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Allwinner shows A31S, A20, A31 tablets, HDMI sticks, game pads, projectors and development boards


Allwinner Technology has an enormous booth showing off some of the latest implementations of their A31, A31s and A20 chipsets.

The quad-core A31 has been available for four months and already shipped more than 1 million units. The quad-core A31s started shipping at the end of March 2013 and has the same quad-core and GPU but is geared towards smaller displays (with less memory bandwidth.) They have introduced the A20 dual-core chip, at a price point quite close to the single core.

Their booth showed more than a dozen HDMI stick and small set-top box like computers. One of the dongles was running the mobile-oriented A20 SoC, which could be poised to take over that market at low cost. The A20 is a low-cost, dual-core Cortex-A7. The A20 is pin compatible with the A10 and offers integrated support for camera sensors. This is looking like a very capable chip to power a variety of low cost devices.

The Allwinner booth was showing off a very cool gamepad built with the A31, running Android 4.1, a built-in screen with 1280 x 800 resolution, and game controllers on the left and right sides of the screen. It works like a self-contained gamepad but also serves as a game controller that can product the game on a large HDMI display. The controller has front and back facing cameras, 1GB of DDR3 and 16GB of internal storage. There was no English-name known for the device, which was developed by www.ibenx.com, one of Allwinner’s many partners.

Wits-Technology was showing a development kit for Allwinner’s chips Other partners showed off full-sized and micro projectors built with Allwinner chips. A mobile karaoke amplifier with built-in tablet display was built around Allwinner chips. A novel, Android-based 13.3″ clamshell laptop was running the A20; faster A31 based laptops are expected later this month. Shenzhen Next-Huawen Technology Co., a design house, was showing off their tablet with keyboard dock. Allwinner says they are studying ChromeOS and also considering support for Linux based distributions like Ubuntu. The company says they have released software supporting the A31 to the open source community through a British company. Does anyone have a contact for that open source partner?

Thanks Brian for the title/description!

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New ainol range of Actions and Allwinner quad-core tablets with Miracast support

Posted by – April 13, 2013

Here are featured the ainol novo10 hero 10.1″ 1280×800 on Actions quad-core, ainol novo7 crystal 7″ 1280×800 on Actions quad-core, ainol novo7 venus 7″ 1280×800 on Actions quad-core, ainol novo9 spark 9.7″ retina on Allwinner A31, ainol novo7 eos 7″ 1280×800 on Nufront NS115 with built-in 3G, ainol novo7 rainbow 7″ 800×480 Allwinner A13, ainol novo8 dream 8″ 1024×768 on Actions quad-core and the ainol novo8 discover 8″ 1024×768 on Actions quad-core.

Ainol is shipping a wide range of 7″, 8 9″ and 10″ tablets. They are a leading provider and brand name for tablets. Their staff of 600 operates a factory in Shenzhen with production capacity of 100,000 units per month. They are shipping to Chinese, European and US markets with sales currently concentrated in South Asia markets (Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea.)

Their low-cost model starts out at $50 wholesale. The Novo 7″ Venus has a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 and runs an Actions-semi quad-core A9 at a wholesale price of $95. The Novo 10″ comes with an Actions quad-core A9 at a wholesale price of $145. Their 9.7″ offers a Retina screen, with Allwinner’s A31 Boxchip, and a wholesale price of $180. The tablets offer different industrial designs snd are engineered with various processors, but they all reportedly provide HDMI ports. Their models based on the Actions processor running Android 4.2.2 support wireless display technology called Miracast: anything displayed on the tablet’s screen can be wirelessly shared with a TV connected to a receiver box.

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I’m looking for help to write good titles/descriptions on videos

Posted by – April 12, 2013
Category: Opinions

So I just filmed 40 video in one day, the Hong Kong fairs are totally awesome thus far. But with all those videos that I film during the day, I don’t have much time left to do following:

1. re-watch what I filmed during the day

2. listen carefully to company names, product names, processors, and prices if mentionned and ther technical details to include those things in the titles and descriptions before publishing each video.

Writing good titles and descriptions on all my videos takes as much time as filming the actual videos.

