Category: Favorite companies

TechNexion announces Freescale i.MX 536 System on Module

Posted by – December 31, 2011

TechNexion announces their upcoming Freescale i.MX 53 based TMX-536 System on Module together with Bachata carrier board.

Development kits will become available in the first quarter of 2012 that will come as all previous TechNexion development kits with source code linux, android and windows embedded compact 7 support backed up with unbeatable documentation to give people all the information that they need to successfully implement TechNexion SoM’s in their project.

Engadget.com text-interviews ARM co-founder John Biggs

Posted by – December 20, 2011
Category: ARM

Acorn needed more CPU power in its machines. 8-bit was no longer enough, so it was looking at 16-bit. Initially, we asked Intel for samples of their 80286 processor, but they refused. That’s funny, because ARM is now perceived as a competitive threat to Intel, and you can trace that all the way back to the seminal moment when they refused to give us those samples. We somewhat arrogantly thought ‘we can do this ourselves’ and we decided to build our own 32-bit silicon. If Intel had been more generous, Acorn might have built its Archimedes computer around the 80286 processor — it would have changed the whole landscape.

Read the whole interview at: http://engadget.com/2011/12/20/the-engadget-interview-arm-co-founder-john-biggs/

I was on Twit!

Posted by – December 10, 2011

You can see me starting at 9 minutes 45 seconds time code in following Twit Live video recorded at LeWeb 2011, I’m interviewed by Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane! This video features some of my talk about Switzerland legalizing piracy, France implementing the global licence to legalize piracy, Archos, my headmounted Kopin Golden-i computer, live stream and augmented video-blogging system.

Source: recorded video on Ustream.tv

I’ll post the YouTube embed if Twit and LeWeb release it separately on YouTube.

Google Display Advertising, status of Truview, ad exchange networking, youtube monetization

Posted by – December 10, 2011

Google’s display advertising business is growing very fast. On YouTube they are implementing TruView technology that allows only good ads to be displayed to the right target audience, and more.

Yves Behar at LeWeb 2011

Posted by – December 8, 2011

Interview with Yves Behar, the designer of the OLPC XO-1, about design, about technology, business, non-profit, consumer electronics design philosophy.

Marissa Mayer at LeWeb 2011

Posted by – December 8, 2011

She didn’t want to let me interview her, but I recorded a bit from her discussion on stage with the Apple fanboy MG Siegler. You can watch the whole video on the official LeWeb Youtube channel here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tIYfnMx8CMM

Google Analytics Interview: Bringing accountability to Social Media

Posted by – December 8, 2011

Google is launching this new tool to measure the value of social media. Read more about it here: https://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/socialData/home.html

Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz OMAP4460

Posted by – December 7, 2011

This is the first demonstration of the 1.5Ghz OMAP4460 running in a fully optimized Honeycomb Tablet. Archos is releasing the Turbo 1.5Ghz in January 2012 worldwide starting at $399 MSRP (actual retail price may be as low as $369 I guess, based on the 1Ghz Archos 101 G9 being now sold for $339 and the 1Ghz Archos 80 G9 being sold at $269.) The price difference between the 1Ghz and 1.5Ghz Archos G9 tablets is supposed to be about $30.

Ice Cream Sandwich preview on Archos G9

Posted by – December 6, 2011

Archos is showing a preview of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich running on the OMAP4 based Archos G9 tablets to be finalized during Q1 of 2012. They still have to finish the hardware acceleration for video support, Samba/Upnp, 3G stick support and all of the other specific features that Archos provides on top of Android.

Archos Home Connect

Posted by – December 6, 2011

$129 Android webradio alarm clock, this can be a nice to have next to your bed. It can wake you up with your Google Music playlists, with your Spotify favorites, with your Pandora, Last.fm, you can use Tune In webradio tuner. It can display trafic informations on a map for your region, show you news healines, pull RSS feed items etc.

