Connect your Freescale board to your PC through USB for debugging.
Ubuntu 11.4 with Unity Desktop
Posted by – June 21, 2011
Canonical shows their new standard user interface. What do you think about Ubuntu’s Unity interface?
FTF 2011 (June 20-23rd) starts, look for my full video coverage
Posted by – June 20, 2011
Category: Freescale
The Freescale Technology Forum is underway. Check back for videos on all the latest Freescale powered devices and news.
The worlds most awesome passenger airplane, Airbus A380 by Air France, nice!
Posted by – June 20, 2011
Category: Other
This is my first flight on the worlds most awesome biggest passenger airplane ever made. It’s awesome, smooth, big, confortable, smooth, there is space for 530 passengers on this one, it can be configured to have up to 800 something passengers, check it out.
Honeycomb 3.2 is for 7″ and other processors
You see, I was mostly right, Huawei unveiled a Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core 1.2Ghz Honeycomb 3.2 tablet. They say Honeycomb 3.2 is the new version of Honeycomb for 7″ tablets and that seems to be the version to use on Tablets powered by other processors than Tegra2. To be released for an unknown price in Q3, it’s 390 grams, no kickstand, which means it will be released at any point between July and September in certain markets.
I’m at the Freescale Technology Forum 2011 in San Antonio
During the next 4 days (June 20-23rd), follow my RSS feed, add my RSS to your Google Reader, subscribe to my YouTube channel, I will be posting my best videos directly from the Freescale Technology Forum 2011 here in San Antonio Texas. Look forward to lots of awesome new Freescale powered devices and news.
If you have heard about any awesome stuff to be shown at the FTF, any cool companies that you think that I should interview, please post your tips here in the comments or send me your tips at charbax@gmail.com or on the Submit news page.
ARM keynote at the AMD conference
Jem Davies is ARM Fellow, VP of technology in the Media Processing Division of ARM, he speaks at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit conference. He talks about Power, Heterogeneous computing, Moore’s Law in the next decade, open standards for massive parallel GPU computing and more.
What do you think about ARM speaking at the AMD conference? First step before AMD announcing that they’ll make an ARM processor? Why wouldn’t AMD also make an ARM Processor? Post your opinions about this keynote in the comments. Jem Davies posted this blog post on blogs.arm.com a few days ago in preparation for his keynote at the AMD conference.
You can watch the full 47-minute official keynote video here: http://developer.amd.com/afds/pages/rebroadcast2.aspx (you have to register with name/email to watch the full flash video)
Source: hpcwire.com
Let me know if you can find an official video with better sound quality and I will embed it here.
Related articles
- How soon will AMD start to make ARM processors? (armdevices.net)
- ARM VP To Keynote AMD Developer Conference (hardware.slashdot.org)
- AMD trumpets next-gen GPU architecture (go.theregister.com)
ARM President Tudor Brown video interviewed about ARM history, competitors and the Cambridge culture
Posted by – June 14, 2011
Category: ARM
Check out this awesome video interview with ARM President Tudor Brown conducted by Rob Symes of Campbell Black, hear Tudor Brown talk about how ARM was founded 20 years ago, a sometimes hilarious interview about ARM’s Cambridge British/European technology company attitude:
We assumed it wouldn’t work. That was the nature of our British Cambridge attitude. Here we go again, this would never work. But never mind, it’s fun, let’s make a go of it. And that was kind of the attitude that had been bred into us at Acorn. Many of us had been working at Acorn for many years, we created some great technology, but commercialy it had been a flop. And indeed the first products that were based on ARM, when ARM set out as a separate company, were all flops commercialy. It was a set of sales flops, I can list them:
– the Acorn computers which were really not very successful,
– the Apple Newton which was the first PDA which was the whole raison d’etre for the company that was clearly a flop,
– the 3DO multiplayer first CD based games machine in the world, based on ARM, commercial flop,
– the Sega Dreamcast, games machine, flop
– and so it went on.. we were kind of used to that.
It was a very important point that we were running the company as a bunch of pessimists, very lean and mean, on the basis that we weren’t going to build the company up on the hope of some future growth, we were going to run the company on the basis that what we had today had to last.
