My interview with Acer and Computex Founder Stan Shih, I try to ask him about the lack of Investments in new technology for Taiwan to take leadership in technological development instead of working for American brands, how Taiwan’s design and implementation of ARM technologies including Smartphones, Tablets, and ARM powered Laptops, Servers and IoT represents the future for Taiwan, how Taiwan may or may not be able to define technological development more than just to serve Intel’s, Microsoft’s and Apple’s agenda. Stan Shih says that if he follows American rules, he will always loose.
Category: Exclusive videos
Allwinner R58, octa-core ARM Cortex-A7 at 2Ghz for Android Laptop Convertibles
Allwinner launches their convertible-optimized Octa-core ARM Cortex-A7, similar to the Allwinner A83T Octa-core but at a higher clock speed for both the CPU and the PowerVR GPU. The roadmap for Allwinner’s productivity processors and solutions includes multi-window Android support in Q3 2015 and also a 64bit Allwinner R88 processor with Windows 10 support by the end of the year.
Jide Remix Android tablet laptop convertible UI
Remix Android presented on this Jide 11.6” tablet that was launched on Kickstarter. Remix presents a multi-window UI and they say firmware-level changes to Android for combining tablet apps with productivity features for the Android convertible. Jide Remix is being made by a large software team in Beijing headed by 3 ex-Googlers and it is being manufactured by Foxconn. For now it’s Nvidia Tegra4 based, and they are designing a next generation with a faster ARM processor and with a design that doesn’t look as similar to a Microsoft Surface tablet.
Rockchip RKi6000 Wi-Fi for IoT, Lowest power in the world
Posted by – June 4, 2015
Rockchip RKi6000 is claimed to be the lowest power Wi-Fi in the world, similar to that of Bluetooth 4.0 LE, it is designed for IoT applications, for Smart Homes, for smart lights, doors, kitchens, wearables, consumer electronics, home appliances, home safety, automation systems, automobiles and medical equipment, etc. Rockchip says that it can run for 35 years on AAA Batteries (when set to only ping data only once every several minutes) The RKi6000 uses Rockchip’s new ultra-low power Wi-Fi and memory technology to reduce power consumption of IoT (Internet of Things) smart devices by 85%, with power consumption equal to that of Bluetooth 4.0 LE (Low Energy), with receiving power consumption around 20mAh during use, 85% lower than standard Wi-Fi from competitors claims Rockchip. When compared with the Bluetooth/ZIGBEE standard, Rockchip says that Wi-Fi is more convenient to use for IoT.
Nvidia Tegra X1 Shield Android TV Box
Posted by – June 4, 2015
Nvidia has launched their Nvidia Tegra X1 Octa-core ARM Cortex-A57/53 big.LITTLE based Nvidia Shield Android TV Home Console Set-top-box with their 256-core Maxwell GPU for and impressive 4K gaming experience. Right now due to Android limitations the gaming is limited at 30 frames per second, but this could be pushed to 60 frames per second through a firmware update if Android TV will support it soon enough, the Maxwell 256-core GPU should support it. Advanced Android games look quite good, it plays back 4K video.
Allwinner partners with Qualcomm for LTE tablets
For all devices with screens above 6.5″, Allwinner will be partnering with Qualcomm to provide afforable LTE Tablet SoCs accelerating time to market through Allwinner’s network of turnkey design houses, with fast component customization, offering system solution services for those OEMs and ODMs creating 4G LTE-enabled tablets to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 and 210 processors, as Allwinner is a provider of total system solutions for the Android tablet ecosystem. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 supports 4G LTE Global Mode, with 7 mode support (LTE FDD, LTE TDD, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA 1x, GSM/EDGE), Cat 4 speeds of up to 150 Mbps, Up to 13 Megapixel Camera and 1080p Full HD video playback on 1280×800 display.
Chromebook on ARM Cortex-A72 MediaTek MT8173 big.LITTLE
Posted by – June 4, 2015
MediaTek are showing their first Chromebook, with a dual ARM Cortex-A72 with dual ARM Cortex-A53 big.LITTLE of their “world’s fastest” MT8173 SoC with SGX6250 GPU. MediaTek are optimizing the Chrome OS performance in partnership with Google to get this launched as soon as possible, though probably not before the beginning of next year they say. It has dual USB Type-C, one of which can output to a secondary display. For the final product, the built-in Chromebook display can be up to 2K resolution, now showing off 1366×768 on this prototype. Fast charge through the USB Type-C will work. The displays could be 11.6″ or 13″, the displays will probably be 1366×768 or 1920×1080. The target is affordable pricing. MediaTek together with Imagination and Google are the first to optimize the PowerVR6 GPU for Chrome OS, trying to take advantage of all its heterogeneous multiprocessing speecs to try to optimize the performance. MediaTek is revisiting their optimization approach to upstream all of their work, soon enough people will be able to get all of the source code that they are developing to get this ready.
Gigabyte H260-T70 ARM Server with Cavium ThunderX dual-socket 96-core/board, 384-core/2U server
Posted by – June 3, 2015
Gigabyte shows their “fastest ARM Server in the world” solution, packing 384 cores into a standard 2U. Big cloud companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon could buy these to fill up their datacers with 11 thousand or 15 thousand of them. Gigabyte’s ARM Server product manager talks about the performance, the features compared to the old fashioned Intel x86 servers, the power consumption is much lower. Gigabyte will launch the mass production in November, now providing samples for validation and testing by their big cloud company customers around the world. The 48-core ARM ThunderX Processor uses about 95W, while the comparative-performance Intel x86 based server processor consumes 145W, totally the saving is about 400W per 2U system, which means a potential saving of 8000W power per server rack. Gigabyte started using ThunderX in their R120-T30 single-socket server, moving to the dual socket design to be ready for taking over the massive cloud computing market.
