Android Version 3.0 is Near

We talked about how the Honeycomb may mandate two processor cores and high resolution displays. This article looks at usability features that the Honeycomb brings you.. read the reference article for details, but here are highlights.  The recent CES showed off a range of tablets based on the Android. The Android OS itself is undergoing improvements and the upcoming version 3.0 was shown off. Motorola has already announced a tablet based on the Honeycomb, the Xoom.

The desktop presented can be split into 5 different customizable screen. The desktop is being touted as a virtual, holographic user UI. Each of these could be named with whatever takes your fancy. Program, widget, apps icons available can be released onto these screens, multiple screens can be combined, it is up to the users to arrange the UI.

The browser has tabs now, forms auto fill, sync with Chrome bookmarks and even an incognito mode are features that have been brought into the Android browser.Full screen video calling is supported to other tablets as well as regular PCs.

eReader is a big feature that gives you access to the Google ebook library. That has some 3 million free books as well as the latest best sellers that you can buy. Google Maps 5 is going to be supported on the Honeycomb. Gmail and YouTube downloader  have been integrated for the devices that will run this OS.  Like many other manufacturers the Android is going to be supported by the Android marketplace that already has some 100,000 apps. 

Android 3.0 Honeycomb

Intel's Core Chips for Secure Streaming Movies, the "Insider"

The new Sandy Bridge processors will have a secure layer built into the hardware that will manage rights protected movies to be processed. These can be in true HD 1080p format and will ensure the plain text video cannot be accessed and thus copied. This will probably encourage the studios to stream movies to consumers. Intel has worked with Warner Brothers on this and have their backing. WB Show and Best Buy's CinemaNow has 300 movies already whose content will be streamed.


Combined CPU and GPU is another thing that is coming onto these chips. Wi-Di that supported up to 720p is upgraded to full 1080p. This technology lets pictures and video to be moved to the TV directly from the processor. Another feature, known as Quick Sync, lets video be reformatted to smartphone format. That visuals are increasingly the preferred medium becomes evident. You can see the moves across all processors, manufacturers improving video processing, managing the high computations needed.


Intel's Core chips to handle secure streaming movies

CES: As processor recedes from view, AMD stands to benefit | ZDNet

More on the Fusion chips from AMD. AMD sees more compute power in these processors than anything available so far. Even after adding a significant amount of salt, the performance of the APUs ( accelerated processing units) has to be something to watch for. AMD chips have always been cheaper than Intel's. Add to that the phenomenon where a consumer is not bothered with a "Intel inside" or any such emphasis on specific. They are now more interested in a total experience a device like iPhone or iPad brings you. It is here that these multi-core ,x86 and Direct X 11 capable CPU's will score.

What such product package will be able to offer to the consumer are improved HD video playback, really long battery life along with heavy application processing power. AMD already has design wins from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. Tablets and embedded designs should be coming along by late Q1 this year.

Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.The APUs cover desktops, notebooks, netbooks and tablets across all price points.


CES: As processor recedes from view, AMD stands to benefit 

Speedy Quad-core, Six-core Phenom II processors from AMD stable

Here's couple of announcements from the AMD stable in the CES, on the 4 Jan. AMD announced a 4 core and 6 core Phenom II processors. They also announced Fusion processors that are addressed to the market powered by Intel's Atom processor.


The Phenom II announcements adds two members. One is the 3.6GHz Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition. This possibly is the fastest quad core of the AMD processors up to now. the second member is the 2.9GHz Phenom II X6 1065T processors. This one balances performance with relatively low TDP which is is a low 95 W. It also has AMD's own Turbo CORE technology. I am making a guess here, but that must be the over clocking mechanism used by the AMD for crucial applications and compute intensive parts of an application.


The fusion processors are a combined processor that puts AMD classic core with ATI GPU logic and gets a high performance GPU. It also has built in Direct X 11 support. Was a long time coming, since the acquisition of ATL by AMD  4 years back. This can offer more than 10 hour battery life and high performance graphics that can change things with netbooks. This territory has been the monopoly of the Intel Atom so long.




AMD announces speedy new quad-core, six-core Phenom II processors

AMD announces first Fusion chips: 10+ hour battery life with DirectX11 graphics

Nano X2 Dual-Core Processor from VIA

VIA Technologies announced the VIA Nano X2, a new dual-core processor on Jan 4. These are available to OEMs and motherboard makers. It is built on 40 nm technology and is part of the VIA's Isiah(64 bit) architecture.

VIA has been a Intel compatible processor maker for quite some time. This processor too is compatible and also covers the superset SSE4 or the Streaming SIMD extensions. As published by Intel this extension set contains some 47 (SSE 4.1)+ 7(SSE 4.2) instructions. These are completely implemented in the core i7 for the first time. The new processor is geared for mainstream PC markets including desktops, notebooks and all-in-one solutions. Looks like VIA is determined to keep up with the Joneses, the Intels and the AMDs of this world in the mainstream computing platforms.

 This is a two core processor and   features two out-of-order x86 execution units/cores. 64 bit support is available natively. It also include VIA's Padlock security features as well as VT CPU virtualization technology. Systems using these chips should start appearing Q1 of this year.

VIA Reveals New Nano X2 Dual-Core Processor

IBM Supercomputer plays Jeopardy!

Power processor seems to be coming up ever so often! This is the third post that is related to the Power architecture from IBM in the recent past. This story is about a supercomputer that does natural language processing and uses 2000 to 3000 Power processors. being able to play jeopardy with two top winners of the jeopardy is something unthinkable even a few years back. Sometime back I had talked about how AI successes are slow in coming. But a IBM computer beating Gary Kasparov, proves something! If this challenge is actually won by this machine, that'll be a huge mile post for natural language processing, an important area of AI. Read the Forbes article for details of the mission.
IBM Plays Jeopardy!

PowerPC based SoCs in Embedded Designs

In one of the recent posts we talked about power management features on the PowerPC processor architecture and how that makes it suitable for the embedded systems. Comes news that AppliedMicro has released a SoC that include Power chips and is positioned for the manufacturers of next-generation multifunction

printers, enterprise control planes, consumer NAS systems, wireless access points and industrial

applications. The AppliedMicro offers the industry’s most advanced capabilities in power management, security and concurrency.


AppliedMicro has created a Scalable Lightweight Intelligent Management Processor (SLIMpro) that is able to provide power management, true Asymmetric Multi-Processing (AMP), inline packet processing, look aside hardware offloads, tamper detection and response circuitry for applications demanding low-power operation, end-to-end security and RTOS concurrency.   These features make the SLIMPro family a contender in complex peripheral device operations. Wake on LAN, USB 2.0, general purpose I?O and on RTC etc. provide the devices lot of opportunities to go to sleep and save power. Frequency gating options are also available.

AppliedMicro News Release