Archos Smart Home Phone

Posted by – December 6, 2011

This is perhaps the coolest landline dect phone, because it runs Android, supports not only landline calling functionality, it can integrate with Skype, SIP, Google Voice and more over the WiFi at home and each set costs $149, you can have up to 5 of them running on the same dect network in your home.

ARM releases free DS-5 Community Edition toolkit for native code Android acceleration

Posted by – November 29, 2011
Category: Software, ARM, Android

Here’s the press release:

ARM today announced the release of the ARM® Development Studio 5 (DS-5™) Community Edition (CE) – a free-to-use edition of its reference software development toolkit. The new edition is dedicated to the Android application developer community and helps them create native software for compute intensive tasks that can run up to 4 times faster than Java code. DS-5 CE complements the standard SDK and NDK Android development kits by offering developers a unique set of tools to help them achieve the performance and energy-efficiency advantages made possible when ARM native code is used in Android applications.

DS-5 Community Edition includes limited, but essential functionality from the premium DS-5 toolkit to help solve common Android application developer pain points. It achieves this by providing an integrated graphical debugger for NDK-generated code and visibility of advanced processor information, including ARM NEON™ Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) registers. The new toolkit permits development of Java and C/C++ code in the same Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) to maximise productivity and ease of use.

DS-5 Community Edition features a tailored version of the ARM Streamline™ Performance Analyzer for use with compatible Android development platforms. Streamline captures detailed, system-wide performance statistics from a variety of sources which helps developers to locate hotspots in their code and isolate potential causes. Platform builders can add support for Streamline by integrating an open source driver available from the Linaro website.

“With over half a million apps on the Android market today, developers need to deliver an outstanding user experience to succeed commercially,” said John Cornish, executive vice president and general manager, system design division, ARM. “ARM DS-5 Community Edition offers developers an easy to use environment for debugging and optimizing C/C++ code. This allows them to take full advantage of ARM processor technology using native code to deliver the performance and functionality that consumers demand.”

Availability
The DS-5 CE is available free-of-charge for use by individuals and organizations with annual revenue of $100,000 or less, and up to 10 employees. DS-5 CE is available from ARM and can be downloaded now. For more information go to:

Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich source code released, how soon on every SoC?

Posted by – November 15, 2011
Category: Opinions, Google, Android

Wow, Google just released the source code for Ice Cream Sandwich in this Google Groups post.

Expect all Gingerbread-capable devices be able to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich rapidly. The question is only how soon each ARM SoC can have it fully hardware accelerated? Who is doing that work of doing all the hardware optimizations? Who is eventually disabling or tuning down certain hardware accelerated advanced user interface features in the software if that hardware is not powerful enough or of lower performance?

As of course one can expect all the latest high-end Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 processors to support this soon, including all devices on the TI OMAP4, Samsung Exynos 4210, Qualcomm MSM8260/8660, Nvidia Tegra2 and Tegra3, St-Ericsson U8500/U9500 and more. Imagine how awesome it is going to be to see firmware updates upgrading all Tablets and Smartphones using following cheap SoCs to Ice Cream Sandwich:
– TI OMAP3630/3530/3430 ARM Cortex-A8
– Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8
– Freescale i.MX51/53 ARM Cortex-A8
– Marvell PXA618 Single Core
– Qualcomm 8255/8255T Single Core up to 1.5Ghz
– Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– AmLogic 8726 ARM Cortex-A9 Single Core 800Mhz
– NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual Core 533Mhz
– Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11
– Mediatek MTK6573 ARM11
– VIA 8710 ARM11

and more! Does anyone know how to get a confirmation from each of these ARM SoC providers to get an idea about how soon and if they expect to get full Ice Cream Sandwich support? Who is going to make that work, do each SoC provider, each device maker have to do all the work or is Google contributing a lot of those software optimizations already as part of the open source Android 4.0.1 code release?

