Category: Marvell

MiTAC GFX ARM Server Launch: Gary Rumney and Ian Ferguson talk about ARM Powered Servers

Posted by – June 6, 2012

At the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server launch at Computex 2012, Gary Rumney, Senior Advisory Engineer at MiTAC, the architect of the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server system and Ian Ferguson, Director of Server Systems and Ecosystem at ARM talk at the launch of the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server system at Computex 2012.

ARM Servers Keynote: Ian Ferguson and Mark Shuttleworth at Computex 2012

Posted by – June 6, 2012

This is the unveiling of the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server at Computex 2012 during the 25-minute keynote presentation by Ian Ferguson, Director of Server Systems and Ecosystem at ARM and Mark Shuttleworth, leader of the Ubuntu Project.

Dell unveils ARM Powered servers

Posted by – May 29, 2012
Category: Servers, Marvell, Ubuntu

Check out the articles on Google News.

The 3U rackmount chassis has 48 ARM servers with a total of 192 processor cores, with each ARM server drawing a maximum of 15 watts of power. Each server uses Marvell’s quad-core Armada XP 78460 chip, which runs at 1.6GHz, and has error correction features, networking and storage components.

OLPC XO-3 unveiled at CES 2012

Posted by – January 9, 2012

The One Laptop Per Child foundation presents the final design for the OLPC sub-$100 Tablet with a 8″ 1024×768 capacitive LCD touch screen, a touch screen optimized version of Sugar Linux. The thin screen protector doubles as a solar charger. Once countries order millions of these, the price can definitely be below $100.

Marvell Armada 1500, ARM Powered Google TV

Posted by – January 9, 2012

This is the new ARM Powered Google TV solution ready to ship in full production early Q2 2012 in set-top-boxes and built-in into HDTVs by all manufacturers wanting to build and sell cheap ARM Powered Google TV solutions. The performance is faster than Intel’s discontinued Google TV solution, this one lowers the cost, lowers the power consumption, makes it more compact all the while including all the HDMI input/output and IR blaster features of a full Google TV.

ARM Powered Google TV launching at CES 2012!

Posted by – January 6, 2012

I’ve been posting over 20 blog posts about the ARM Powered Google TV over the past year and a half, and now it’s finally going to be shown for the first time on several ARM Processors at CES 2012! ARM is I think the key to make Google TV seriously revolutionary and a huge worldwide success, revolutionizing TV, the media people spend 5 hours per day watching in average! Look forward to my up to 100 videos coming up next week from CES as I plan to film the top ARM Powered devices to be shown there.

The ARM Processors to be unveiled to support “The New Google TV Experience with Full Live TV Integration” are:

– Marvell 1500 (which I think I might have covered a few months ago nicknamed Project Berlin shown in a Zinwell prototype)
– Mediatek shows an ARM Processor for Google TV
LG L9 is probably an ARM Cortex-A9 optimized for Google TV

TV makers to show new ARM Powered Google TV boxes at CES 2012 include:
– LG
– Sony
– Vizio

Might not yet be showing Google TV but probably are preparing to launch Google TV a few months later:
Samsung
Panasonic
– I expect Philips to replace their Set-top-box functionality with Google TV
– Sharp
Toshiba

These ARM Powered Google TV boxes thus have the full Live TV integration mode supported. That means the ARM Processors are optimized to playback 1080p in 60fps, evt play 2 1080p video streams at the same time (picture in picture stuff), they support HDMI input and output at the same time, rendering overlay graphics on top of the 1080p video stream, controlling an IR blaster. I expect they also support all video codecs up to 1080p at full bitrates, I expect 1080p USB webcams are supported for HD video conferencing. USB host ports are supported to connect USB NTFS/EXT/FAT32 hard drives and USB sticks. Full Chrome browser web browsing on top of Android with Flash is for sure supported.

That means the ARM Processors used in Set-top-boxes such as Samsung Hummingbird, AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 Single-core, ZiiLabs, Rockchip RK2918, VIA ARM9, probably those didn’t include the “Full Live TV Integration” support. My guess is some of those may also be working on customizing some ARM Processors to also support the Live TV HDMI pass-through features, while others I think may be waiting to support Google TV without Live TV pass-through. Possibly that those other ARM platforms need to wait for Google to open source this new Google TV source code before they can try to use the basic Google TV functionalities without Live TV pass-through. Perhaps Google will announce a Basic Google TV version to use on basic ARM Processors that aren’t providing the pass-through stuff.

For people who don’t use Cable, Satellite, DVB-T/C/S, for TV, there is no need for the HDMI input features of Google TV. We still want to have a more basic version of Google TV that offers every other feature and may provide it on cheaper hardware.

We’re talking a revolution in YouTube, a revolution in video-on-demand, a revolution in Democracy. Why and how? Simply because things are going to change and improve much faster as more and more people watch web video content directly on the TV in a leanback experience, and don’t watch the content in small embedded players on a laptop or desktop computer. Things change as more and more people will watch web video content instead of regular TV channels when in the living room. Things change when more and more people watch more political videos through the web, such as watching official campaign videos explaining policies instead of only the short sound-bytes on news channels leading up to important elections.

The most important factor that will make ARM Powered Google TV a success is the price. Marvell CEO said in his keynote at ARM TechCon 2010 that it only costs $25 to add this type of Internet connected Set-top-box functionality into a HDTV, and that it thus only makes sense that nearly all new HDTVs will quite simply integrate this right inside of them. It will be expected by consumers buying a new HDTV, that Google TV functionality will always be included for free and that it does not increase the price. I think all HDTVs will include an Ethernet port, some might include WiFi or just support it using any WiFi dongle on one of its several USB host ports on the side. As Eric Schmidt has said, by the middle of 2012, expect that most new HDTVs will include Google TV functionality for free. Expect ARM Powered Google TV set-top-boxes for $99 with Live TV integration and $49 without Live TV integration (no HDMI input, no IR blaster).

