Variscite announces the first System on Module based on TI’s OMAP4460 smart multicore processor with dual ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCores™ running at up to 1.5GHz each – now the fastest on the market.
Variscite is really speeding things up with the new future-proof and highly integrated VAR-SOM-OM44, responding to the increasing demand for faster processing and cutting-edge multimedia performance. Leveraging Variscite’s known design expertise for proprietary System-on-Chips from Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), this offering is based on TI’s smart multicore OMAP4460 (OMAP 4) mobile processor. The VAR-SOM-OM44 is ideal for a wide range of target markets requiring rich multimedia functionality, advanced graphics and video capabilities, together with high-processing power.
They have some kind of wireless USB dongle on the tablet, that can beam the Android screen and UI to a wireless USB touch monitor. The frame rate is not yet optimized but this seems to work.
You clip a thing on the iPad connector and with that special Pen from Yifang, you can scrible and write text memos in the special iPad app that they provide.
Transfer bitrates are now going upwards 520MB/s read speed and 400MB/s write speed. They plan to release those around October, in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities, going upwards 800€ for the 512GB SSD storage.
This means that with one cable, no adapters needed, people can charge and output HDMI using any MHL compatible device on this new Toshiba HDTV. MHL now has 60 licensees, possibly everyone in the industry is going to be using this solution to combine all of charging, HDMI output, USB slave and perhaps more all into one Micro-USB connector.
We’ve seen the EyeFi do something like this before, this is Toshiba’s new entry into this market of enabling any SDHC device, for example any photo and video camera to transfer wirelessly and stream content out to any other WiFi device around it.
Bloggers are talking about using White Spaces for connecting rural areas to broadband, citing specs such as “transmissions speeds topping out at 22 Mbps per channel, with a range of up to 100 kilometers”. That is great and all, bravo. But what I have been suggesting for years, please write comments if you know more or better, is that White Spaces can also be used in all cities to rapidly replace the need for cell phone carriers completely! Consider this scenario:
1. Next month, someone, perhaps Google or Martin Varsavsky‘s fon release a cheap low voltage short antennae $20 White Spaces router, one that everyone is encouraged to connect as any other WiFi router at home.
2. Clever online White Spaces anti-interference and bandwidth-management maps are used to automatically set the voltage for each White Spaces WiFi on stereoids hotspot, to not create any interference in the city and also cover as much of the city area as possible.
3. All users connect using FON.com method, all White Spaces hotspots are broadcasting open hotspots but without providing actual internet access until each user gets reliably authenticated, for example using username/password method. In devices you can save your username/password so you always automatically connect.
4. Bandwidth is thus throttled cleverly as there is more or less demand in any given area. And owners of each hotspot can of course decide to prioritize the bandwidth for their own consumption and only give out whichever unused bandwidth on this shared White Spaces sharing network. Basically, as owner of a White Spaces hotspot, you can never even know that your home bandwidth is being used by people walking by in the streets outside your appartment, as long as you need bandwidth yourself in your home your own usage is always fully prioritized.
5. Because of net neutrality, internet service providers can not legally try to block or throttle this type of usage. One can do whatever one wants to do with ones home bandwidth. This is nothing else than wanting to roam the world for free by sharing ones own home bandwidth with the neighborhood.
6. The higher the demand for bandwidth, the smaller each White Spaces hotspot is dynamically made, by lowering the voltage of each hotspot to lower its coverage diameter.
7. With about 1000 such White Spaces hotspots, at a cost of about $20 each (if those cost not much more than WiFi routers to mass manufacture), it means that for about $20 thousand, users can totally cover any city with free wireless broadband for all. And as more and more bandwidth is required, simply more hotspots are added and purchased by the users themselves.
8. Micro-payments for better bandwidth prioritization can also be added somehow. If Fiber providers decide to try to improve bandwidth in this city-wide White Spaces network, those should be able to easily sell such premium bandwidth by the Gygabyte. So while some basic bandwidth for VOIP and other such basic use may mostly be free for all users, someone who may not be sharing bandwidth at home, may have to pay something like $0.10/GB for some prioritized bandwidth. The micro-payments can also work automatically with one payment standard for the world, one simple “Pay $__ for __GB bandwidth in region __ OK/No” standard for the world.
So what do you networking experts say, are we just about to enter a new world where cell phone carriers become unnecessary, but where everyone shares White Spaces from their home using types of Fem2Cell and simple White Spaces routers and even White Spaces mesh networking?