So I am looking for volunteers here among you who would be willing to be the first to watch my videos as unlisted yet un-published videos without titles and descriptions and then if possible post me back a good title an description that I can use on each video following these guidelines for how I usually title videos:

1. [price of main most interesting product if price is mentioned] [processor used] [device type tablet/phone] [evt other special feature] by [company name]

description usually goes something like this:

2. Company name [URL of company website if can be found or/and is mentioned/showed in video] releases blah blah that does blah blah etc. If possible the description can be very detailed going through all the things talked about in the video. But it can also just be 1 or two sentences to be good enough.

3. If possible some relevant tags would also be nice, but otherwise I can use the same tags for all the videos filmed at the same conference.

Please apply for membership to the ARMdevices Unlisted mailing list if you would like to help me with this work and I can add you to the mailing list where I’d post each of the unlisted videos as soon as they are uploaded. You can then reply in the thread when you’ve got a title/description that can be used. I can maybe also pay you something per post, if you want money over paypal, especially if the titles/descriptions can get to be much better and significantly improves people’s experience and the searchability of the videos.

It’d be nice if Google could use voice recognition and automatically write good summaries for the titles and descriptions for all the videos. But for now Google doesn’t seem to be able to do this.

If someone can help me with this, perhaps I can get time to video-blog 20-30% more videos and perhaps also I can get time to get a bit of sleep between each video-blogging days, which would be nice especially during these days where I’d like to try to get through video-blogging at hundreds of Chinese companies preferably interestingly.

In any ways, my Hong Kong hotel internet upload speed is terribly slow right now. I read online that people in Hong Kong can get 1000mbit Fiber to the home, but I can barely get a bit over 1mbit/s upload speed here from my hotel. So it may get difficult for me to upload 15-20GB of videos each day. I’ll try to get a fast upload tomorrow at the HKTDC Fair, hopefully it’ll be possible to then upload during the day while I video-blog. Another reason for it being nice with some help from you helping me to get good titles and descriptions written.

Freelander Link-Create Factory Tour, A31, Exynos4412, MT6577 tablets and phones

Posted by – April 11, 2013

Freelander Link-Create manufactures about 2000 tablets or/and phones per day in this factory in Shenzhen China. Freelander makes and sells a whole range of Allwinner A31, Exynos 4412, MediaTek MT6577/6589 and other tablets and smartphones. But they were just making some MediaTek and Exynos based tablets the day (week-end) I was there. Check back for more on Freelander at http://ARMdevices.net in the next few days. I’m going to try to visit their factory again also while there are more people working making some of these newer devices.

CSOT 4K 55″ and 110″, Chinese 8.5th Generation LCD manufacturer

Posted by – April 11, 2013

CSOT (China Star Optoelectronics Technology) shows their latest 4K2K LCD screens, which they are right now manufacturing in their Shenzhen-based 8.5th generation LCD factory. They currently make about 10 million screens per year. Their LCD panels are used by Chinese brands Skyworth, TCL and Hisense among others.

Ampe ICOO ICOU7GT, 7″ 1280×800 Allwinner A31 for $129

Posted by – April 11, 2013

Nice looking 7″ 1280×800 IPS tablet with the Allwinner A31 inside. Selling for about $129 (800rmb) in Shenzhen China.

Konka 50″, 65″ and 84″ 4K screens

Posted by – April 11, 2013

Konka is showing their latest 4K screens, at 50″, 65″ and 84″ sizes.

Vivo X1S, MT6589 ultra-thin 6.55mm for $403


This is perhaps the best looking MediaTek MT6589 quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 phone that I have seen yet out of China. I don’t know where the Vivo brand comes from, but this phone is kind of impressive although it is kind of expensive for a MT6589 phone. It includes DAC audio using on-board Cirus Logic chip which provides quite high quality sound.

