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Android soared in Gartner's 3Q smartphone report to a 25.5 percent, second-place-worldwide share, up from 17.2 percent last quarter. Meanwhile, Android phones came out tops in Consumer Reports' latest quality rankings, and also held their own with the iPhone and BlackBerry phones in a SquareTrade study on smartphone reliability.
Xi3 Corporation announced a compact PC it claims will be readily upgradeable, thanks to the use of one board containing the processor and memory, along with two separate I/O boards. The Xi3 Modular Computer offers a choice of AMD processors, SSD (solid state disk) storage, 1080p video output, two eSATA ports, and an “Xm3dia” expansion port, the company says.
Freescale Semiconductor announced two new single-core members of its PowerPC-based QorIQ family of system-on-chips (SoCs). The QorIQ P1010 and less-feature-rich P1014 clock to 800MHz and can run on as little as 1.1 Watts, and the P1010 model is the first QorIQ SoC to integrate multiple FlexCAN controllers for industrial automation, says the company.
[Updated: Nov. 12] — ISEE began shipping a computer-on-module (COM) that offers extended-temperature support and a choice of TI Cortex-A8 SoCs: the OMAP35xx or the newer 1GHz DM37xx. The Linux-ready, 2.68 x 0.71-inch IGEP Module features built-in 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0, as well as an onboard microSD slot and USB On-The-Go port that enable the module to act as a standalone computer.
Samsung's seven-inch, Android 2.2 Galaxy Tab tablet is now available on T-Mobile for $399 with a two-year plan or $599 without, says the carrier. Meanwhile, a 10.1-inch Samsung tablet has been spotted at a Chinese trade show.
Red Hat announced a major new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 release, adding cloud support, performance improvements, and energy savings. Meanwhile, Red Hat also released a RHEL 5.6 upgrade to its 5x platform, adding support for BIND 9.7, improved DNSsec, and PHP 5.3.
MSC Vertriebs announced a Qseven module sporting three of Intel's recently announced Atom E6xx processors, plus up to 2GB of soldered-on DDR2 memory and an optional bootable, 4GB or 8GB SSD (solid state disk). The MSC Q7-TCTC-FD features operating ranges as wide as -40 to 185 deg. F, seven USB 2.0 ports, three PCI Express x1 lanes, CAN bus, plus LVDS and SDVO video outputs.
Startup Greenliant Systems has announced a range of SSDs (solid state disks) for the embedded market. Based on the company's own SATA controllers, the NANDrive GLS85LS comes in 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64GB of storage, according to the company.
ARM announced a new Mali graphics processing unit (GPU) and related interconnect IP, designed to work with its recently announced 2.5GHz Cortex-A15 MPCore processor design. The Mali-T604 delivers up to five times the performance of current Mali GPUs, and the CoreLink 400 interconnect offers high-speed cache sharing between the Cortex-A15 and the Mali-T604, says the company.
Not-for-profit engineering firm Linaro has released a 10.11 version of its open source Linux code and tools for ARM Cortex processors. Meanwhile, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments are showcasing multiple Linux distros — including MeeGo and Ubuntu, running on Cortex-A9 SoCs — using Linaro-related code or tools.
AMD used an annual event for analysts to demonstrate its combination of CPU and GPU (graphics processing unit) technologies on a single die, touting availability to OEMs for early 2011. Observers were impressed, but professed themselves skeptical about the company's ability to gain market share from Intel.
Google's Android Market is having major download and installation problems, leading to a growing protest from users. Meanwhile, Verizon announced tomorrow's release of Motorola's Citrus Android phone for $50, and Google released a beta version of its “YouTube Remote” Android app for the YouTube Leanback push-content service available on Google TV.
Congatec announced a COM Express module that offers ECC (error correction code) memory and a choice of Intel Celeron or Core i7 processors. The Conga-BE57 supports up to 8GB of RAM, provides two independent video channels, and delivers expansion including five PCI Express lanes, eight USB ports, and three SATA ports, the company says.
Texas Instruments (TI) announced a “TMS320C66x” family of digital signal processors (DSPs), including the TMS320C6678, which, with eight 1.25GHz cores, is claimed to be the industry's fastest. The Linux-ready C66x DSPs also include a dual-core C6672, a quad-core C6674, and a quad-core C6670 communications SoC version with extra networking coprocessors.
Marvell says it is now sampling a quad-core, ARM-based processor aimed at “enterprise class cloud computing.” The Armada XP runs at 1.6Hz, has a 2MB second-level cache, supports 64-bit DDR3 memory, includes four gigabit Ethernet ports and other interfaces, and uses fewer than ten Watts, according to the company.