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Archive for May, 2010

Freescale Cortex-A8 SoC advances to 1080p video

May 31, 2010

[Updated: June 1] — Freescale announced an heir to its i.MX51 family of ARM Cortex-A8 SoCs that boosts video decode performance to 1080p HD. The i.MX535 processor offers 720p video encode, up to 2GB of external memory, and improved peripheral support including new DDR3, SATA, and LVDS, and is compatible with Android, Linux, Windows Embedded CE, and Chromium.

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Intel tips new silicon for tablets

May 28, 2010

Intel says it will launch dedicated silicon for tablet PCs at next week's Computex show in Taiwan. The Atom-based chipset — likely bearing the “Moorestown-W” moniker — will run a tablet-specific version of Windows 7 that supports power-saving “SmartIdle” technology, according to various reports.

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ARM9-based $100 Android tablets to light up Computex

May 28, 2010

Next week at Computex, Via Technologies' WonderMedia Technologies subsidiary will demonstrate low-cost Android-based tablets based on the ARM9-based, 600MHz WonderMedia Prizm processor and related “SmartTouch” reference designs. The tablets will be manufactured by a variety of Chinese manufacturers, and sold for as low as $100 in the U.S. later this year, says Bloomberg.

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Ruggedized OpenVPX SBC runs Linux

May 28, 2010

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) announced a military-focused 3U OpenVPX-compliant VPX-REDI SBC equipped with Freescale's PowerPC-based, eight-core 1.5GHz QorIQ P4080 system-on-chip. The XPedite5470 offers PCI Express or Serial RapidIO expansion, SERDES or standard gigabit Ethernet ports, plus MIL-STD 810F Level 1-5 ruggedization and temperature resistance, says the company.

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GPS-equipped ARM SoC gets more integrated

May 28, 2010

CSR says it's now shipping a Linux-compatible SoC (system on chip) incorporating an ARM11-based application processor and a 64-channel GPS engine. The SiRFatlasV offers 500 or 664MHz clock speeds, supports VGA-resolution video, supports DDR2-400 RAM, and includes an on-chip audio DAC and power management unit (PMU), the company says.

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New OLPC tablet built on Marvell reference design

May 27, 2010

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and Marvell have agreed to develop next-generation OLPC XO-3 tablets based on the Marvell Moby reference design and the Armada 610 SoC. Aimed at the worldwide educational market, the Moby-based XO devices will support 1080p video encode and decode, 3D graphics, Flash 10-enabled web access, and teleconferencing, and consume only a single Watt, say the partners.

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Acer unveils Android smartphone and teases with a tablet

May 27, 2010

Acer announced an Android 2.1 smartphone called the Stream, offering a 1GHz Snapdragon, a 3.7-inch AMOLED WVGA display, and a five-megapixel camera. At the device's Chinese launch, the company also showed off a LumiRead e-reader with a 6-inch grayscale display, WiFi, 3G, and an ISBN scanner, and provided a brief glimpse of a seven-inch Android tablet.

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BeagleBoard to gain 1GHz SoC, Ethernet

May 27, 2010

BeagleBoard.org has tipped a new version of its open-platform development board for hobbyists, sporting a faster 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 SoC and twice the memory. The BeagleBoard-xM runs an upcoming Texas Instruments “DM3730” processor with 512MB of low-power DDR RAM, and a new on-board, four-port USB hub with 10/100 Ethernet, all in a 3.25 × 3.25-inch footprint.

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MeeGo for Netbooks released — and it’s fast

May 26, 2010

The Intel- and Nokia-backed MeeGo project released version 1.0 of an open source operating system optimized for Intel Atom-based netbooks. MeeGo v1.0 for Netbooks — which we found to be speedy — comprises Google's Chrome browser, Nokia's Qt 4.6, plus a variety of other tools, and will be followed next month by a handset version, says the project.

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Atom-powered PC/104 module supports dual displays

May 26, 2010

Aaeon announced a PC/104 CPU module equipped with the Intel Atom N450 processor. The PFM-LNP supports simultaneous dual-view displays, has an 18-bit single channel LVDS interface, provides PCI/104 and Mini-PCIe expansion, and offers gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, and serial connectivity, says the company.

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Intel scraps discrete GPU plans

May 26, 2010

Intel has, “at least in the short term,” canceled its plans to bring a discrete GPU (graphics processing unit) to market. The move follows the company's having missed “key product milestones” for a planned product codenamed Larrabee, spokesperson Bill Kircos wrote in a blog entry yesterday.

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Chrome 5 release includes first stable Linux version

May 26, 2010

Google released version 5.0 of its Chrome web browser — including the first stable builds for Linux and Mac platforms — promising faster performance plus new multi-machine sync and HTML5 utilities. Meanwhile, tech pundit Om Malik suggests that Google's Linux- and Chrome-based Chrome OS should step aside to let the fast-growing Android evolve.

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Multicore simulation engine gains GUI analysis tools

May 26, 2010

Wind River announced a new version of its Linux-ready, multicore oriented Simics virtualization and simulation software for embedded hardware development. Wind River Simics 4.4 adds a GUI-enabled “Analyzer” application for evaluating a virtual representation of the target hardware, as well as an extension builder that exposes Simics APIs for customization and plugin development, says the company.

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Dell’s Android mini-tablet unveiled

May 25, 2010

Dell says its Streak mini-tablet — featuring a five-inch touchscreen, voice telephony, the Android operating system, and a Snapdragon processor — will begin shipping next month. Meanwhile, Opera Software announced an Android-ready, “touch-optimized” tablet version of its Opera Mobile 10 browser.

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Flash on Android 2.2: Slow loading, but smooth running

May 25, 2010

eWEEK evaluated a Nexus One running Android 2.2 and a beta Flash Player 10.1, and found Flash to be slow loading, but surprisingly smooth and power efficient. Meanwhile, HTC vows that most of its Android phones will move to version 2.2 later this year, and a 4Q release for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) has been tipped.

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