Source: googletv.blogspot.com

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


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.

OLPC XO-1.75 hands-on

Posted by – October 30, 2011

I got to play with the new Marvell Armada PXA618 powered One Laptop Per Child XO-1.75 laptop during the ARM Technology Conference. It seems to already be very stable and run very fast, although this is still a beta prototype, with beta software, OLPC, Red Hat, Marvell still have some work to do to optimize the software and complete the hardware so that it can be mass produced and shipped to children around the world starting early next year. Here in this video I walk around with it outdoors for a few minutes and show you some of how it looks like.

Marvell Armada 618 in the Vizio V-Tab 8″ capacitive sub-$200 tablet

Posted by – October 30, 2011

Marvell provides this low leakage highly optimized single core Armada 618 now in end consumer products and reaching sub-$200 pricing.

Marvell Armada PXA2128 processor in a tablet prototype

Posted by – October 27, 2011

This is the first time that Marvell is showing the PXA2128 in a workable tablet prototype form factor. This is the new high-end processor from Marvell with a 1.2Ghz Dual-core doing the intensive tasks and a slower lower power co-processor doing the basic background tasks, providing a solution that can peak at high performance and go back to low power mode automatically.

Pogoplug Mobile, cheap new simpler Pogoplug

Posted by – September 2, 2011

This new Pogoplug Mobile is designed to be cheaper, with just 1 USB host connector, 1 SD card slot, one Ethernet port and the power charger. The idea is that you connect this at your house, with a 2TB external hard drive or whatever other storage you want, and you can then stream it to your smartphone, tablet, laptop wherever else you are in the world. There is also a hacking community at http://pogoplugged.com that may do things like BitTorrent RSS downloads work on this device. This device may still have about the same performance using the same Marvell processor as the previous Pogoplug, but that is to be confirmed. Please post in the comments if you know anything more about the actual performance of this processor to download from BitTorrent RSS, stream HD video files over the local network and other of the processor intensive tasks that can be envisionned from such Internet connected NAS system.

semiaccurate.com: New rumors on Marvell’s upcoming Tri-core ARM Processors

Posted by – July 28, 2011
Category: Marvell

Marvell has an Architectural ARM licence, like Qualcomm and Microsoft. What that means is that they can take the ARM Instruction Set Architecture but customize things around that and implement things as they want to differentiate.

SemiAccurate’s moles say that Marvell is cooking up an A9/A15 hybrid part, philosophically closer to the A9 on the core, but with a very A15-like memory controller. This likely means a 3-pipe design rather than a 4-pipe, but with >32-bit memory access and virtualization instructions. The new chip should implement the full A15 ISA, so there should be no software compatibility issues, but has less raw grunt than a full A15. At least on paper.

SemiAccurate speculates that this is either to lower the cost at near Cortex-A15 performance, or to configure things to try and provide the highest ARM chip performance on the market, targeting Laptops and Servers even more so than others do.

multiple sources in the know say that the key players in the ARM game are all quite nervous about Marvell’s offering, more so than even Krait. Specifics are few, but interest is very high among CPU watchers and system builders. If this chip pans out like many are saying, it could be one of the, if not the fastest ‘next gen’ ARM core. Marvell is not going to be the ‘quiet type’ for much longer, stay tuned.

Read the full article at semiaccurate.com

Honeywld Marvell Armada 1000 88DE3010 “Berlin” based Android Set-top-box

Posted by – June 8, 2011

Here’s one of the first Marvell Berlin (Armada 1000) based Android Set-top-boxes I have yet seen, firmware is still to be finalized but they can start shipping this hardware this month.

Wyse T50 Thin Client on Marvell Armada 510 presented by Canonical Ubuntu

Posted by – June 2, 2011

Wyse T50 is an Ubuntu Core powered thin client device, it is powered by Marvell Armada 510 (1Ghz). It features DVI, Ethernet, 4 usb host ports and an sd-card slot.

Shenzhen Sailing Digital Technology shows Marvell 166 powered Tablets


Tablets with GPS and cellphone function. With 3G the cost can be $184 in bulk. They also use the Telechips ARM Cortex-A8 for $130 without 3G. And they’ll use the next Marvell processor next month and Infotmic also.

KM Technology Marvell and Freescale based tablets

Posted by – April 16, 2011

They make Marvell and Freescale based tablets.

Toradex shows Tegra2 computer on SO-DIMM form factor

Posted by – 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.

Zinwell does ARM Powered $70 Android Set-top-box

Posted by – March 2, 2011

Zinwell is one of the worlds top-5 Realtek based media player box makers, after Western Digital, Xstreamer, now they want to support full Android and eventually Google TV for ARM, so they take the Marvell Berlin (Armada 1000?) processor platform, even add DVB tuner and e-Sata ports, to provide full HD web browsing speed and the performance needed for full Flash and all Web videos and the like.

Gigabyte NAS GR-EZM02H

Posted by – March 2, 2011

Gigabyte is launching this dual-hard drive NAS product, powered by a Marvell ARM processor, it has dual-LAN and a bunch of embedded software features.

Marvell’s seamless multimedia synchronization

Posted by – February 20, 2011

Marvell demonstrates seamless sharing of pictures, videos over the Internet with picture frames, HDTV slideshows, NAS and more. This demo is using the software from Funambol and Eyecon.