Archos G9 Android 3.2 Tablets Are Now Officially Available

Archos announced that Archos G9 Tablets are now available. There is of course a caveat to this… Only Archos 80 G9 Tablet can be purchased on Archos Store (limited availability) for 299.99 USD, all other models show the dreaded icon “Coming Soon”. However, all Archos G9 models can be pre-ordered on Amazon France but they are not yet available on Amazon US. The other disappointment is that the Turbo versions appear to have been clocked down to 1.2 Ghz, whereas they were previously announced at 1.5 Ghz. Having said that, if you click on “Product Information” on Archos website, it still says “ARM dual-core CORTEX A9 OMAP™ 4 up to 1.5 GHz”. There is also still a lot of confusion about the amount of RAM in the device 512 MB or 1 GB as this is not shown in the specifications. That’s quite a mess, it’s  confusing and somewhat frustrating. […]

Emulate Gumstix Overo COM with Qemu and Linaro Nano Image

Overa COMs are low cost computer-on-modules (COM) built around OMAP3503 and OMAP3530 depending on the model. Such device can be purchased on gumstix website. However if you just want to try a program on the board, you could use QEMU to emulate the Overo board as follows: Download pre-built image. (nano is a minimal linux ditribution without UI): wget http://releases.linaro.org/images/linaro-n/nano/11.07/overo-nano.img.gz gunzip overo-nano.img.gz Install the qemu tools: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linaro-maintainers/tools sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install qemu-user-static qemu-system Run the image: qemu-system-arm -M overo -clock unix -serial stdio -device usb-kbd -drive file=/tmp/overo-nano.img,if=sd,cache=writeback You can also watch the installation in the video below:   Source: https://wiki.linaro.org/Resources/HowTo/Qemu-5   Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

Texas Instruments AM387X Sitara ARM Cortex A8 Microprocessors

Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced three new AM387x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors (MPUs): AM3871, AM3872 and AM3874. TI says these MPUs offer integration of the ARM Cortex-A8 core, peripherals for high-bandwidth connectivity (SATA, D-CAN, PCI Express (PCIe), Gigabit Ethernet switch and more), 3D graphics for enhanced GUIs and display subsystems for camera connectivity and viewing. The AM387x ARM Cortex-A8 MPU can connect to and control IP and CAN networks, HD displays, keyboard, mouse, PC, SD card and various general purpose peripherals, all via one highly integrated processor in an industrial automation application controlling a production line and a high-speed, shared data bus allows for reduced communication overhead and quick access to shared data, which results in reduced chip count, discrete memory costs and printed circuit board (PCB) space compared to separate solutions. Those MPUs are targeted at a variety of fanless applications such as: single board computing, network and communications processing, […]

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) Overview and SDKs

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a multi-vendor open standard for general-purpose parallel  programming of heterogeneous systems that include CPUs, GPUs and other processors. OpenCL provides a uniform programming environment for software developers to write efficient, portable code for highperformance compute servers, desktop computer systems and handheld devices. OpenCL standard is managed and defined by the Khronos Group. The latest version (OpenCL 1.1) was ratified by the Khronos Group on the 14th of June 2010 and adds significant functionality for enhanced parallel programming flexibility, functionality and performance including: Host-thread safety, enabling OpenCL commands to be enqueued from multiple host threads. Sub-buffer objects to distribute regions of a buffer across multiple OpenCL devices. User events to enable enqueued OpenCL commands to wait on external events. Event callbacks that can be used to enqueue new OpenCL commands based on event state changes in a non-blocking manner. 3-component vector data types. Global work-offset which […]

Windows 8 NFC (Near Field Communication) Demo

A few months back, I would have never thought I would post about Microsoft and Windows in an embedded software blog, except for the rare mention of Windows CE or Windows Embedded products. But it now seems Windows 8 will actually focus on products that were previously almost exclusively ARM based such as tablets and smartphones. I have already posted about Windows 8 Tablet and Smartphones demo at the build conference and today I’ll discuss a little bit about NFC support in Windows 8. Windows 8 will support NFC (Near Field Communication) with NXP PN544 NFC controller chip. NXP PN544 is also the NFC solution used in the Windows 8 tablets, made by Samsung, which are being distributed to attendees of Microsoft’s Build Windows conference 2011. The NFC use cases available with Windows 8 include: Windows 8 device pairing (e.g. Bluetooth headsets and speakers) Data sharing (e.g. digital business cards) […]

Window 8 ARM Platforms at Build Conference 2011

Yesterday, I mentioned the Nvidia Tegra 3 tablet running Windows 8 which is currently showcased at Build Conference 2011 and they also had a Tegra 3 laptop running Windows 8. But Nvidia was not the only company showing off ARM based processors running Windows 8. There were at least 2 other companies, namely Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. Qualcomm showcased a Snapdragon MSM8660 (Dual core 1.2 GHz) Tablet running Windows 8 and announced that the first batch of Windows 8 PC will be based on the Snapdragon processor. Texas Instruments brought a Windows 8 Tablet based on OMAP4430 (dual core 1 GHz) developed in partnership with Quanta. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

Intel and Google to work on Android for Atom

Intel officially announced it will collaborate with Google to optimize the Android OS for Intel’s Atom processor platform in order to help Intel entering the smartphone market. In his keynote on the 13th of September – the first day of the Intel Developer Forum 2011 – Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced the partnership with Google to support Android on Atom processors and said the first Intel-based smartphones will be available in the first half of 2012. Paul Otellini demoed Intel’s Android smartphone reference platform running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). The phone is 9.5mm thick, had an HDMI output, NFC support and features Intel’s 32nm Medfield processor which is said to include a newer generation GPU. Intel also showed off the new ISP (Image Signal Processor) capabilities in Medfield which is capable of capturing up to 20 fps at 1600 x 1200. However, the reference platform could only deliver 10 fps from […]

Microsoft demoes Windows 8 on Tegra 3 Tablet

Microsoft demonstrated several Windows 8 features running on a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 tablet at the company’s BUILD developer conference in Anaheim, California. During the event, Mike Angulio – Microsoft’s VP of Windows planning – demonstrated: Windows 8 devices’ ability to instantly switch on and off The new Windows 8 user interface, designed to work equally well with both touch-based tablets and keyboard/mouse-based PCs New applications, mostly written in HTML5, which are always running in the background Platform agnostic applications (running on both ARM and x86) Anguilo also emphasized that all Windows 8 applications will feature hardware accelerated graphics so that developers will not need to do additional work to support hardware acceleration and their applications will automatically take advantage of graphics on both ARM and x86 platforms. Source: Microsoft Wows BUILD Crowd with Windows 8 on Quad-Core NVIDIA Tegra Tablet You can watch Windows 8 Demo from Build Conference […]

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