Larry Page, Google CEO, talking about White Spaces in September 2008:
Here’s what Raspberry Pi has posted on their blog:
Over the past three months, we’ve been working hard to finalize the specs for the Raspberry Pi device, and to produce schematics and a PCB layout. Last Tuesday, we sent an alpha release of the board for manufacture. From an electrical perspective, this board is intended to be identical to the final device; the resulting units will be used to validate the schematic design, and will serve as our interim software development platform.
The Raspberry Pi is configured with an unknown ARM Processor, 128MB or 256MB RAM, SMSC LAN9512 USB 2.0 hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller.
Freescale launches the new altimeter MPL3115A2. This device uses a piezoresistive bridge as its sensor element. It also includes a dedicated ASIC which performs ADC conversions, oversampling, trim compensation, data path calculations and I2C port control. What this means is that your next smartphone can detect on which floor you are in a building, it can detect the altitude of your smartphone in theory to as small a distance as 3cm (they guarantee 30cm because of potential interference and uncertainties). IT can also do barometric weather forecast and measure the ambient temperature. When you combine this new sensor with all the other sensors in a device such as accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer you can get a complete inertial navigation system which helps you to have a more accurate positioning for indoor and outdoor navigation.
Connect a new blood glucose meter, blood pressure monitor, weight scale, digital thermometer, spirometers and other devices to sensors in your bed, on your arm and to your smartphone, tablets etc to monitor your health and help improve lifestyles and prevent disease. Freescale presents a whole range of new technologies to lower the cost of those healthcare devices so everyone can afford to have them at home and want to use them regularly as the data being wirelessly transfered and visualized online makes it easier and very useful for everyone to live a healthy lifestyle, eat good food, sleep well and do enough exercise.
The Kinnetis K50 has integrated operational amplifiers and transimpedance amplifiers, allows to reduce the PCB size and thus cost of healthcare sensor products. Expect to see many Healthcare oriented products arrive on the market using this Cortex-M4 processor. You can find more information at http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=K50
They have Android running on the Freescale i.MX53, but it’s running virtualized using a separation micro-kernel they call COQOS offering the real-time features that are required in a car running the industry-standard AUTOSAR software also at the same time, thus this solution is fully secure. You can find more information at http://www.opensynergy.com/en/Products/COQOS
This new type of wheel includes two motors controlled by Freescale procecssors, one to accelerate the car and to have regenerative breaking, and the second is the manage the suspension and the control of the chassis. This could be transformational for cars, no more engine could be needed under the hood, no more traditional suspension system, and no more gearbox or transmission as all the essential components have been integrated into the wheel itself. The Active Wheel System could outperform Ferrari and Porsche in a straight line when it comes to braking. While a typical high performance supercar takes about six seconds to come to a complete halt from 100km/h, the Michelin concept does it in a mere 2.8 seconds at up to 1G. Find more information: motorauthority.com and gizmag.com
This is the 77Ghz chipset demonstrating Freescale’s for Automotive Radar Millimeter-Wave Technology, this is a demo of a radar for cars to see through the dark, through rain, through any weather. Find more information at http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=AUTRMWT
Freescale Xtrinsic radar chipsets are the most advanced SiGe technology on the market, consisting of a transmitter and a multi-channel receiver with an integrated phase-locked loop (PLL). Freescale’s 77 GHz technology allows a device to switch between long- and short-range functionality simply by issuing a serial peripheral interface (SPI) command. This enables the same radar module to be used for multiple safety systems, such as adaptive cruise control, headway alert, collision warning and mitigation. Long-range radar, used for adaptive cruise control and lane departure warnings, has long and narrow coverage directly in front and back of the car. Short-range radar, ideal for blind spot detection, pre-crash and stop-and-go applications, monitors the car’s immediate surroundings with a wide spatial view that covers shorter distances.
This is a robot training kit for $199, you get all the parts needed to start playing around programming with Freescale’s microcontrollers, sensors and more. At the Freescale Technology Forum, Freescale is organizing the Make It challenge, where attendees have 36 hours to use one of these and build the coolest robot to win prizes. You can find more information at http://freescale.com/mechbot and http://buildsmartrobots.com
Freescale had a press conference to talk about all the microcontroller related releases they had at FTF. Microcontrollers represents about 40% overall of Freescale’s revenue, in this video I try to ask Jeff Bock, Freescale’s director of marketing industrial microcontrollers, what those Microcontrollers are used for, how Freescale’s customers chooses one architechture over another and where they are going.
Freescale works with Universities around the world to help provide tools to educate students on programming for Freescale processors. At the Freescale Technology Forum, Freescale organizes a Cup where some of the worlds best student teams show off their auto driving cars implemented with all of Freescale’s microprocessors and sensor technologies.
