabilities, together with high-processing power.

Find more info: http://www.variscite.com/

Ubuntu for ARM Powered Servers, to go mainstream within 2 years

Posted by Charbax – September 17, 2011
Category: Servers, Ubuntu

Canonical is working with ARM and Calxeda to prepare the customized and optimized Ubuntu Server Edition software to run on ARM Powered servers once they are ready.

With Ubuntu Server becoming the de-facto standard for cloud infrastructure and big data solutions, we recognise that power consumption is key to efficient scaling. Building on four years of working with ARM, we are now taking the step of supporting Ubuntu Server on ARM. We expect these processors to be used in a variety of use cases including microservers.

This is a first step and there will be many revisions of processors, hardware designs and of software as the performance and supported server workloads optimised for ARM grow over the next four years. It is, however, a first crucial step towards a new technology and one where yet again open-source innovation leads.

The new addition to the Ubuntu family | First release in October 2011

In October, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release will be simultaneously available for x86, x86-64 and ARM-based architectures. The base image of the releases will be the same across architectures with a common kernel baseline. The ARM architecture will also be part of the long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Server in 12.04 and other future releases.

Initial development focus and optimisation will be around the most popular Ubuntu workloads of web/network infrastructure and distributed data processing via NoSQL or big data applications where workloads typically use hundreds or thousands of systems.

Source: blog.canonical.com

20 years ago today, Linux was released

Posted by Charbax – August 26, 2011
Category: Software, Opinions, Android, Chrome OS, Google TV, Ubuntu

On August 26th 1991, Linus Torvalds released Linux in the comp.os.minix newsgroup:

Hello everybody out there using minix –
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).
I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and
I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them 🙂
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

The creation of Linux was possible thanks to the Socialist system in Finland that provides free unlimited University education to its students, where Linus Torvalds was able to mess around with his own personal ideas for 8 and a half years for free:

Some talk by Linus Torvalds about Linux 10 years ago on the Charlie Rose TV show:

While Linux totally dominates in your smart phone (Android), in your TV/set-top-box, in the worlds servers that host all websites, in powering Government and Industry infrastructure, I believe that with Chrome OS and OLPC we are also soon likely to see Linux dominate for the home and enterprise desktop/laptop OS ecosystem.

Acer to release an ARM Powered Laptop next week!

Posted by Charbax – July 23, 2011
Category: Laptops, Nvidia, Android, Chrome OS, Ubuntu

x86 is becoming more and more problematic for Laptop makers as the retail prices are lowered, component and manufacturing costs remain high, profit margins are lowered and the overall Laptop market growth is being slowed by consumers using gradually more and more of their consumer electronics budgets on ARM Powered Tablets and Smartphones instead of x86.

Acer’s previous CEO got fired about 3 months ago as their board of directors were angry at them not investing enough of their potential into releasing more ARM Powered devices, those that can maximize profit margins and enable real growth.

The big question for this ARM Powered Acer Laptop is to know if this will run the Tegra2, does that provide enough memory bandwidth for a good multi-tab web browsing experience, if they somehow have been able to provide a version of the 1Ghz Tegra2 with more memory bandwidth for Laptop use, or if performance is simply going to be similar to the awesome ARM Powered Toshiba AC100 released last year.

The other big question is do they run Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Android Honeycomb or all of the above? Wouldn’t it be awesome if Acer came forward and said something like “Hey, we will support more than 1 OS, even Windows 8 when it comes out, simply choose your OS in a multi-boot menu and we will provide updates for each OS over the Internet or they can be updated through the SD card”. I think multi-boot multi-OS support is the key to enable a successful ARM Powered Laptop product for convincing the early adopters now while the whole Linaro software is being optimized and worked on, while memory bandwidth on ARM Powered laptops may or may not provide a fully smooth multi-tab full javascripts and Flash web browsing experience, and while so many nice OS are competing with each other to provide the best most hardware accelerated web browsing experience. I would for example very much like Chrome OS on this, but the look of Android Honeycomb on a Laptop sure is nice and Ubuntu on ARM is becoming awesome!

The news arrives by way of company chairman and CEO J.T. Wang as he addressed concerns about the company dropping from the second world’s largest PC manufacturer to the fourth largest during the second quarter of 2011. He said that to regain its lost market share, the company plans to adopt a new strategy to create “more value instead of pursuing volume growth.”

This is Awesome! ARM Powered Laptops are CHEAPER, use much lower power, thinner, lighter, would be perfect in a $199 ARM Powered Acer Chromebook, this is a perfect way for Acer to introduce something new to dominate a market.

