At CES 2011, Sharp showed their 3.8″ parallax barrier 3D screen in their Android powered 3D phone on the Softbank network. Sharp is making the 3D screen that is in the upcoming Nintendo 3DS, it allows for amazing 3D screen without the need for 3D glasses. Thus as Sharp is ramping up mass production of that “parallax barrier” 3.8″ WVGA 3D screen, they are able to put it in Smart phones as well, which is how they are now shipping in Japan the Sharp 003SH and 005SH (with slide-out keyboard). Sharp is also entering the Tablet market with their new Tablet optimized screens at 5.5″ and 10.8″ super sharp high resolution LCD screens in the Galapagos Tablets now released in the Japanese market.
ARM and IBM have been collaborating for 3 years on designing smaller and smaller processors for the industry, improving SoC density, routability, manufacturability, power consumption and performance. Just a year ago, the standard was about 65nm for most ARM Cortex-A8 processors in devices on the market such as the Nexus One. About 6 months ago, 45nm ARM Cortex-A8 processors appeared on the market such as in the ipad/iphone4, galaxy tab/s, droid x/pro. Recent devices with Nvidia Tegra2 are 40nm. The next step for ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core and quad-core processors to appear on the market this year are in designs of 32nm (50% shrink off 45nm node) and 28nm (50% shrink off 40nm node). What’s next? They are working on 22nm and 20nm designs for 2012 and have been announcing since ARM Techcon last November that they have 14nm designs for as soon as 2014 that are under work with IBM.
You have to consider, it’s not possible to make them smaller than 0nm, there are no minus nanometers. Their achievements in shrinking processor designs are insane. The investments are huge. They have to invest billions of dollars in fundamental research of materials and processes, they have to invent new mathematical tricks. Some of these technologies take 10 years from the lab research to something that can be mass manufactured. To make it feasible, the ARM industry has to collaborate (2).
The reason for wanting smaller process size is to consume less power, to increase performance and to potentially lower cost of devices at the same time (factoring out the increasing cost of R&D for smaller designs through very huge scale).
Watch my video of IBM’s Vice President of Semiconductor Research and Development, Dr. Gary Patton, keynoting on how they are getting to 14nm ARM Processor designs and smaller:
They show an 8.4″ capacitive (M9C) and resistive (M901) Android tablet (resistive is about $30-$40 cheaper) running the Rockchip RK2818 ARM9 processor.
Uses a 10.1″ resistive screen, can be manufactured for below $199 using the Marvell 166 processor. Marvell is working on user interface layers on top of Android suitable for Tablets to be used in education leading the way towards the OLPC XO-3 Tablet to be based on the faster Armada 610 processor.
For $55 per month, the phone is $199, no contract, unlimited talk, text, mobile web (on the phone only, no tethering) and unlimited access to online streaming of millions of songs. Cricket Communications developed their feature phone OS using the Brew platform.
Shenzhen Canjing Electronics presents an 8″ Freescale i.MX51 powered Android tablet priced at $112 in bulk. They also make a $98 Telechips based 7″ tablet with an HDMI output.
Yootechpros are showing a 9.7″ LG IPS panel Samsung Hummingbird 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A8 based Android tablet which could retail at 30% cheaper than the iPad.
The winner of ARMdevices.net Best of CES 2011 award goes to the Motorola Atrix 4G smart phone.
Congratulations! clap clap..
With the launch of this new Motorola Super Phone, we have witnessed a historic moment in the history of consumer electronics. Motorola unveils not only the most powerful smartphone yet based on Nvidia’s Tegra2 AP20H ARM Cortex-A9 processor, but has actually worked feverishly on making software layers on top of Android to provide for a Desktop/Laptop replacement experience, all powered by the phone! Motorola presents full HD resolution Firefox web browser running on top of Android, Citrix virtualization integration for running all other x86 apps that can be virtualized, they put Android in a Window so you can still run any Android apps in that Window when in Desktop mode! And this is the first generation of this type of product, so you are only witnessing the beginning of ARM Powered Pocketable Smart Mobile Devices to be able to power everything you would do on a Laptop powered by Intel/Microsoft. Expect even faster dual-core processors to run this type of product soon with unlimited amounts of tabs with lots of pictures/embedded videos and do it all fully smoothly.
Here is my 25 minute long video featuring the part of the keynote unveiling of the product as well as 16 minute interview with Seang Chau, product manager on Motorola Atrix 4G, Vice President and Chief Software Engineer at Motorola Mobility Inc:
To tell you the truth, this award does not mean Motorola Atrix 4G is perfect yet. I noticed some lagging on scrolling when browsing through 3 or 4 tabs with websites loaded such as ARMdevices.net Engadget.com and Gizmodo.com and having Flash videos play in one of the tabs and maybe other Flash instances such as some advertisement running in some other tab. Maybe the slow downs can be removed if Flash can be managed to only use processing and memory bandwidth on-demand or seamlessly when in the front tab. This type of slow down may be caused by any number of factors. Maybe the Software isn’t fully ready yet and can still be optimized. Maybe the Chrome browser on ARM would be faster than Mozilla Firefox. Maybe the Nvidia Tegra2 AP20H processor doesn’t yet have enough fast access memory bandwidth, not fast enough I/O speeds to let the Firefox tabs load their contents instantly enough when switching tabs. Although, I haven’t tested it yet, I wonder if the Tegra2 AP20H is not yet fast enough for full 1080p@60fps high bitrate high profile video playback of all video formats. I tried to playback the 9mbitps .MP4 h264 that my Sanyo HD1000 camcorder makes as well as the 5-24mbitps .MTS h264 that a Panasonic SH900 camcorder makes, those files are not yet recognized or launchable by the file browser. Too bad I didn’t have some standard 720p and 1080p MKV movies on my mass storage device that I tested.
Anyways, multi-tab browsing and HD video isn’t smooth on a regular Intel Atom netbook either, 480p YouTube seems also to be the maximum that can smoothly be played back using even a recent dual-core Intel Atom N550 Acer D255E netbook, and over 100 million consumers seem to be more or less satisfied with that or even slower experience. The key here is to see if the ARM Cortex-A9 platforms in Laptop/Desktop situations can match performance of Intel Atom. At least Motorola is hereby showing that they are investing heavily into this convergence, they are now definitely officially focused on speeding up ARM Powered performances to a level where consumers and enterprise can be satisfied to replace their Wintel machines. This is the big type of high-end Android product that AT&T wants to promote now that their iPhone exclusivity is finished. Motorola may be trying to say that they are not entering the Laptop and Desktop market, when in fact they are and they are pulling the whole smartphone industry in there with them.
Joyplus International Enterprise Ltd shows a 5″ resistive Android tablet powered by ARM11 800Mhz 76JZFS Core with removable 2300mAh battery, 7″ Marvell PXA168 800Mhz design with Ethernet connection and a 7″ capacitive Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 Hummingbird powered with 1080p HDMI output.