Allwinner V3, 1080p@60p video encoder for Car-DVR, Sports and IP cameras
Posted by – June 2, 2015
Allwinner V3 is based on a single-core ARM Cortex-A7 with Allwinner’s video encode acceleration engines to encode 2x1080p@30fps, 1080@60fps or 720p@120fps in the SoC. For the in-car DVR configuration it is featuring Car Advanced driver assistance systems while recording of two 1080p video streams at 30 frames per second at the same time with a camera pointing to the front and another camera on a long cable pointing back behind the car. The Allwinner V3 also is for sports action cameras to record 1080p at 60 frames per second or 720p at 120 frames per second. Allwinner also uses their V3 SoC for IP security cameras, to stream the IP camera feeds remotely over the Internet.
Allwinner T2 for Car navigation and infotainment
Posted by – June 2, 2015
Allwinner has been optimizing some solutions for In-Car infotainment following on the work being done by Allwinner with companies like Jeavox who are using Allwinner in the car.
ARM Cordio Radio IP and ARM Subsystem for IoT
Posted by – June 2, 2015
At Computex 2015, ARM launches their new ARM Cordio Radio IP ultra low power Bluetooth LE 4.2. It has an analog RF component, a digital baseband modem component and mbed IoT subsystem running on an ARM Cortex-M3, based around the mbed OS and mbed device server allowing to build a solution around IoT devices and to connect them to the web. The ARM mbed OS runs on ARM Cortex-M devices. ARM is partnering with TSMC using their 55ULP process to dramatically lower the power consumption getting a 40% reduction in dynamic power consumption and a 25% reduction in the leakage.
You can read more about ARM Cordio and ARM’s new IoT subsystem here: http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-de-risks-design-cycle-for-iot-chips.php
Gigabyte ARM Servers, Cavium ThunderX, AppliedMicro X-Gene and Annapurna AL5140
Gigabyte is launching a whole range of ARM Powered Servers at Computex 2015: Gigabyte H279-T70 based on the Cavium ThunderX with 384 cores in a 2U system, Gigabyte D120-S3G featuring the Annapurna Labs Alpine AL5140 quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and the Gigabyte R120-P30 is based on the Applied Micro X-Gene 1 Octa-core 64bit processor.
Sharp Memory LCD
Posted by – June 2, 2015
At the IDTechEx show, Sharp demonstrates Memory LCD technology that delivers high-contrast, high-resolution displays for outdoor use. They are already being used in the quite popular Pebble watch. These LCD modules embed 1-bit memory in every pixel to enable each pixel to hold state while requiring low power. This delivers an “always on” display that uses little power (only a single supply voltage is required), even when updating images. This helps designers create products with long battery life. It also eliminates sweeping images or “ghosting”, because only the part of the image that requires updating needs to be changed. The response time of Sharp’s Memory LCDs makes it fast enough to display motion video. Right now Memory LCD is thus a quite good contender for the Smartwatch market, with Android Wear being a possibility also, perhaps Smartphones could use Memory LCD also to design a smartphone with potentially weeks of battery life instead of a day or two.
Maysun shows LTE phones on MT6732 with wireless charging and finger print
Posted by – May 27, 2015
Category: Smartphones, Projectors, Smartwatch, Exclusive videos, MediaTek, Qualcomm, China Sourcing Fair, Maysun, Android
Maysun is an OEM/ODM manufacturer of smartphones now shipping models with LTE, finger printing, large battery capacities up to 5000mAh, wireless charging, their RMA rate is less than 4%. Founded in 2008, Maysun has its own R&D team and a big factory employing more than 300 workers at their assembly and SMT lines, Maysun outputs Smartphones with a production capacity of 8000 smartphones per day, 250 thousand smartphones per month. You can read more about Maysun at http://www.maysuncn.com/
Actions Bubblegum-96 Linaro 96Boards.org development board on quad-core ARM Cortex-A53
Posted by – May 26, 2015
Actions Semiconductor launches their first 96boards development board running Android 5 Lollipop, Ubuntu based on Linaro codebase, based on Actions S900 Quad-core 64bit ARM Cortex-A53 with PowerVR G6230 GPU, Memory 1-8GB DDR3, Storage support 4-64GB eMMC. Rich interfaces including HDMI, USB2.0 host and Micro USB2.0, LAN, WIFI.
$180 E Ink and LCD dual-display 64bit MT6752 phone by Huateng
Posted by – May 20, 2015
Huateng flag D1 is a Dual display smartphone with a 5″ FHD LCD and a 4.7″ E Ink display at 960×540, touch screen is on both sides, the phone is based on MT6752 Octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 64bit with Mali T760-MP2 GPU. 2G RAM and 16G Flash, Micro SD card support up to 64GB. Android5 is supported.
Bainisha Body Motion Capturing using Printed Electronics
Posted by – May 15, 2015
Bainisha is a high-tech start-up dedicated to the development of a new paradigm in Body Motion Capturing. This interview, taken at the IDTechEx event on Wearable Technology, shows some of the product they are working on. Based on a thin hyper-stretchable film version of an Inverse Artificial Muscle, it delivers a set of new and hitherto unattained functionalities in terms of accuracy, speed & differentiation. The on-body concept guarantees an Absolute Body References Frame and hence sets a new standard for Medical Quality Data. Because the system has no “wake-up”-threshold and no filtering and/or damping combined with a +kHz capturing speed, it allows capturing such minute displacements as muscle tremor, pre-natal contractions, fatigue induced tremble etc… as well as explosive kinetics. Learn more about the technology and event at http://www.wearabletechnologyinsights.com