Source: youtube.com/TheCampbellBlack
Found via: @ARMCommunity
Android Infrared-touch i.MX508 are the new thing for E Ink e-readers
Both of the new amazingly priced Nook Touch ($139) and Kobo Touch ($129) seem to use the new Freescale i.MX508 (I first filmed i.MX508 a year ago) to facilitate smooth touch interfaces using Infrared Touch technology (first used in the Sony PRS-650) but also to easily enable those to be the first Android powered e-ink e-readers! Basically i.MX508 and Android makes first real useful use of WiFi and Touch on e-ink e-readers! Using Android on e-ink is awesome to provide for great files support, web browser, easily add apps like news readers, rss readers, Chrome-To-Phone functionality (just beam any article or any text from your Chrome browser on your laptop to your e-ink e-reader in one click!), synchronizing of bookmarks, wireless beaming of web based ebooks, all in one click. Android on e-ink just increases the e-readers potential greatly. Using infrared touchscreen technology is a great way to provide the best possible readability, not adding any layers on top of the screen.
Look forward to much more fascinating devices to come with:
i.MX508 + Android + infrared touch + WiFi/3G + e-ink = Low-cost e-ink e-readers!
Also see my video of the alternative Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) touch technology.
An interesting thing to follow though will be to see how open Android i.MX508 e-ink e-reader makers will be towards allowing for alternative e-book stores, and allowing for full open Android apps installation and full unrestricted access to the web browser. As it may be that part of the profit margins on these new low-cost e-ink e-readers may be subsidized by the hardware makers expecting to make later huge profits on selling e-books, like Amazon does with their Kindle e-book store, it will be fun to see if all the e-ink e-reader makers will seize the opportunity to be open with Android on e-ink and at the same time find new interesting ways to monetize those. I for example would prefer paying less than $10 per month for unlimited legal access to all e-books, all newspapers, all blogs, all websites, everything, perhaps even certain 3G bandwidth included, but will content owners and hardware makers be open minded enough to let that happen quickly?
When will Google officially announce open source Android optimizations for e-ink devices and with deep integration of Google Books, Google Reader, Google Fast Flip and more?
Here’s how I think those e-ink e-readers could be sold in the best way: $99, $10/month optional pre-paid plan gives 100mb 3G data (upgradable bandwidth for $1/100mb or less) and full unlimited access to all e-books, all e-newspapers, e-magazines, blogs through RSS/search and more. Full unrestricted web browsing on e-ink. And nice complete cloud syncing with your Smartphone, Tablet and Laptop. While e-ink e-reader market is doing great perhaps reaching 20 million units to be sold this year, if they price them right and open them fully, I think they’ll do even better.
Sources for these videos: the-ebook-reader.com, engadget.com
Related articles
- Kobo Bets on a Smaller, Touch Sensitive E-Reader (gigaom.com)
- Tipster: New Nook is ‘The Simple Touch Reader’ (news.cnet.com)
- $129 Kobo eReader Touch Edition unveiled, original slashed to $99 (geek.com)
Panasonic UniPhier, 1.4Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 for HDTV/Set-top-box
Posted by – June 12, 2011
Category: Set-top-boxes, Displays
New Panasonic ARM Processor
The Panasonic UniPhier MN2WS0220 is claimed to be one of the fastest to use for HDTV and Set-top-box will begin sample shipments this month.
Panasonic’s new chip will open the way for a new generation of smart TVs that allow users to simultaneously enjoy two TV broadcasting channels, as well as Internet-based content and applications in high-resolution at the same time. In addition, the new chip is able to reduce power consumption of and the number of components used in smart TVs, which will help drive smart TVs to spread in the global market.
I would find it normal for Google to qualify this Panasonic UniPhier MN2WS0220 ARM Dual-core chip to be used to run the Google TV software, and I would find it normal for Panasonic to start using Google TV for their Smart TVs instead of that proprietary Viera SmartTV stuff. I think all future Panasonic HDTVs should include Google TV, to provide for the best software for WebTV, interactive features, I think it’s the best full integration of the web in the TV.
