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The Linux Foundation announced an event intended to increase “systems level” collaboration among Android and Linux developers — and perhaps patch up an ongoing rift with Google over kernel contributions. The Android Builders Summit, scheduled for April 13-14 in San Francisco, is now open for presentation submissions, the organization says.
Wind River and McAfee — the first already an Intel subsidiary, the second soon to be — say they will jointly develop security solutions for mobile and other embedded devices. The strategic agreement will initially focus on software related to Wind River Linux, say the two companies.
Seeking to undercut Apple's App Store subscription service, Google unveiled a payment service to let publishers set their own prices and terms for digital content they serve on tablets, smartphones, and websites. With “Google One Pass,” publishers will keep 90 percent of sales, vs. 70 percent from Apple's service, giving Android a potential advantage over iOS in the digital publishing contest.
Hoping to fend off Oracle's lawsuit claiming Android patent infringement for certain Java patents, Google has asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to reexamine four of them. Meanwhile, an open source expert suggests that because Google is a relative weakling in the patent game, lacking few patents of its own, it will be tough to settle with Oracle.
After some heady competition from its human rivals in the second exhibition round of Jeopardy, supercomputer “Watson” handily won round three, as well as the competition. Now the SUSE Linux-powered Watson is heading to medical school to prep for a role as a diagnostic assistant, while IBM readies a more context-sensitive successor dubbed “Racr”.
Axiomtek is readying an IP4X-rated, dust-proof digital signage player based on a dual-core, 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 processor. The DSB-300 offers 4GB of DDR3 memory, dual PCIe slots with wireless options, a gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 2.0 ports, a serial port, and an optional hardware decoder that supports 1920 x 1080 HD video, says the company.
ST-Ericsson announced an ARM Cortex-A15 “Nova A9600” processor it says will be the first to offer Imagination Technologies' speedy “Rogue” graphics. The chipmaker also announced two Cortex-A9 application processors — the Nova A9540 and A9500 — plus three Cortex-A9-based “NovaThor” smartphone platforms, and an open source “Snowball” board and “Igloo” community based on the A9500.
Freescale Semiconductor announced a Linux-ready system-on-chip family for femtocell and picocell 4G base stations. The QorIQ Qonverge SoCs combine a Power-PC core for the PSC9130/31 femtocell version — or dual cores for the PSC9132 picocell model — as well as one or two Freescale StarCore DSP cores, a Maple baseband accelerator, and other accelerators that create a scalable “base station-on-chip.”
The LiMo Foundation announced the imminent launch of LiMo 4, giving its mobile Linux stack new components such as widget libraries, social networking support, and support for multitouch and larger screen sizes. Meanwhile, LiMo's Morgan Gillis told Reuters that Nokia's move to Windows Phone 7 should open more opportunities for the increasingly marginalized consortium.
An upcoming “I” Android release will provide Honeycomb-like tablet features for phones, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said during a Mobile World Congress (MWC) keynote. He added that Google would still welcome Nokia in the Android camp, demonstrated a video editor for Honeycomb named Movie Studio, and waxed eloquent on mobile technology's positive effect on society.
As anticipated, Nvidia used the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona to confirm its next-generation Tegra SoC (system on chip), which will feature quad cores and support 1440p (2560 x 1440 pixel) resolution. Code-named “Kal-El” but likely to be called “Tegra 3” upon release, the device will include four ARM-based CPU cores and a twelve-core GeForce CPU (graphics processing unit), the company says.
Novell's Mono Project has delivered a preview version of Moonlight 4, the open source Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight multimedia development platform. Moonlight 4 offers support for Silverlight 4 APIs for H.264 video codecs, graphics hardware acceleration, 3D transformation, and pixel shaders, among other improvements.
Renesas Electronics announced a mobile processor offering dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores and what's said to be the first implementation of Imagination Technologies' Powervr SGX MP graphics. The “SH-Mobile APE5R” is clocked at 1.2GHz, can provide 30fps stereoscopic HD video, and provides for both HDMI and USB interfaces, the company says.
Intel made loud overtures in support of MeeGo at Mobile World Congress, getting Toshiba, Fujitsu, Asus, and Acer to stand behind the Linux-based OS, despite Nokia's defection. The MeeGo project also demonstrated the long-awaited MeeGo Tablet User Experience (UX).
Imagination Technologies — a key supplier of graphics IP to many ARM licensees and to Intel — says a new version of its software will boost performance at least 20 times. The Powervr Series6 architecture, code-named “Rogue,” has already been licensed to one “tier-one” company and will appear in product around the beginning of 2013, the company says.