Finally, instead of simply pushing out x86 powered reference design laptops based on Intel and AMD x86 chips, now Acer is investing to differentiate, improve, optimize, customize and design awesomeness through ARM Powered laptops that run embedded software.

Acer is not the only one!

Last month, Digitimes reported that Several vendors plan to offer ARM-architecture notebooks.

Several vendors, including Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Acer and Asustek Computer, plan to develop ARM architecture notebooks, with products possibly to be launched as early as the end of 2011, according to industry sources.

Samsung may release Exynos 4210 Powered Chromebooks! Toshiba is probably doing an AC200! Asus is also rumored to be preparing a 13″ ARM Powered Android Laptop similar to its Asus Transformer!

Look forward to A LOT of FUN TIMES ahead in the ARM Powered Laptop market. Which ARM Processor with how much memory bandwidth and which software OS would you like to run on your next ARM Powered laptop?

via: liliputing.com and tomshardware.com

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Linaro ARM Linux optimizations status at the Freescale Technology Forum

Posted by Charbax – June 23, 2011
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Ubuntu

Discussion with Linaro employees about the status of ARM Powered laptops.

Ubuntu Core with touch screen for interactive in-car navigation system

Posted by Charbax – June 23, 2011
Category: Tablets, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Ubuntu

This is the Ubuntu In-Vehicle Infotainment system, using Ubuntu in the car. This is touch screen UI optimized version of Ubuntu.

Genesi launches new cheaper/better i.MX53 based Laptops and Desktops

Posted by Charbax – June 22, 2011
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Ubuntu

Here is the board for now, they are going to launch the new Genesi i.MX53 based Laptops and Desktops around July or August, providing more performance, using lower power, at lower cost. The current Genesi Efika MX Smartbook i.MX51 based laptop is selling for $199, the Genesi MX Smarttop i.MX51 Desktop is selling for $129, they plan for the next generation i.MX53 based Laptop (Smartbook) and Desktop (Smarttop) to be sold for even cheaper. They are also working to combine their ARM based Laptop with the Pixel Qi screen as soon as it’s mass produced.

Also watch my video interview with Konstantinos Margaritis talking about the way Genesi is optimizing Linux on ARM to make it up to 300% faster on these ARM Powered laptops and desktops.

Genesi’s Hard Float optimizations speeds up Linux performance up to 300% on ARM Laptops

Posted by Charbax – June 21, 2011
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Ubuntu

Konstantinos Margaritis is a Senior Software Engineer at San Antonio based Genesi, he talks about how Genesi is pushing Linaro forward to recompile all the apps and everything around Linux to use hard float, to re-optimize floating point applications on ARM Powered Desktop/Laptop designs. Watch this video interview to find out how Genesi is doing these software optimizations on Debian for the i.MX51 and i.MX53 platforms in their ARM Powered Smartbook designs. How soon are ARM Powered laptops going to have enough performance optimizations in them to demonstrate that ARM is fast enough to power Desktop/Laptop designs so that every consumer can be satisfied with the performance?

iWave PCB Designs based on i.MX53, i.MX51, i.MX27

Posted by Charbax – June 21, 2011
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, Freescale, FTF, Android, Ubuntu, Windows

iWave Systems makes Freescale based PCB designs and software optimization.

Ubuntu 11.4 with Unity Desktop

Posted by Charbax – June 21, 2011
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, FTF, Ubuntu

Canonical shows their new standard user interface. What do you think about Ubuntu’s Unity interface?

Cupp Computing turns any Laptop into an ARM Laptop

Posted by Charbax – June 3, 2011
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, Computex, Android, Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Windows

Cupp Computing is now launching as a product their module to replace the hard drive in any Laptop, add an SSD, up to 2 MicroSD cards (one for the ARM Powered OS of your choice), and with a keyboard shortcut you instantly go from the ARM Powered OS to the x86 OS, and back while the x86 goes to sleep. The ARM Powered Laptop runs up to 40 hours on a battery, if you have just 10 minutes left of battery, switch to ARM mode and you’ve still got 1 hour of use to finish your work. In ARM Mode it can run Android, Ubuntu, Chrome OS and other. They are currently using OMAP3, they can use OMAP4 also soon for more ARM Performance. They also plan to work with motherboard manufacturers to add the whole ARM Powered laptop module right onto all motherboards so ARM Powered laptop mode becomes a default option in all laptops.

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Nufront Cortex-A9 Tablet and Desktop reference designs at Computex 2011

Posted by Charbax – June 2, 2011
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Nufront, Computex, Android, Ubuntu

They say that they can make a 2Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core now, but for now they are demonstrating it at lower clock speeds on an Android tablet, an Ubuntu laptop and an all-in-one Ubuntu 11.4 desktop example.