Category: Favorite companies

$199€ Archos 50c Oxygen, Octa-core MT6592 5″ FHD

Posted by – April 5, 2014

Archos 50c Oxygen is an octa-core MT6592 5″ FHD phone.

Archos 64 Xenon, 6.4″ 720p MT6582 $199€

Posted by – March 21, 2014

6.4-inch HD IPS screen (1280 x 720), the unlocked ARCHOS 64 Xenon phablet uses the MT6582 Quad-Core CPU for released available for under $200.

David Rusling and Jon Masters, Linaro CTO interviews Chief ARM Architect at Red Hat

Posted by – March 21, 2014

Jon Masters (2, 3) is responsible for leading research and development efforts around the ARM Architecture at Red Hat (in particular, the 64-bit ARM Architecture known as AArch64), instrumental in the creation of the Linaro Enterprise Group, sitting on the LEG Technical Steering Committee, and is elected to represent LEG on the core Linaro Technical Steering Committee.

Jon Master’s keynote:

Linaro Security Working Group discussing open source TEE

Posted by – March 19, 2014

Linaro Security Working Group (SWG), Jens Wiklander, Joakim Bech, Pascal Brand and Cedric Chaumont are talking about what is happening within Linaro’s working group that handles security. The group is currently focusing on creating an open source Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) solution running on TrustZone® for ARMv7 and ARMv8 architecture. They also mention that they are going to work on secure boot (UEFI) and DRM schemes (EME) later on. According to SWG there has been and is a lot of interest shown from various companies, markets and countries. People have a hard time trusting a black box that is supposed to protect their most valuable assets. Therefore it is more than welcome to create an open source TEE solution right now, says SWG.

Sree Kotay, Comcast Chief Software Architect about starting the Linaro Home Group for optimizing Linux for the ARM Powered Set-top-box


Radically revamping the device development model for Carrier class operators with ARM and Linaro. Comcast? Software? Isn’t that an oxymorom? See how the open source community and modern development models are re-shaping the feature velocity and security models for embedded devices like set-top-boxes, cable modems and gateways. Competing in the modern landscape means building products and experiences that compete with a new breed of innovators. Comcast’s SVP, Engineering and Operations and Chief Software Architect will provide insight into how its reinvented its technology stack and product line.

my interview with him:

The new Linaro Home Group is about optimizing ARM Linux for Multimedia Set-top-boxes. Here’s my interview with Sree Kotay, Comcast Chief Software Architect about how Comcast is interested in working with Linaro to optimize Linux on the ARM Powered Set-top-box.

and his keynote video is here:

Geniatech OTT TV devices, M802 HDMI Stick, DVT-T, ISDB-T, Office Cast, WiTV

Posted by – March 18, 2014

This video features:
1. Geniatech ATV180 shows 2Ghz AmLogic M802 based ATV180 Series HDMI Stick with 4K2K support, OTT STB / UHD Support, 600MHz Mali 450MP8 Octa Core GPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash

2. Geniatech PT115 – Android TV Dongle for DVB-T, PT115 DVB-T is a high sensitivity Tiny size digital micro USB TV Stick It turns your Tablet into a portable digital multimedia center. Features Watch and record DVB-T TV on Tablet, Supports Electronic Program Guide EPG and Subtitle Supports Time-Shifting function Low power consumption, requires Android 4.1 and a phone or tablet with OTG USB host support.

3. Geniatech PT230 – Android TV Dongle for ISDB-T same as PT115 but for ISDB-T standard

4. Geniatech Office Cast / any cast New product / connect – display and beam any content from smartphone / tablet / notebook / PC to Beamer. Office use ! Protocol: Miracast, DLNA, UPnP, own APK iOS and Android. ARM CORTEX A9, frequency is 800MHz-1GHz, RAM is 1G, built in 2G-32G flash memory Linux / based !

5. Geniatech ATV1610 – Series

6. ATV582 Series

7. WiTV – Wireless, WiTV is a small stand alone TV tuner which connects worldwide TV signals and streams of live TV wirelessly to mobile devices in iOS/Mac OS/Android OS the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android Phone and Android tablet etc.. Live TV can be watched through your home Wi-Fi network

ARM Cortex-M for Wearables and IoT

Posted by – March 16, 2014

ARM Cortex-M Marketing Manager Diya Soubra talks Wearables and Internet of Things using ARM Cortex-M processor family. The ARM Cortex-M is a group of 32-bit ARM processor cores intended for microcontroller use, consists of the Cortex-M0, Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M1, Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4. The ARM Cortex-M processor family is an upwards compatible range of energy-efficient, easy to use processors designed to help developers meet the needs of tomorrow’s embedded applications. Those demands include delivering more features at a lower cost, increasing connectivity, better code reuse and improved energy efficiency. The Cortex-M family is optimized for cost and power sensitive MCU and mixed-signal devices for end applications such as smart metering, human interface devices, automotive and industrial control systems, white goods, consumer products and medical instrumentation. ARM Cortex-M processors is a global microcontroller standard, having been licensed to over 40 ARM partners including leading vendors such as Freescale, NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. Using a standard processor allows ARM partners to create devices with a consistent architecture while enabling them to focus on creating superior device implementations.