I am not sure how big ARM has been thus far on being inside all those HDTVs, but now it seems all the major HDTV makers have serious ARM Powered HDTV plans underway, LG is definitely using ARM for their next SmartTVs, Samsung has their ARM Powered Google TV plans, what is Sharp, Philips going to do? How soon until Sony’s HDTVs shift from Intel to ARM for Google TV? How soon until all the major HDTV makers agree that Google TV is the software that they should all use?
Source: panasonic.co.jp
Found via: engadget.com
Related articles
- ARM Powered Google TV now confirmed officially by Google (armdevices.net)
- Panasonic, ARM work on 1.4GHz dual-core chip for set-top box (electronista.com)
- Panasonic targets smart TVs with 1.4GHz Cortex-A9 SoC (linuxfordevices.com)
- Panasonic’s 1.4 GHz dual-core Smart TV chip is industry’s fastest, should load Netflix quicker (engadget.com)
ARM Cortex-A15, the next Complete computing and content creation platform
Posted by – June 11, 2011
Category: Opinions, Texas Instruments
Last I heard, Texas Instruments said it might start sampling OMAP5 in October already, in testing and demo development boards before Mobile World Congress in February and target to be launched in consumer commercial products by Christmas 2012, within about a year and a half from now. In the following video, Nandan Nayampally, ARM’s Director of CPU Product Marketing says:
With ARM’s Cortex-A15, the smartphone or mobile device can take the next step of becoming a Complete computing and content creation platform.
I find it amazing that with such amazingly awesome ARM Cortex-A9 designs, clocked higher, added cores, just barely reaching the market, we can already also look forward to even greater performance and more features to come in devices just a year or so later.
My question is for the type of “Complete computing and content creation platform” that someone could define as for example a basic laptop, for example running Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Windows 8 or an ARM version of Mac OSX, can we expect those ARM Powered Laptops to have enough performance in ARM Cortex-A9 designs or do we still have to wait for ARM Cortex-A15 for ARM Laptops to replace Intel?
While the promise of Cortex-A8 Smartbooks shown at Computex 2009 just over 2 years ago didn’t actually launch on the market, probably because of a lack in performance, I hope we will see optimal Cortex-A9 and other custom Dual-core, Tri-core and Quad-core designs released this year that will hopefully feel to have enough performance to feel just as fast at least as an Intel Atom Netbook.
Once ARM has that level of “Complete computing” performance covered and actual products such as just basic Laptops and Desktops on the mass market using that and that consumers don’t see those as “slower”, then ARM can also bring forward all it’s other advantages in being lower power, cheaper, simpler, customizable, etc.
I feel that the immersive internet computing interfaces like Tablets and Smartphones of course are fantastic and awesome, and kudos for ARM for dominating in that, but it would be nice also to see ARM power just some basic Laptops and Desktops also and have those replace a big part of consumer electronics “Complete computing” devices previously only based on x86.
Innovative new touch screen interfaces, eventual Kinect style gesture controls, voice commands, all that are cool, but perhaps it won’t actually be possible to do the next “Complete computing” devices using anything more than just a basic Laptop keyboard, mousepad and screen, at least when it comes to being a “content creation platform”.
When do you think ARM is ready to power the Laptops? Are there Cortex-A9 designs with fast enough memory bandwidth, clock speeds, huge RAM, so they can power a full web browsing experience with all the multiple tabs, flash instances, javascripts and other useful web browser plugins or do we need to wait for Cortex-A15 yet for that performance level to be achieved?
My expectation is that the next devices based on ARM Cortex-A9 and other Dual-core designs such as OMAP4460/OMAP4470, i.MX6Duo/Quad, MSM8660/8960, Marvell 628, Ziilabs ZMS-20/40, Exynos 4210 (or a Laptop optimized higher clocked version of that), an Apple A5 optimized for Laptop use, of course the Nvidia Tegra3 Kal-El Quad-core, I expect all those to have fast enough memory bandwidth designs, fast RAM support, ample enough processing speed and other hardware acceleration required to run a full web browser centric OS like Chrome OS, Windows 8 and even ARM optimized versions of Ubuntu and OSX. I expect that the ARM Laptops can start to take 25% of Intel’s x86 Laptop market this year with Cortex-A9 designs and that they can dominate with over 50% of the marketshare against Intel x86 sales with the Cortex-A15 designs performance reach next year!