AU Optronics 5″ 1080p OLED and other LCDs including 4K 55″ and 65″

Posted by – April 11, 2013

AUO debuts their 5-inch FHD OLED smartphone display with a 443ppi pixel density, as well as they are showing off a full range of smartphone displays from 5″ to 5.7″ adopting AHVA technology with LTPS production process, or Hyper LCD technology, with resolutions of 1080p, 720p, providing super narrow bezel with 1mm-width from display area to touch panel border. AUO is also some of their latest transparent and mirror displays for digital signage applications, for smart vending machines and other. For better touch screens, AUO is introducing One Glass Solution Touch, integrating the cover lens and sensor glass into the ultra slim and light module. The direct bonding manufacturing process simplifies the production procedure of the integration of the touch structure, panel and backlight to provide slimmer and lighter, high optical and anti-glare performance LCD modules.

Nubia Z5, APQ8064 ultra-thin


ZTE’s new brand Nubia releases this ultra-thin Z5 Android phone on the Qualcomm APQ8064 processor.

Skyworth 4K 50″ sells for $1453 in China

Posted by – April 10, 2013

You can now buy this Skyworth 50E780U 4K HDTV in China for under $1500. It’s for sale right now. $1453 (8999rmb) is just the official suggested retail price, it seems to be sold for as cheap as $1323 (8198rmb) online at taobao (which I think is kind of China’s Amazon).

This 4K display is made by Taiwanese Chimei Innolux, it’s sold by the Skyworth brand, the number 1 TV brand in China (in front of Samsung in China). The only sad thing about this 4K display is that you are only getting a 50″ size, not 55″ nor 65″, I have been talking about my wish of seeing sub-$2000 4K 55″ during 2012/2013, now we’ve got sub-$1500 4K, but for now it’s 50″. I’m seriously considering buying one of these for myself, if I can somehow have it safely shipped to myself in Europe with UPS or some other shipping method, do you think that would be a good idea or will I regret not having at least a 55″ screen size for my 4K home screen resolution? Maybe if I wait another 2-3 months, sub-$2000 55″ 4K screens are going to be broadly available? I am very excited about the possibilities of 4K displays, simply because the demonstrations of 4K at trade shows that I have seen over the past few years have always been the highlights of the shows for me. 4K is way, way more interesting than 3D. I also expect to be able to buy sub-$2000 4K camcorders later this year, maybe Panasonic is working on a GH4 with 4K high bitrate video recording resolution. And I am convinced that YouTube, BitTorrent and other online sources for above 16mbit/s compressed 4K video streaming or downloading can provide for awesome 4K video content online in the months and years to come. So I am not worried about 4K content. I am sure Hollywood already has digitized most of their movies in 4K resolution and it wouldn’t be hard for them to release them all in 4K as soon as the home movies industry decides how to release them, I’d say they should just turn on 4K video-on-demand right now. $20/month for unlimited 4K movie streaming/downloading/progressive-downloading, I’d pay for that Hollywood! To save on bandwidth costs, Hollywood should just use BitTorrent for their 4K VOD movie distribution. All 8 megapixel pictures can already provide for great 4K slideshows today. I would consider placing my 4K display on an adjustable arm that easily allows the display to be used for office use, home cinema use and when raised a bit higher it can be a constant amazing 8 megapixel slideshow display in the living room. I wonder though what will be with the 30fps limitation of HDMI 1.4a that is the 4K interface used by these new 4K displays, I wonder if a firmware update can transform those to a possible HDMI 1.5 with at least 60fps or maybe 120fps support and maybe also higher bitrate if needed. I’m also worried about the built-in ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core M-star processor system not being user-replaceable once faster processors get available, because the solution to the limitation of HDMI 1.4a would be to directly stream all the contents from Ethernet or USB, but if the built-in processor needs update for the user interfaces, the 4K Google TV UI that I am expecting and perhaps especially the video decode performance being upgraded in the future. There, I’d prefer if the ARM SoC platform was easily user replaceable in all new 4K TVs, that I think would make the 4K panels more future proof regardless what happens with the eventual limitations of HDMI. What do you think is the future-proof 4K solution to the current 30fps@4K limitation of current HDMI 1.4a?

Check back for more than 100 videos from Shenzhen and Hong Kong in the next few days


Get ready to reload my website several times a day over the next few days to discover tons and tons of new videos of the latest best value ARM Powered devices out of China that I am about to video-blog here in Shenzhen at the Shenzhen Electronics Fair, then China Sourcing Fair and mostly at the HKTDC Electronic Fair here from April 10-16th, then April 17-21th I’ll video-blog some more in Shenzhen China. Let me know in the comments if you’ve heard about some awesome new devices by Chinese companies which you know are exhibiting at these trade shows or who have something to show on video in Shenzhen China.

