Marvell has an Architectural ARM licence, like Qualcomm and Microsoft. What that means is that they can take the ARM Instruction Set Architecture but customize things around that and implement things as they want to differentiate.
SemiAccurate’s moles say that Marvell is cooking up an A9/A15 hybrid part, philosophically closer to the A9 on the core, but with a very A15-like memory controller. This likely means a 3-pipe design rather than a 4-pipe, but with >32-bit memory access and virtualization instructions. The new chip should implement the full A15 ISA, so there should be no software compatibility issues, but has less raw grunt than a full A15. At least on paper.
SemiAccurate speculates that this is either to lower the cost at near Cortex-A15 performance, or to configure things to try and provide the highest ARM chip performance on the market, targeting Laptops and Servers even more so than others do.
multiple sources in the know say that the key players in the ARM game are all quite nervous about Marvell’s offering, more so than even Krait. Specifics are few, but interest is very high among CPU watchers and system builders. If this chip pans out like many are saying, it could be one of the, if not the fastest ‘next gen’ ARM core. Marvell is not going to be the ‘quiet type’ for much longer, stay tuned.
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.
Jeff Hoogland posted this project on kickstarter.com for developing an alternative embedded Linux OS for ARM Powered tablets:
We want to provide an elegant, fully open Linux based operating system that is a viable alternative to Android and Meego for mobile touch screen devices. Competition stimulates market growth and produces better products over all for consumers. An open development model means no surprises or lock downs that will hurt end users. It also means developers can more easily get involved and contribute to what we are creating.
We are starting with Debian as our base and building our interface on top of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFLs). It will be optimized for touch screen devices, but the interface will still be practical for devices controlled by a keyboard and mouse. We have an ever growing team that is dedicated to producing a quality product.
x86 is becoming more and more problematic for Laptop makers as the retail prices are lowered, component and manufacturing costs remain high, profit margins are lowered and the overall Laptop market growth is being slowed by consumers using gradually more and more of their consumer electronics budgets on ARM Powered Tablets and Smartphones instead of x86.
Acer’s previous CEO got fired about 3 months ago as their board of directors were angry at them not investing enough of their potential into releasing more ARM Powered devices, those that can maximize profit margins and enable real growth.
The big question for this ARM Powered Acer Laptop is to know if this will run the Tegra2, does that provide enough memory bandwidth for a good multi-tab web browsing experience, if they somehow have been able to provide a version of the 1Ghz Tegra2 with more memory bandwidth for Laptop use, or if performance is simply going to be similar to the awesome ARM Powered Toshiba AC100 released last year.
The other big question is do they run Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Android Honeycomb or all of the above? Wouldn’t it be awesome if Acer came forward and said something like “Hey, we will support more than 1 OS, even Windows 8 when it comes out, simply choose your OS in a multi-boot menu and we will provide updates for each OS over the Internet or they can be updated through the SD card”. I think multi-boot multi-OS support is the key to enable a successful ARM Powered Laptop product for convincing the early adopters now while the whole Linaro software is being optimized and worked on, while memory bandwidth on ARM Powered laptops may or may not provide a fully smooth multi-tab full javascripts and Flash web browsing experience, and while so many nice OS are competing with each other to provide the best most hardware accelerated web browsing experience. I would for example very much like Chrome OS on this, but the look of Android Honeycomb on a Laptop sure is nice and Ubuntu on ARM is becoming awesome!
The news arrives by way of company chairman and CEO J.T. Wang as he addressed concerns about the company dropping from the second world’s largest PC manufacturer to the fourth largest during the second quarter of 2011. He said that to regain its lost market share, the company plans to adopt a new strategy to create “more value instead of pursuing volume growth.”
This is Awesome! ARM Powered Laptops are CHEAPER, use much lower power, thinner, lighter, would be perfect in a $199 ARM Powered Acer Chromebook, this is a perfect way for Acer to introduce something new to dominate a market.
Finally, instead of simply pushing out x86 powered reference design laptops based on Intel and AMD x86 chips, now Acer is investing to differentiate, improve, optimize, customize and design awesomeness through ARM Powered laptops that run embedded software.
Acer is not the only one!