Android challenges Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in gaming
Android Game Changer
The new Dual-core and Quad-core ARM Processors that are coming out in the newest ARM Powered Smartphones, Tablets and Set-top-boxes in the coming months can display more than 200 million triangles per second! The 5-year old PS3 does 250 million triangles a second. XboX 360 does 500 million triangles a second. So in terms of performance, the graphics improvements on ARM Powered devices are absolutely amazing. Graphics performance on ARM processors seems to be more than doubling each year. Consider that the ARM Powered device probably uses 100x less power than the PS3 or XboX 360! One theory why Sony disables HDMI output on PSVita may be because the $249 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 Powered PSVita may actually be more powerful for gaming than the 5-year-old $299 Cell Processor based PS3!
Here are some of the angles that may make of Android the near futures biggest home and portable console platform:
1. Openness
– Any small game developer can easily release their games to a global audience without asking anyone. Gamers can also install whichever game they want (legally or ilegally) just by downloading the .apk downloaded from any website.
2. Choice
– All manufacturers can make the Android gaming devices, not just Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
3. Lower prices
– More manufacturers competing means lower prices and better features. Also, Google can start a global gaming all-access pass, something like $10/month for hard core gamers to gain access to all the games as much as they want. Who would want to pay $50/game through retailers anymore?
4. Remove intermediaries
– Games in the age of the internet are meant to be downloaded from the Internet. No more need to distribute physical disks at retail stores. Even for big games that take up several gigabytes, the games can be downloaded through p2p with no central distribution cost.
5. Emulation of all previous consoles
– New Dual-core and Quad-core Android devices can probably emulate all the previous Nintendo, Sony consoles, I expect even N64, Dreamcast and PS2 games to get emulated smoothly. This means tens of thousands of games are thus (legally or ilegally) available to all Android gamers. Even the oldest Nintendo NES console games released 25 years ago are as cool as Angry Birds, and SNES games released nearly 20 years ago have about the same quality level of graphics as Angry Birds. This means through (legal or illegal) emulation, from day 1, Android devices can have about 1000 blockbuster games as good as Angry Birds.
Nintendo is awesome.
Yet I feel they try too hard to hold onto old business models that consist of centrally distributing the games on disks through retailers. And they may believe too strongly that only themselves must control the gaming hardware, that they would not legally allow other hardware makers to play their games.
Nintendo needs to forget about retailers and they need to embrace everyone elses hardware. Nintendo needs to distribute all their games as downloads, provide legal access to all their games on Android for that sub-$10/month global gaming subscription plan. This would instantly provide Nintendo with Billions of dollars of pure new profit. They can still release new consoles, they can even release reference designs and certification branding “Certified by Nintendo” for how they think Android devices should be designed to provide the best gaming user interfaces and performance.
The Nintendo Wii U announced this week at E3, seems to be an upgraded HD capable Wii with a new controller that basically seems to be an ARM Powered 6.2″ capacitive tablet, with perhaps not much local processing going on with most of the 3D game processing happening on the IBM Power PC powered Wii U console, thus the new Wii Controller may act most as some kind of remote input and display device designed to have minimal latency.
Wii U is going to be awesome and all. And I want a Quad-Core PSVita for $249 this Christmas, I just think both are kind of sad in their closed philosophy. Those are basically awesome ARM Powered hardwares which just aren’t designed to take full advantage of their potential, they have features blocked or removed in them because Nintendo and Sony believe only in their previous-century business models, sad.
But who knows, Nintendo and Sony still have time to adjust their plans. They still both may take full advantage of Android opportunity and feel they need to open up towards it instead of ignoring it.