Get ready for tons of new quad-cores, ARM Cortex-A9, A7, A5, check back for the markets latest best value tablets, smartphones, set-top-boxes, HDMI Sticks. If you have any requests for Shenzhen Factories and Shenzhen companies which I should interview at and film factory tours at, let me know in the comments!

If you have any tips for what I should video-blog these next 11 days, let me know here in the comments or to my email charbax@gmail.com thanks!

I can also be reached by mobile phone in China: +86 13247632620 (April 10-11th, 17-21th) and my Hong Kong phone number: +852 9555 7482 (April 11-17th).

Alldocube RK3188 Tablet Factory Tour Part 3/3: Assembly

Posted by – April 9, 2013

Welcome on this 23-minute tour at the Alldocube RK3188 Tablet assembly line. See how Shenzhen Cube assembles about 2-3 million Android Rockchip tablets a year, expecting to double their output each year.

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Be sure to have seen all my 21 Shenzhen Factory videos in my YouTube playlist for Shenzhen Factory videos, more to come in the days/weeks to come! Check back!

Alldocube Tablet Factory Tour Part 2/3: SMT workshop

Posted by – April 9, 2013

Here’s a look at Alldocube‘s SMT line in their Shenzhen Headquarters.

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Alldocube RK3188 Tablet Factory Tour Part 1/3: Headquarters


Welcome on my full tour (Part 1 of 3) at the Alldocube Tablet Factory in Shenzhen China. This is the tour at the Alldo Cube Headquarters, featuring their R&D office, design, testing, component storage, component quality control and the device repair/support area. Alldocube in Shenzhen is finalizing the testing and is beginning mass production of the Rockchip RK3188 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 28nm HKMG based tablets. Full mass production of the new RK3188 Quad-core Tablets is expected for the middle of April 2013. Check back in the next days for the Parts 2 and 3 of this Factory Tour, to feature the Alldocube SMT Line and Assembly lines next.

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Tom Gall on the Linaro Graphics working group

Posted by – April 2, 2013

Tom Gall talks about the wide variety of graphics related optimizations that the Linaro Graphics working group works on, activities within the Kernel layer for panel and kernel device drivers, user space optimizations for libraries important for the graphics stack including audio-visual libraries for multimedia type applications, optimizing using NEON, starting to look at using GPGPUs, doing general purpose computing on a GPU device.

Vincent Guittot on the Linaro big.LITTLE MP work

Posted by – April 2, 2013

Vincent Guittot, Linaro assignee from ST-Ericsson, talks about the work that is being done at Linaro to Extend the Linux kernel to support ARM’s big.LITTLE MP architecture, building on the features provided by the big.LITTLE Switcher project. The most powerful use model of big.LITTLE is called MP and enables the use of all physical cores at the same time. Threads with high priority and/or computationally intensive can in this case be allocated to the A15 cores while threads with less priority or less computationally intensive such as background tasks can be performed by the A7 cores.

I am the new CEO of Intel

Posted by – April 1, 2013
Category: Opinions, Intel

My non-disclosure agreement expires today, you can read the official press release at http://intel.com/press

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 1, 2013 – Intel Corporation’s board of directors has announced that it has selected Charbax to be its new CEO effective May 23rd 2013. Charbax is being given full control over the company, tasking Intel’s engineers to design and release ARM Processors in the months to come, the new company motto is to supply market demands instead of trying to control them. More information about Intel’s new corporate priorities to follow in the next few weeks.

I’m excited to announce that the Intel board of directors has named me to be their new CEO. As I have been noticing from looking at my visitor statistics, hundreds of Intel employees have been visiting my blog at least weekly for over a year, they tell me that many of my posts have been sent around their executive offices and that they have then thought about considering me in their search for a new CEO.