Pradeep Kathail, Cisco Chief Software Architect

Posted by – March 15, 2014

The Linaro Networking Group marked its first anniversary at the Linaro Connect Asia. Here Bob Monkman, ARM Enterprise Segment Marketing Manager, interviews Pradeep Kathail, Cisco Chief Software Architect, Network Operating System Group, to reflect on the year’s accomplishments and current activity within LNG. In addition to delivering Big Endian support in the Linux kernel, LNG launched the OpenDataPlane (ODP) project to enable data plane applications to easily port across different hardware platforms and architectures while retaining the ability to exploit hardware acceleration features unique to each platform. Pradeep discusses the importance of ODP and its relationship to other open source initiatives like OpenDaylight (ODL) as part of the larger industry trends of Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

and here’s my Interview with him:

and here is his keynote video from the LinaroOnAir channel:

HiSilicon D01, 16-core ARM Cortex-A15 presented by Huawei


Here’s the 16-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor from HiSilicon Huawei on a development board for ARM Powered Networking and Servers coming up. Hacked on in this video by Linaro Toolchain Engineer Rob Savoye (2), who now is climbing the Mount Everest. Linux kernel v3.13 is running on this board, with three SATA ports and two Gigabit ethernet ports driver ready. The BSP code will soon be upgraded to kernel v3.14 and be upstreamed in parallel. Source code and binaries are released through Linaro website. Ubuntu Server is verified on this board. In this demo, it runs a GCC toolchain native build. Linaro Toolchain Working Group plans to use this board to run multiple builds per board, to maximally saturate D01’s computing and storage capability.

Kernel source: http://git.linaro.org/landing-teams/working/hisilicon/kernel.git (branch: integration-hilt-d01)
Binary release: http://www.linaro.org/downloads/ (found ‘HiSilicon D01’)
WiKi page: https://wiki.linaro.org/Boards/D01

Linaro VP of Engineering Mark Orvek talks Security with Joakim Bech and Kernel with Deepak Saxena

Posted by – March 14, 2014

Mark Orvek, Linaro VP of Engineering chats with Joakim Bech, Tech Lead Security Working Group; and Deepak Saxena, Tech Lead Kernel Working Group about the work that their teams are focusing on in 2014.

Ongoing activity on the Energy Aware Scheduler

Posted by – March 14, 2014

Linaro and ARM engineers talk about their current activities to integrate power management into the Linux scheduler. By integrating cpuidle and cpufreq mechanisms into the scheduler, they hope to work with the community to create an energy-aware scheduler as an alternative to the current performance-oriented scheduler. This work will require improvements in other parts of the scheduler such as better description of processor topology, load estimation in the scheduler and better tools to measure the performance impact of changes to the scheduler.

Linaro engineers implementing ACPI for ARMv8

Posted by – March 13, 2014

Linaro is working on implementing ACPI for general purpose servers using the ARMv8 architecture. This has been controversial as it is a competing technology to FDT which has been used now for the 32bit ARM world.

ACPI has been chosen on for the general purpose servers to allow standard distributions such as RHEL and Ubuntu server to boot on hardware which they have no special support in the same way as x86 world. ACPI is used to abstract the hardware to the level the standard distribution can boot to the point it can be useful.

There is a large overlap between FDT and ACPI but they actually do things a different way. FDT is currently holding fast the the mobile and tablets market for ARM. But with Intel implementing ACPI phones and tablets nothing is certain for the future.

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Linaro’s validation team demonstrates using LAVA for native toolchain builds and “hack” sessions on Arndale Octa and APM X-Gene ARMv8 platforms

Posted by – March 12, 2014

Linaro’s automated validation architecture (LAVA) is typically used to execute automated tests to validate Linaro’s engineering output. However, LAVA has recently integrated features to automate builds and provide secure remote interactive sessions to developers. Linaro’s lab lead Dave Pigott shows a native toolchain build orchestrated by LAVA. This technology enables developers to validate the toolchain on many ARM processor designs as well as other architectures. Tyler Baker a technical architect at Linaro explains how LAVA abstracts the image deployment, boot process, and installation of software needed to support these “hack” sessions.

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You can read more at:
http://validation.linaro.org
http://community.validation.linaro.org

Linaro Enterprise Group LEG accelerating Linux development on ARM Servers

Posted by – March 11, 2014

The Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG) is dedicated to accelerate Linux ARM server ecosystem development and extends the list of Linaro members beyond ARM silicon vendors to Server OEM’s and commercial Linux providers.