Last month, Digitimes reported that Several vendors plan to offer ARM-architecture notebooks.
Several vendors, including Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Acer and Asustek Computer, plan to develop ARM architecture notebooks, with products possibly to be launched as early as the end of 2011, according to industry sources.
Samsung may release Exynos 4210 Powered Chromebooks! Toshiba is probably doing an AC200! Asus is also rumored to be preparing a 13″ ARM Powered Android Laptop similar to its Asus Transformer!
Look forward to A LOT of FUN TIMES ahead in the ARM Powered Laptop market. Which ARM Processor with how much memory bandwidth and which software OS would you like to run on your next ARM Powered laptop?
I got lucky enough to be able to play around with the new Archos G9 tablets for a few minutes (as I am the admin on http://forum.archosfans.com), they are awesome. Here are some of the features that I think makes this probably one of the best tablets in the world when it comes out in September:
– 50% faster than iPad2/Xoom/Transformer/Tab101/etc, 1.5Ghz Dual-core OMAP4460 ARM Cortex-A9 vs 1Ghz for the others (Quad-cores such as Nvidia Tegra3 are rumored to come at 1.2Ghz so this dual-core may be 25% faster for some things that are not too parallel and perhaps about 20% slower on other more parallel processed things)
– Optional unlocked $49 3G Dongle slides in the back
– Built-in kick-stand
– HDMI-out (1080p All Codecs High Profile High Bitrates) with most powerful Video/Audio/Photo apps on any device with automatic meta-data and Upnp/Samba streaming support
– 2x USB Host (one is dedicated for 3G Dongle)
– Honeycomb 3.2 with official Google Marketplace pre-installed
– Most importantly, starts at $279 for 8″, $349 for 10.1″, there will be all kinds of options though, 16GB Flash or 250GB hard drive (the 250GB version is likely around $100 more than the 16GB flash version, to be confirmed) don’t worry about hard drive speed/failures, all the Android OS and apps are on 4GB Flash based ROM cache so the OS feels 100% as fast as on a Flash based tablet, the HDD only spins up when loading big video files into memory while you probably are not likely to be running around with it anyway.
This is my first video showing how those tablets are. Look forward to many more videos that I will post about the Archos G9 if I can get some review samples at one point in the next few weeks until and after they are released in September worldwide.
I would have liked to see them do 5″ and 7″ G9 tablets as well to be more pocketable (pants 5″ or jacket 7″ pockets), but for now, Archos has nothing to announce regarding more sizes for the G9 series, it’s open to speculation, my speculation is that it may be the reason for them to have to wait for Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich to come and support more screen sizes officially and also it may be a question of production capacity and limiting the amount of skews they release.
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.
Freescale is expanding their line of processors that are customized for e-reader type of applications with the i.MX502, i.MX503, i.MX507 and i.MX508 processors. Compared with i.MX51/53, i.MX50 is built to lack GPU for 3D acceleration (unnecessary on e-readers) but they can do 2D and have the option (i.MX503 and i.MX508) to hardware accelerate vector graphics through the OpenVG accelerator. This series is the first processor on the market to combine ARM Cortex-A8 with an EPD controller. Those are in different configurations to be used for e-ink (i.MX508 with OpenVG and i.MX507 without) or LCD e-readers (i.MX503 with OpenVG and i.MX502 without). Read the full press release here. Find more info at freescale.com
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.
Last year, AllGo presented the $35 tablet idea, which they are still working on. This year they are focusing their FTF presentation on their Android powered in-car interactivity features, with Nokia Terminal Mode and USB/MTP/iPod playback.
Microsoft is preparing Windows 8 on ARM, but until then, there are Windows CE solutions in use and in the works such as these solutions demonstrated in this video. What do you think about Microsoft’s positionning in this embedded software market? Paul Wright offers his opinions on Windows in the second half of this video.
This may be the best e-reader on the market today. If it does run Android, if Kobo decides to open up the access to those Android features and not lock it down to only be about buying ebooks on their ebook store. Right now it may not be running Android at all, at least Kobo is not taking advantage of the potential Android openness yet. Hopefully Kobo updates their firmware for it to run a fully open Android, they can monetize e-readers in other new ways not only by locking it for a e-book store.
