Here is the board for now, they are going to launch the new Genesi i.MX53 based Laptops and Desktops around July or August, providing more performance, using lower power, at lower cost. The current Genesi Efika MX Smartbook i.MX51 based laptop is selling for $199, the Genesi MX Smarttop i.MX51 Desktop is selling for $129, they plan for the next generation i.MX53 based Laptop (Smartbook) and Desktop (Smarttop) to be sold for even cheaper. They are also working to combine their ARM based Laptop with the Pixel Qi screen as soon as it’s mass produced.
This is an Interview with Rajeev Kumar, consumer product line manager for Freescale’s Multimedia Applications Division, demonstrating the first prototype reference design board running the first sample of Freescale’s new i.MX 6Quad processor platform. This is the industry’s first Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 SoC combined with a full 64bit memory bus. I try to ask Rajeev Kumar about the performance, the features, the design. They use triple-play graphics designed in partnership with Vivante. Look forward to more videos here on http://ARMdevices.net about the i.MX 6 processor.
They make algorithms for measuring pedestrian navigation, using the Freescale Fusion sensors, accelerometers, gyro, to measure every step and the distance of every step. The target device is a smartphone.
William Hohl is ARM’s Worldwide University Relations Manager, he talks about what ARM does for universities worldwide, for students to learn to work on ARM technologies, working on curriculum and tools suggestions and standardization.
Konstantinos Margaritis is a Senior Software Engineer at San Antonio based Genesi, he talks about how Genesi is pushing Linaro forward to recompile all the apps and everything around Linux to use hard float, to re-optimize floating point applications on ARM Powered Desktop/Laptop designs. Watch this video interview to find out how Genesi is doing these software optimizations on Debian for the i.MX51 and i.MX53 platforms in their ARM Powered Smartbook designs. How soon are ARM Powered laptops going to have enough performance optimizations in them to demonstrate that ARM is fast enough to power Desktop/Laptop designs so that every consumer can be satisfied with the performance?
Using Freescale’s Sensor Fusion solutions, the accelerometer and some algorithms can improve the magnetometer as so-called e-compass, an improved compass that knows in which direction you are heading, speed things up for augmented reality, and any application that requires the compass.
This is my first flight on the worlds most awesome biggest passenger airplane ever made. It’s awesome, smooth, big, confortable, smooth, there is space for 530 passengers on this one, it can be configured to have up to 800 something passengers, check it out.
You see, I was mostly right, Huawei unveiled a Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core 1.2Ghz Honeycomb 3.2 tablet. They say Honeycomb 3.2 is the new version of Honeycomb for 7″ tablets and that seems to be the version to use on Tablets powered by other processors than Tegra2. To be released for an unknown price in Q3, it’s 390 grams, no kickstand, which means it will be released at any point between July and September in certain markets.
If you have heard about any awesome stuff to be shown at the FTF, any cool companies that you think that I should interview, please post your tips here in the comments or send me your tips at charbax@gmail.com or on the Submit news page.
Jem Davies is ARM Fellow, VP of technology in the Media Processing Division of ARM, he speaks at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit conference. He talks about Power, Heterogeneous computing, Moore’s Law in the next decade, open standards for massive parallel GPU computing and more.
What do you think about ARM speaking at the AMD conference? First step before AMD announcing that they’ll make an ARM processor? Why wouldn’t AMD also make an ARM Processor? Post your opinions about this keynote in the comments. Jem Davies posted this blog post on blogs.arm.com a few days ago in preparation for his keynote at the AMD conference.
Check out this awesome video interview with ARM President Tudor Brown conducted by Rob Symes of Campbell Black, hear Tudor Brown talk about how ARM was founded 20 years ago, a sometimes hilarious interview about ARM’s Cambridge British/European technology company attitude:
We assumed it wouldn’t work. That was the nature of our British Cambridge attitude. Here we go again, this would never work. But never mind, it’s fun, let’s make a go of it. And that was kind of the attitude that had been bred into us at Acorn. Many of us had been working at Acorn for many years, we created some great technology, but commercialy it had been a flop. And indeed the first products that were based on ARM, when ARM set out as a separate company, were all flops commercialy. It was a set of sales flops, I can list them:
– the Acorn computers which were really not very successful,
– the Apple Newton which was the first PDA which was the whole raison d’etre for the company that was clearly a flop,
– the 3DO multiplayer first CD based games machine in the world, based on ARM, commercial flop,
– the Sega Dreamcast, games machine, flop
– and so it went on.. we were kind of used to that.
