Here’s one of the first Marvell Berlin (Armada 1000) based Android Set-top-boxes I have yet seen, firmware is still to be finalized but they can start shipping this hardware this month.
ShiZhu Technology shows Pixel Qi Tablets at Computex 2011
Check out how ShiZhu’s new Pixel Qi tablet series perform outdoors and indoors against other regular LCD based new Android tablets such as the HTC Flyer (with an anti-glare coating) and the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, you can see how the Pixel Qi screen is much more readable outdoors. This tablet is based on the Samsung Hummingbird Cortex-A8 processor. They are releasing also a 7″ and they can provide them in several different designs.
Pixel Qi tablets can run on solar power
A quite small modern solar panel can produce 1W of power, enough to power both the Pixel Qi and the whole ARM Powered tablet motherboard behind it. Think for a second how amazing this is. They can put solar panels on the bezel and the Tablet could basically be fully solar powered, have a bigger solar panel on the back of the tablet if you want to just charge it and not use it. This compact 1W Solar panel is $3. OLPC could be using this for the upcoming OLPC XO-1.75 Laptop and the XO-3 tablet.
ZTE Light Tablet with Pixel Qi screen
While this is not yet with the anti-glare anti-reflective coating and the reflective mode for touch is not yet implemented in this ZTE sample, this is how the ZTE Light with Pixel Qi might look like, the fully optimized version should be shipping in the third quarter of this year.
UDM.tw Q101 compact TI DM3730 Cortex-A8 module PCB design
UDM provides a full Texas Instruments ARM Cortex-A8 module to integrate in tablets or any other device.
Cupp Computing turns any Laptop into an ARM Laptop
Cupp Computing is now launching as a product their module to replace the hard drive in any Laptop, add an SSD, up to 2 MicroSD cards (one for the ARM Powered OS of your choice), and with a keyboard shortcut you instantly go from the ARM Powered OS to the x86 OS, and back while the x86 goes to sleep. The ARM Powered Laptop runs up to 40 hours on a battery, if you have just 10 minutes left of battery, switch to ARM mode and you’ve still got 1 hour of use to finish your work. In ARM Mode it can run Android, Ubuntu, Chrome OS and other. They are currently using OMAP3, they can use OMAP4 also soon for more ARM Performance. They also plan to work with motherboard manufacturers to add the whole ARM Powered laptop module right onto all motherboards so ARM Powered laptop mode becomes a default option in all laptops.
Related articles
- CUPP Computing transforms all Laptops to ARM Powered laptops (armdevices.net)
- CUPP PunkThis hands-on (video) (engadget.com)
- CUPP PunkThis packs full ARM PC into your notebook’s HDD bay (slashgear.com)
- PunkThis: An Android and ARM PC Inside Your SATA Bay (pcworld.com)
- PunkThis: an ARM computer for your notebook’s SATA bay (geek.com)
Nlighten huge multi-touch screens
Check out this collection of pretty large optical based multi-touch screens shown by Nlighten at Computex.
ARM Powered Android used to lower the cost and power of Point-of-sale systems
POSLab is showing their ARM Powered TI Cortex-A8 implementation of Android on a Point-of-sale (POS) system.
Malata shows first 7″ Tegra2 tablet
This will run Honeycomb when it’s released after around September. Malata manufactures their tablets for several brands, including ViewSonic and others.
FirstView shows Rockchip RK2918 capacitive tablet design
FirstView now also makes a nice looking capacitive RK2918 based tablet:
ZiiLabs ZMS-20 ARM Cortex-A9 1.5Ghz runs Honeycomb nicely
ZiiLabs launches their ARM Cortex-A9 1.6Ghz processor, demonstrated here in their Jaguar 7″ and 10.1″ capacitive tablet reference platforms running Honeycomb smoothly. Here’s an interview with Tim Lewis director marketing and partner relations at ZiiLabs about their Stemcell’s differentiation, performance, value. Is this only the third SoC to publicly (I still had to go find their demos in their private meeting room) demonstrate Honeycomb support yet after the Tegra2 tablets and the Qualcomm Dual-core Asus Memo?