Related articles
- Live Blog: Nintendo Unveils New Console at E3 (blogs.wsj.com)
- Nintendo’s task: The Wii, again, more, better (sfgate.com)
Texas Instruments OMAP4470 1.8Ghz Dual-core, sampling in October
Posted by – June 10, 2011
Category: Texas Instruments
Here’s TI’s next OMAP4 processor, to start sampling around October 2011, it’ll be sampled at 45nm process size, it features the new SGX544 for graphics, it increases memory bandwidth even further to 7.5Gbit/s
supporting resolution up to QXGA (2048×1536). The new applications processor drives still more unparalleled HD UIs with simultaneous support for up to three HD screens and up to 2x more layered imaging and video composition than competitive solutions
Read more: newscenter.ti.com
Archos Gen8 Tablets can multi-boot Froyo, Debian, Angstrom, Gingerbread, Ubuntu, Chromium OS and more!
Posted by – June 10, 2011
Archos hacker Bubu just released the multi-boot menu support for the Archos Gen8 Tablets, it reportedly works great on Archos 70 Internet Tablet and Archos 101 Internet Tablet, find the release here: http://www.openaos.org/archives/739
This is how this is cool, you can install the official alternative OS firmware from Archos called the Special Developer Edition firmware here: http://www.archos.com/support/support_tech/_ppp.html?country=us&lang=en&p=gen8
Then you can install alternative firmwares and have them right there available in your multi-boot menu on your Archos, so you could for example today choose between Archos official Android firmware, Debian Linux and Angstrom Linux.
If more software hackers contribute, Archos tablets may also run Ubuntu 11.4, Chromium OS, Gingerbread and any other embedded Linux OS through this multi-boot system.
Bubu and the team at OpenAOS.org previously released this solution for the Archos Gen6 and Gen7 tablets as well.
Huawei MediaPad, dual-core Honeycomb 7″ capacitive?
Posted by – June 10, 2011
Huawei is holding a live press event at the Red Dot Design Museum Singapore at 5pm on June 20th, where they will unveil all the technical details of their new Huawei Mediapad Android tablet!
Watch my video talking about this product when it was just a mockup at Mobile World Congress last February (as codename then was Huawei S7 Pro):
Here is my speculation about some of the specs that the Huawei Mediapad may be presented with:
– Since Huawei has a long partnership with Qualcomm, I think they might actually use the new pretty awesome Qualcomm MSM8660 (CDMA+HSUPA) or/and MSM8260 (HSUPA) Dual-core 1.5Ghz processor, which as shown recently at Computex on the Asus Memo, can already run Honeycomb even though it’s just 7″, a 1280×800 screen might be required for Honeycomb to display correctly yet, but surely Qualcomm and Google are working to support Honeycomb 3.1 and Ice Cream Sandwich on smaller and lower resolution screens to keep prices low.
– Dual-core should be expected, Honeycomb can be part of the party. If they don’t yet use Qualcomm’s dual-core maybe they just have a Tegra2 in there for now.
– Expect it even lighter and thinner than the Huawei S7 Slim.
– Hopefully they don’t impose their custom UI on top of Android again, and maybe they do target a sub-$400 price point even with 3G included.
My top-20 videos filmed at Computex 2011 in Taiwan
Posted by – June 8, 2011
I just returned from 10 days video-blogging over 44 videos from Taiwan. Here’s my list of my top-20 best Computex 2011 videos:
1. Pixel Qi launches 10.1″ super thin 1280×800 screen, their first showing of the 1280×800 resolution Pixel Qi screen to be mass manufactured in Q4, they also will mass produce 7″ in Q3, and listen to this video for more talk by Mary Lou Jepsen on the latest status and news on Pixel Qi in the industry.
2. Latest e-ink e-reader news from Freescale, check out the new Android friendly i.MX508 that may be used in the new Nook and Kobo to also use Android as software basis for e-ink e-reader innovation. This video is also featuring the new Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) touch screen technology integrated in a prototype e-reader by Tyco Electronics.
3. ShiZhu Technology shows Pixel Qi Tablets, ShiZhu Technology is a big Chinese manufacturer, they can now mass produce Android Tablets with Pixel Qi screens. This video features comparisons of its matte Pixel Qi screen compared with the glossy Archos 70 Internet Tablet screen and with HTC flyer with a matte anti-reflective layer.
4. MHL now in several phones at Computex 2011, the MHL protocol for sending HDMI over Micro-USB is now not only on the best ever smartphone the Samsung Galaxy S2, it’s also now in HTC Sensation, HTC Flyer, Evo 4G and Evo 3D phones and more to come.