Linaro Enterprise Group (ARM Servers) engineers Ed Nevill, Leif Lindholm, Andrea Gallo, Al Stone, Hanjun Guo share key achievements in the OpenJDK, HipHopVM, UEFI and ACPI areas, building on new hardware, defining plans towards upstream acceptance, solving bugs and more.

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Android optimizations for ARM by Linaro Engineers


Linaro Engineers present a bunch of optimizations they recently did in Android for ARM. These optimizations are in areas like BIONIC for Cortex C string routines, migrating to GCC 4.9, migrating the external projects to their latest versions, optimizing SQLite, optimizing battery life, also they discuss their progress building Android with CLANG, migrating Android to latest versions and how Linaro is planning to release these optimizations to the Android community through Linaro Android releases and upstream them to respective project repositories.

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The Android Linaro team’s presentations are live and available on Linaro.org LCA14 and on youtube at LinaraOnAir channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/LinaroOnAir:
LCA14-205: Optimizing SQLite for Android mobile
LCA14-304: Building Android with CLANG for ARM v7 and v8 platforms

Qualcomm, Mediatek, ZTE, Allwinner and Comcast join Linaro


George Grey, CEO of Linaro, the not-for-profit engineering organization consolidating and optimizing open source Linux software and tools for the ARM architecture, announces that Qualcomm, Mediatek, ZTE, AllWinner and Comcast are joining Linaro to work together on bringing Linux on ARM forward together. They are joining the existing Linaro member companies who are ARM, HiSilicon, Broadcom, Fujitsu, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, AMD, AppliedMicro, Canonical, Cavium, Cisco, Citrix, Enea, Facebook, Freescale, HP, LSI, Marvell, Montavista, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Red Hat and IBM who all are contributing engineers to all be working together to improve Linux on ARM for Mobile, Enterprise (servers), Networking, and now also for Home (Set-top-box) usage with the Internet of Things potentially also to be supported. Linaro just held its Linaro Connect Asia here in Macau this week and I will be posting many videos from there, interviewing Linaro engineers about some of the latest Linux hacking work they are doing to speed up all ARM Powered devices.

50 Billion ARM Processors Shipped

Posted by – March 6, 2014
Category: Exclusive videos, MWC, ARM

ARM shipped over 10 billion processors in 2013 alone. From 1990-2008, ARM had shipped one billion processors. The growth of ARM Processor deployments worldwide is accelerating at a crazy pace. About 2 Billion ARM Powered Smartphones are now in use throughout the world. It won’t take long, perhaps just 3 years, for the next 50 billion ARM Processors to be shipped! The official 50 Billion chips videos are here http://138.2.152.197/2014/02/26/50-billion-arm-processors-shipped/ and you can read more about it at http://50billionchips.com

The latest with ARM big.LITTLE at MWC 2014

Posted by – March 4, 2014
Category: Exclusive videos, MWC, ARM

Brian Jeff, Product Manager at ARM, talks about some of the new ARM Processors launched at the Mobile World Congress 2014, including the Exynos 5422 octa-core and Exynos 5260 hexa-core with 2 big cores and 4 little cores. Talking about the optimal price, power, performance for ARM Processor designs to bring best possible performance as soon as possible for the mid-range market ($200-$250 smartphones). You can also watch my previous video with Brian Jeff talking about ARM’s big.LITTLE: http://138.2.152.197/2013/11/03/arm-big-little-with-brian-jeff-product-manager-roadmap/

ARM Cortex-A17

Posted by – March 1, 2014

Nandan Nayampally, ARM VP of Processor Marketing presents ARM Cortex-A17. ARM expects over 500 million mid-range smartphones to be shipped in 2015. The ARM Cortex-A17 provides a product that will be defining the performance and feature set for that mid-range smartphone segment. ARM Cortex-A17 is the most efficient mid-range mobile solution for smartphones and tablets ARM has ever delivered, essentially delivering a new mid-range performance point for 2015 (and beyond) that matches today’s high-end phones and tablets at a mid-range price point. ARM Cortex-A17 provides 60 percent higher performance than the Cortex-A9 and by using big.LITTLE technology Cortex-A17 can be paired with the Cortex-A7 processor for full system coherency. ARM Cortex-A17 is launched as part of ARM’s new suite of ARM IP for mid-range mobile devices together with the Mali-T720 GPU, Mali DP500 DPU, Mali-V500 and ARM POP IP.

Read more: community.arm.com

110€ Archos 40B Titanium, MT6572 4″ IPS dual frontal speakers

Posted by – February 26, 2014

Archos presents their entry-level music enthusiasts phone, powered by the Mediatek MT6572 dual-core 1.3GHz ARM Cortex-A7 processor. 4-inch IPS display with a 800x480pixel resolution, 4GB of internal storage plus a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, HSPA+, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 1400mAh battery. This phone is released now for 110€ in Europe. You can find out more about it here: http://www.archos.com/gb/products/smartphones/titanium/archos_40btitanium/index.html