It was a very important point that we were running the company as a bunch of pessimists, very lean and mean, on the basis that we weren’t going to build the company up on the hope of some future growth, we were going to run the company on the basis that what we had today had to last.
Both of the new amazingly priced Nook Touch ($139) and Kobo Touch ($129) seem to use the new Freescale i.MX508 (I first filmed i.MX508 a year ago) to facilitate smooth touch interfaces using Infrared Touch technology (first used in the Sony PRS-650) but also to easily enable those to be the first Android powered e-ink e-readers! Basically i.MX508 and Android makes first real useful use of WiFi and Touch on e-ink e-readers! Using Android on e-ink is awesome to provide for great files support, web browser, easily add apps like news readers, rss readers, Chrome-To-Phone functionality (just beam any article or any text from your Chrome browser on your laptop to your e-ink e-reader in one click!), synchronizing of bookmarks, wireless beaming of web based ebooks, all in one click. Android on e-ink just increases the e-readers potential greatly. Using infrared touchscreen technology is a great way to provide the best possible readability, not adding any layers on top of the screen.
Look forward to much more fascinating devices to come with: i.MX508 + Android + infrared touch + WiFi/3G + e-ink = Low-cost e-ink e-readers!
Also see my video of the alternative Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) touch technology.
An interesting thing to follow though will be to see how open Android i.MX508 e-ink e-reader makers will be towards allowing for alternative e-book stores, and allowing for full open Android apps installation and full unrestricted access to the web browser. As it may be that part of the profit margins on these new low-cost e-ink e-readers may be subsidized by the hardware makers expecting to make later huge profits on selling e-books, like Amazon does with their Kindle e-book store, it will be fun to see if all the e-ink e-reader makers will seize the opportunity to be open with Android on e-ink and at the same time find new interesting ways to monetize those. I for example would prefer paying less than $10 per month for unlimited legal access to all e-books, all newspapers, all blogs, all websites, everything, perhaps even certain 3G bandwidth included, but will content owners and hardware makers be open minded enough to let that happen quickly?
When will Google officially announce open source Android optimizations for e-ink devices and with deep integration of Google Books, Google Reader, Google Fast Flip and more?
Here’s how I think those e-ink e-readers could be sold in the best way: $99, $10/month optional pre-paid plan gives 100mb 3G data (upgradable bandwidth for $1/100mb or less) and full unlimited access to all e-books, all e-newspapers, e-magazines, blogs through RSS/search and more. Full unrestricted web browsing on e-ink. And nice complete cloud syncing with your Smartphone, Tablet and Laptop. While e-ink e-reader market is doing great perhaps reaching 20 million units to be sold this year, if they price them right and open them fully, I think they’ll do even better.
The Panasonic UniPhier MN2WS0220 is claimed to be one of the fastest to use for HDTV and Set-top-box will begin sample shipments this month.
Panasonic’s new chip will open the way for a new generation of smart TVs that allow users to simultaneously enjoy two TV broadcasting channels, as well as Internet-based content and applications in high-resolution at the same time. In addition, the new chip is able to reduce power consumption of and the number of components used in smart TVs, which will help drive smart TVs to spread in the global market.
I would find it normal for Google to qualify this Panasonic UniPhier MN2WS0220 ARM Dual-core chip to be used to run the Google TV software, and I would find it normal for Panasonic to start using Google TV for their Smart TVs instead of that proprietary Viera SmartTV stuff. I think all future Panasonic HDTVs should include Google TV, to provide for the best software for WebTV, interactive features, I think it’s the best full integration of the web in the TV.
I am not sure how big ARM has been thus far on being inside all those HDTVs, but now it seems all the major HDTV makers have serious ARM Powered HDTV plans underway, LG is definitely using ARM for their next SmartTVs, Samsung has their ARM Powered Google TV plans, what is Sharp, Philips going to do? How soon until Sony’s HDTVs shift from Intel to ARM for Google TV? How soon until all the major HDTV makers agree that Google TV is the software that they should all use?