5. The whole ARM Powered Tablet or Laptop with Pixel Qi screen can run on a relatively small and cheap $3 1W solar panel, Solar panels could be built-in to the bezel, on the back of tablets or laptops or on a flip-out screen protector to thus be able to power the whole tablet and laptop and charge its battery just from direct or indirect sunlight. This means children in Africa, India, other places with a lot of Sun but little power, could be getting Internet connected ARM Powered devices that can run just on sun power. Pixel Qi is able to demonstrate that this works, but they didn’t have the time to set it up at Computex and the day I was there to film it was half-cloudy in Taipei (it had been raining some of the days during Computex) so perhaps not optimal for filming the actual demonstration. Pixel Qi could be releasing an official video showing pretty soon on their blog proving that this works today.
6. Texas Instruments talks Memory Bandwidth and Desktop Computing performance on the OMAP4430, TI suggests that they may have the fastest memory bandwidth on their OMAP4430, OMAP4460 and on the newly announced OMAP4470 that goes to 1.8Ghz.
7. Cupp Computing turns every Laptop into an ARM Powered laptop with hard drive to SSD replacement module, this is really awesome, it means that all Intel/AMD x86 powered laptops can easily get added an ARM Processor to their motherboards, or added in replacement of the Hard Drive with an SSD, to provide every laptop with the option to run up to 40 hours on a battery on a button switch. Imagine if by a button switch you could automatically resume your x86 work in the ARM version of Windows, thus extending your battery runtime by 10x or more. This could be a great transitional solution from x86 to ARM for people not yet totally confortable with going away from x86.
8. HD Video Conferencing on Texas Instruments OMAP4430, 720p and 1080p SIP and Skype video conferencing is now possible on the modern ARM Powered smartphones and tablets, just amazing.
9. Hands-on with Nvidia Kal-El Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.2Ghz (or more) prototype tablet, Nvidia continues their run towards bringing Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 to the market, to be clocked at least with 1.2Ghz maybe more, it may reach the commercial top brand name Honeycomb tablets after August, normally well in time before Christmas. Nvidia has upgraded their graphics and video playback support significantly.
10. ZiiLabs ZMS-20 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, with ZiiLab’s Stemcell alternative to DSP/GPU for massive multi-threaded computing it seems to run Honeycomb smoothly on their Jaguar 10.1″ and 7″ reference design tablets.
11. Nufront Cortex-A9 (up to) 2Ghz runs Ubuntu 11.4 ARM Edition, they show that they have completed their tablet reference design, now just gearing up for commercial announcements for products using their new powerful chip.
12. Qualcomm says their Dual-core strength is in being asynchronous, Qualcomm’s implementation of the ARM Dual-core is about to reach many of the top most powerful ARM Powered devices. With the HTC Senstation coming out now, Asus Memo coming out later and many other smartphones and tablets in preparation.
13. ZTE Light tablet featuring their 7″ Pixel Qi screen (not yet matte, still glossy on that prototype).
14. Asus Memo, worlds first 7″ Honeycomb, Honeycomb looks great on 7″, even with it only being optimized for larger 1280×800 screens for now. Maybe it is too bad that Asus only wants to sell this with a 3D screen and this expensive looking Bluetooth headset/remote control MiMic thing. I also filmed another 7″ Honeycomb tablet, the Viewsonic 7x using Tegra2.
15. Samsung Origen, the new $199 Exynos 4210 development board, possibly the most powerful publicly released ARM Powered development board, to be sold for $199, featuring Samsung’s latest Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with Mali-400 graphics, fast DDR3 RAM and other features of fast memory bandwidth.
16. ARM President Tudor Brown Computex 2011 keynote, 15 minutes of his Computex 2011 keynote talking about how ARM is dominating the world.
17. ARM keynote at Computex 2011, Ian Drew is the Executive VP of Marketing at ARM, here’s my recording of most of his keynote speech. Sorry for missing out the first 3 minutes in this video, and my audio volume is a bit low you have to turn up your playback volume to the maximum to hear things clearly enough.Q Which was fun to come right after the Intel keynote. A notable quote from this keynote is this part: “Multiple options is always better than one size fits all”.