I was surprised to hear Intel would hire someone like me as CEO of a $105 Billion Silicon Valley company. My background is just being a technology video-blogger, but the board of directors have convinced me, they are giving me complete freedom in choosing what to do with all engineering and fabrication resources at Intel corp. And I am also allowed to continue to blog on http://ARMdevices.net at the same time, so you can expect me to post more videos here, not fewer.

Here are my priorities for Intel to be enacted as soon as possible (expect official press releases to come in the next 2-3 weeks):

1. Intel to announce Licencing of the ARM Architecture, as well as licencing of ARM Cortex-A15/A7, Mali-T600 series GPU and ARM Cortex-A57/53. Intel is going to dedicate most R&D resources into making the worlds best ARM Processors.

2. Intel Fabs are hereby going to be optimized at making ARM Processors for third party companies. Apple has expressed interest in having Intel fabricate the Apple A6X and future Apple ARM Processors. Intel will do its best to supply Apple and anyone else with some of the worlds most advanced ARM Processors. 22nm ARM Process node manufacturing is available within the next 3 months, 14nm FinFet process node manufacturing of ARM designs to be in full mass production in Intel’s Fabs by the end of the year.

3. Intel Ultrabook to be renamed the Intel Ultra Expensive Notebook division. Intel does hereby invest in ARM Powered Chromebook. Intel to provide full featured ARM Cortex-A15/A7 big.LITTLE designs in mass production within 3 months from today targetted at $199 ARM Powered Chromebooks. Customers Lenovo, HP, Asus, Acer are to announce ARM Chromebooks using Intel’s ARM big.LITTLE processor. Intel expects the ARM Chromebook to overtake x86 Laptop shipments by the middle of this year and Intel is going to do its best to supply to a majority of those ARM Powered laptops.

4. Intel to invest $1 Billion in the ARM Powered One Laptop Per Child project. Official apology letter sent to the One Laptop Per Child foundation with the title: “We are sorry to have delayed the distribution of laptops to children in developing countries around the world”.

5. Intel to use own ARM Architecture licence to optimize ARMv8 64bit design for ARM servers. Intel is going to deliver mass production of 64bit ARM Server designs by the end of this year.

6. Intel allows Microsoft rename Windows RT into Windows 8 Value Edition. Intel will aim at supplying a new range of Windows 8 Value Edition ARM laptops at sub-$299 by the middle of this year. Intel recommends Microsoft open source and free the Windows 8 Value Edition source code, to optimize their chances in gaining market share, but that decision is up to Microsoft. Expect more on this to be announced by Microsoft in the weeks to come.

7. Proprietary projects Thunderbolt and Intel Wireless Display are abandoned, all in favor of USB 3.0 and WiHD open standards.

8. Intel to appologize to AMD and Nvidia for last decades of anti-competitive behavior. Promises to not use anti-competitive behavior going forward.

This is a major pivot for Intel’s business model, the board of directors have full confidence in me being able to guide them through this major inevitable change. Supplying market demands and not trying to dictate and control market trends is hereby Intel’s future role in this industry.

Lenovo to design own ARM processors

Posted by – March 31, 2013
Category: Opinions

Eetimes reports that Lenovo is getting a team of 100 chip designers together (60 in Shenzhen, 40 in Beijing)  to design and integrate their own ARM Processor designs.

Because Samsung may not agree to provide them with the latest fastest Exynos designs and because Lenovo needs own differentiation in this market.

I expect Lenovo to use ARM in ThinkPad Laptops soon also, using Chrome OS in priority.

Karim Yaghmour talks Linux Trace Toolkit, Embedded Linux and Embedded Android

Posted by – March 25, 2013

Karim Yaghmour talks to Zach Pfeffer about the Linux Trace Toolkit, the Embedded Linux book and now he’s releasing the Embedded Android book. At Linaro Connect Asia 2013, Karim Yaghmour presented 4 sessions on Embedded Android which I filmed in their entirety which you can watch here:
Karim Yaghmour Presents Embedded Android Session 1: Android Internals
Karim Yaghmour Presents Embedded Android Session 2: Working with the AOSP
Karim Yaghmour Presents Embedded Android Session 3: Native Android user-space
Karim Yaghmour Presents Embedded Android Session 4: Using and Customizing the Android Framework