How soon can we expect to find some awesome sub-$100 and sub-$200 fully capacitive, fully smooth Android phones, tablets running on the amazing Android 4.0.1? Can we expect them all now to be fully officially allowed to pre-load the full Google Marketplace, having the full Google-supported Tablet features, official tablet services pre-loaded, no questions asked? I expect Google’s new Ice Cream Sandwich Compatibility Definition Document to allow for every one of those SoCs full compatibility, even the cheapest, and not requiring any specific sensors, screen sizes, buttons, 3G features or other to get official Google Marketplace on those.

I expect that we may see Ice Cream Sandwich on all these SoC, even the ARM11 based ones, starting as soon as before the end of the year, or maybe in January or February of next year. I expect all cheap tablets and phones to run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich, all come with the official Google Marketplace legally pre-loaded, regardless of sensors present. I also expect either Android 4.0.1 or perhaps later coming Android 4.1, Android 4.2 to also provide full support for Set-top-boxes, Laptops, E-readers and more. That means, I expect this to provide a full Google TV experience on HDMI out. I expect this to provide a full Chrome browser when outputting a HD output and keyboard/mouse is detected. I expect this to provide the best ever user interface and applications platform for E-Ink and Pixel Qi based e-readers, powering a better reading experience.

Source: techmeme.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.

ARM Mali-T658 announced

Posted by – November 10, 2011

ARM Media Processing Division’s Jem Davies and Ian Smythe talk about the launch of the new Mali-T658 GPU. It can start to appear in devices by the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013. This is like having a 250 Gigaflops super computer in your pocket. The performance is anywhere from 2x to 4x faster than the Mali-T604 announced last year. Now supporting configurations up to 8 cores. It easilly supports 4K resolutions. It’s compatible with the newly announced ARMv8 64-bit architecture. The Mali-T658 delivers desktop-class performance, achieved by doubling the number of GPU cores, doubling the number of arithmetic pipelines within each core and improving the compiler and pipeline efficiency. Find more information at http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-hardware/mali-t658.php

ARMv8 Technology Preview, a highly technical presentation video

Posted by – November 5, 2011
Category: ARM TechCon, ARM

Right after the announcement of the ARMv8 64-bit architecture at ARM TechCon, Richard Grisenthwaite, Lead Architect and Fellow at ARM did this following highly technical presentation to a huge packed room of ARM industry insiders and experts, here’s the full video with slideshows as released on the official ARMflix YouTube channel:


At the end of the video you can click through to Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of this 45-minute technology preview.

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.

Charbax Cyborg: How I video-blog, Live and On-demand

Posted by – October 29, 2011

This is how I was walking around the ARM TechCon 2011, with the OMAP3530 Powered Kopin Golden-i Headmounted display (voice-controlled and with head-tracking) to monitor the live Ustream IRC chat, a USB webcam on my head streaming live video to Ustream through the Marvell Armada 618 Powered OLPC XO-1.75 in my bag (using another netbook when Marvell was showcasing the XO-1.75 at their booth), a T-Mobile 4G Mobile Hotspot ($50/3GB/month/prepaid/$141-Mifi), and my nearly 4-year old Sanyo HD1000 (9mbitps 720p) with the external Sennheiser MKE400 shotgun microphone.


Source: ti.com

I also have the new higher quality JVC GC-PX10 but its 24/36mbitps 1080p50 recording bitrate is too high to upload on the relatively slow upload speed at this conference. At the San Francisco Downtown University Campus last weekend, the upload speed was 100mbitps so there I filmed all 16 videos at the OLPC Summit with that camera, for most of which you can even download the full original camera sample video file using Google Docs separately linked under each video.

Mike Muller, ARM CTO, ARMv8 64-bit launch interview

Posted by – October 28, 2011

ARM launches the 64bit ARMv8 Architecture. Here’s my interview with ARM’s CTO Mike Muller on the day of the announcement.


Simon Segars, ARM Inc President, Interview at ARM TechCon 2011

Posted by – October 28, 2011

Simon Segars is the President of the US division of ARM. Here’s an interview with him at ARM TechCon 2011 about the state of the ARM industry.