18. Qualcomm Dragonboard, $300-$500 Dual-core MSM8660/APQ8060 development board to work on Qualcomm’s Dual-core platform.
19. VIA WonderMedia Prizm WM8710 ARM11 Gingerbread solution, now VIA also has a newer faster DSP-accelerated Gingerbread solution for low-cost Android tablets.
20. ARM Powered Android to lower cost and power consumption of Point-of-sale setups, POSLab shows in this video how they are implementing ARM Powered solutions runing POS software on top of Android to significantly lower the cost and power consumption of Point-of-sale systems to be used by all stores around the world.
Windows 8 on ARM shown at Computex, Microsoft becomes cool
Short of calling it Azure OS (yet..), Microsoft is going all-in making HTML5 web-apps the core of the next generation Windows 8 apps ecosystem. It means Microsoft is betting their farm on the cloud. Microsoft is going all-in for “immersive internet computing” touch screen tablet UI support. Microsoft is making sure ARM Powered Windows 8 works exactly like on x86.
Watch this following awesome demonstration and talk of Windows 8 on ARM at Computex. I embed it starting at time-code 17m49s when Mike Anguilo starts talking about ARM Windows 8 status, but also do make sure to rewind to the start to watch the full Windows 8 UI demos. Mike Anguilo runs Windows planning and is also responsible for Microsoft’s technical engagement with the Windows 8 ecosystem.
The Microsoft people like Mike Anguilo seem to have a serious plan, they probably still have some of the worlds best engineers on staff and they can afford to basically do whatever they want. It will be awesome to see how Microsoft will try to sustain a same or greater level of revenues and profits in such a rapidly auto-disrupting industry. While it can be argued Microsoft is late to the whole Smartphone and Tablet game, on the other hand the number of Smartphones sold in the last 5 years is probably 15x smaller compared to the number of Smartphones likely to be sold within the next 5 years. And the number of Tablets sold in the last 3 years likely is probably 150x smaller compared to the number of Tablets likely to be sold in the next 3 years. It sure looks to me like Windows 8 is going in the right direction for Microsoft. Since Windows 7, Microsoft has given up its always escalating hardware requirements Wintel strategy to instead focus on cutting off more and more of the bloatware. With Windows 8 they now even move over to an even more cloud centric Browser based HTML5 application ecosystem, sounds to me like an answer to Chrome OS in the form of an Azure OS with backwards “.exe compatibility”. The question is, how can Microsoft differentiate its UI enough to justify the proprietary pricing differences? Or if they plan to be priced comparatively even with the cheapest Android and Chrome OS Open Source alternatives, how can they provide enough of a differentiating user experience to hold unto those billion Windows PC users that they got with the previous Wintel PC ecosystem?
While I don’t know if it would make complete business sense and a corporations main focus legally has to be to take care of its shareholders, here are a few more directions I think Windows 8 might need to get into if they seriously want to be the dominant ARM Powered ecosystem:
– Windows 8 needs to be open source and free. They can do it like Google, and develop their next gens in secret hardware/chipset partnerships, but to get onto the next couple billion ARM Powered Smartphones, Tablets, Set-top-boxes, Laptops, they need it to be open and free. Nothing closed and pricey can ultimately win over open and free in the ARM world.
– Microsoft needs to focus on providing software as a service. The new Windows 8 App Store needs to have all the HTML5 apps, all the Android apps (yup.. why not?), and also, all the .exe apps (all Windows 98/XP/Vista/7 apps should just work), if not through native code execution then through cloud based software virtualization.
– Microsoft needs to focus on eliminating all the bloat, minimize the hardware requirements, make all ARM chipsets compatible and invite all manufacturers to use it for free. A $100 ARM Powered Laptop sold a year from now in every super market needs to be able to run a full Windows 8 OS, boot in 3 seconds, resume in 0.03 seconds and last 30 hours on a battery.