Related articles
- ZiiLabs unveils Jaguar family of Honeycomb tablets for OEMs to devour (engadget.com)
- ZiiLabs rolls Android 3.0-based Jaguar reference tablets (electronista.com)
ARM keynote at Computex 2011
Ian Drew is the Executive VP of Marketing at ARM, here is my recording of most of his keynote at Computex 2011 in Taipei today. Sorry about the missing first 3 minutes, sorry for the slight shaking in the first few minutes (as I was trying to get to a better chair) and sorry that I don’t have direct sound recording from the microphone. I couldn’t see if Computex organizers were actually recording these speeches on official video to publish on their website, if you find another better recording of this keynote please post the video link in the comments.
e-ink touch screen technologies shown by Freescale at Computex 2011
Tyco Electronics introduces Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) touch screen technology in a reference e-ink touch screen based on Android on the Freescale i.MX508 platform.
Freescale Tablet strategy at Computex 2011
Freescale is still showing just the i.MX51 and i.MX53 platforms at Computex, but this time, they emphasize the aspect of customizing tablets for niche uses, kind of providing for the long tail of the tablet market. Especially in the Chinese market, which could amount to 7 million tablets this year alone, Freescale has a pretty significant market share.
Qualcomm’s Dual-core is asynchronous, demonstrated at Computex 2011
Qualcomm now has their dual-core super fast ARM processor in several products shown at this trade show, they demonstrate how they suggest that thekir asynchronous implementation is superior to competing Dual-core implementations, anyone got some benchmarks?
Nufront Cortex-A9 Tablet and Desktop reference designs at Computex 2011
They say that they can make a 2Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core now, but for now they are demonstrating it at lower clock speeds on an Android tablet, an Ubuntu laptop and an all-in-one Ubuntu 11.4 desktop example.
Wyse T50 Thin Client on Marvell Armada 510 presented by Canonical Ubuntu
Wyse T50 is an Ubuntu Core powered thin client device, it is powered by Marvell Armada 510 (1Ghz). It features DVI, Ethernet, 4 usb host ports and an sd-card slot.
A further update on Linaro status at Computex 2011
At Computex 2011, Linaro gave an update on their status, with some new technical demos showing graphics and other hardware acceleration that thy are working on.
Related articles
- Linaro to establish leadership in embedded software accross all ARM chips (armdevices.net)
- Linaro and Samsung roll out Exynos 4210-based Origen development board for $199 (engadget.com)
- Linaro Non-Profit is Rapidly Hitting Embedded Linux Milestones (ostatic.com)
- Linaro: Now a Year Old, the Linux Effort Begins to Deliver (pcworld.com)
- ARM President Tudor Brown Computex 2011 keynote (armdevices.net)
- Linaro supports Linux and Android on new Cortex-A9 open platform board (linuxfordevices.com)
- Samsung courts developers with low-cost Origen Exynos dev board (thinq.co.uk)
7″ Honeycomb Viewsonic 7x shown at Computex 2011
ViewSonic is showing their new Tegra2 based 7″ capacitive Android Honeycomb tablet, with a layer of their own vertical-only custom UI on top. The price is going to be $449 for the WiFi version and $529 for the 3G version when it gets released.
$60 Cortex-A9 Android Set-top-box
The price is a bulk price, at least 300 pieces need to be ordered, does not include the chosen remote controller that can go from a couple dollars to twenty dollars depending on what type of remote control is used. Also there are different memory and other components that can be configured. Most importantly is the idea to communicate that an ARM Cortex-A9 powered set-top-box could potentially run Google TV basic for ARM as soon as that one is released. It depends if Google decides to support their Google TV implementation on the AmLogic 800Mhz single core implementation, it depends if Google is interested at all in supporting HDMI-out only until their open source Ice Cream Sandwich and allow everyone to make whichever Google TV on ARM implementations they want anyways.