Do I think Microsoft can become so disruptive to its old business models so fast? I don’t know how such a corporation may or may not quickly adjust or/and change its leadership. I don’t know if Steve Ballmer needs to be replaced by a new CEO like Mike Anguilo or someone as cool as Google’s Vic Gundotra (who previously worked at Microsoft) for these major business model shifts to actually occur as soon as with Windows 8/Azure OS. If done correctly, Microsoft could maybe even make more money per new Windows user than they did on selling basic proprietary software licences. How hard could it be for Microsoft to provide good enough cloud services and web app and web content integration over a potentialy popular Windows 8 devices for them to make up more than those $40-$80 or so per Windows user over 2-5 years of use in average pure profits per user? Or will Microsoft insist on staying proprietary, closed, try to enforce some kind of closed profit margin value chain where they’d try to reserve some kind of significant profit margins some what imitating Apple’s large profit margins business model on selling ARM Powered devices? What do you think? Post your opinions on Windows 8 in the comments.
Here are a few awesome ARM Powered Windows 8 quotes that you can find in the 32-minute Microsoft Windows 8 Computex demo video:
The most important app of all on these systems is the browser. Over 60% of people’s time on any of those systems is focused in the browser.
We’ve extended the trend that we started with Windows 7, on keeping our system requirements on either flat or reducing them over time.
The newest addition to the Windows ecosystem is of course ARM.
This has been made possible in part because of the innovation that has been going on in the ARM ecosystem today. ARM SoC’s in general, virtually all of the new ones support Windows 8 system requirements. They all run over 1Ghz. They all have hardware accelerated graphics.
They are all getting more powerful. They are all getting more efficient. The cost is coming down and they are enabling thinner and lighter form factors than ever. In fact, all of these ARM Powered PCs that I am showing you here are not only able to experience to full Windows 8 experience you just saw, they are also able to support a new mode called Always On Always Connected. So the way you would it expect it from a Smartphone today, these systems will be able to instantly wake, they’ll be able to go in standby for a really long time with low power drain, get great battery life but stil stay syncing and connected all at the same time.
Related articles
- Microsoft to show Windows 8 ARM Tablet Edition next week!? (armdevices.net)
- Microsoft reportedly considering its own-branded Windows 8 tablet (winrumors.com)
- Will Microsoft Release Its Own Windows 8 Tablet? (slashdot.org)
- Windows 8 Video Demonstration At Computex 2011 (ghacks.net)
- Microsoft May Build Its Own Windows 8 Tablet (pcworld.com)
- Microsoft eyeing own-brand Windows 8 tablet for end of 2012? (engadget.com)
Qualcomm Dragonboard, $300-$500 Dual-core MSM8660/APQ8060 development board
Posted by – June 8, 2011
Qualcomm is releasing this hardware and software development board solution for hardware makers wanting to customize their use of Qualcomm’s latest Dual-core ARM Processor. The Dragonboard includes a dual-core Snapdragon APQ8060 clocked at 1.5GHz (same as MSM8660 and MSM8260, just without the modem), runs on Android by default. The cost is $300 for a basic unit, and $500 if you want the screen and all the other components featured in this video.
Monkeys in the Kaohsiung Shoushan Monkey Mountain
Posted by – June 8, 2011
Taiwan Wilderness, check it out. Here I walk around for some hours in the Monkey Mountain (Shoushan) in Kaohsiung, a big city at the south of Taiwan. The monkeys are used to humans walking around in their jungle so they don’t mind saying hello, even protective mother monkeys with their baby monkeys as you can see in this video.
Shoushan is the one of the mountains where Kaohsiung residents can see natural biological specimens within an hour of drive. There is an extensive system of boardwalk hiking trails that circle the mountain. Hikers can enjoy tea at various tea stations sprinkled throughout the trails. Water is carried to the tea stations by hikers who bring it from a reverse osmosis station at the bottom. From the tea station at the top of the mountain, hikers can see views of the Taiwan Strait through the trees.
The mountain is a reserve for Formosan rock macaques.
Serafim shows 42″ Optical Touch Module (OTM) multi-touch screen
Posted by – June 8, 2011
At Computex 2011 you could find many very large multi-touch screens based on Optical Touch screen technology. Basically they add something to any 42″ or larger LCD HDTV to turn them into multi-touch capable very large touch screens.
