I’m Watch is a wireless (Bluetooth) watch designed by an Italian Company http://www.imwatch.it currently showcased at ARM Techcon 2011. The device is powered by Freescale i.MX233 feature a capacitive touchcreen and runs Android. It can synchronize with any Android smartphone and iPhones via Bluetooth. The company developed an Android API for this watch. The product will be ready before Xmas and be available for 299 Euros (base version) in Europe, although you’d have to wait until January if you are based in the US. If you want to show off you can buy the Gold version for 12,000 Euros. There already have pre-orders for 30,000 pieces. The company will also announce other services at CES 2012 such as I’m Market, an app store to download apps for the watch and I’m Music an app to listen music via the watch. Watch the video below to see the Android watch in […]
Ubuntu on Tegra 2 Netbook and Ubuntu Server on Pandaboard
Canonical showcases several demos at ARM Techcon 2011: Toshiba AC-100 Netbook (Nvidia Tegra 2) running Ubuntu 11.10. with Unity interface. Freescale i.MX53 board playing a 1080p video in Ubuntu 11.10. TI Pandaboard running Ubuntu 11.10 Server Edition. Ubuntu 11.04 is not officially supported for Toshiba AC-100, but the community if working on it and the image can be downloaded at http://ac100.gudinna.com/ Canonical however supports Netbook and Headless (Server) edition for OMAP3 (Beagleboard) and OMAP4 (Pandaboard). Those image are available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/NattyReleaseNotes Watch the interview by Charbax and demos in the video below. 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
Linux 3.1 Release
Linux Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.1 yesterday: As promised, the kernel summit has started, and Linux-3.1 is out. The (small) shortlog of changes since -rc10 are appended, we have mostly some sparc and networking changes, along with some radeon and intel iommu fixes (mostly for largepages and integrated graphics issues). Most people probably will not notice the changes. One big change from -rc10 is that there are tar-balls and patches, so if you aren’t a git user (why?) you can download it now in a traditional format. On of the things to note is that the files are now signed by my gpg key, and it’s the *uncompressed* version that the signature is for. And of course, this means that the merge window for 3.2 is open. I’ll do some merging during the KS, but probably most when I get back home – but you can still […]
MontaVista adds HTML5 and Android support to its GENIVI-Compliant Automotive Technology Platform
Montavista announced secure HTML5 and Android support to its Automotive Technology Platform (ATP) which is GENIVI Compliant. HTML5 support is provided via MontaVista’s ModiiTM Digital Media Solutions Platform. Both Android and HTML5 are made independant of critical part of the software as they are executed in a MontaVista Linux Container (isolated virtualized container environment). Here’s an excerpt of the press release: SANTA CLARA, Calif. – October 10th, 2011 – MontaVista® Software LLC, today announced secure HTML5 and Android support for its Automotive Technology Platform (ATP). The addition of HTML5 support is provided via MontaVista’s ModiiTM Digital Media Solutions Platform which adds a powerful HTML5-based UI Framework to its recently released GENIVI-Compliant Platform. The Android support delivers a high performance Android runtime environment, which opens up access to a vast number of popular applications from the entire Android ecosystem. Complementing the Android and HTML5 capabilities, MontaVista has implemented a unique dual-layered […]
Freescale i.MX6 in Tablet PC by First International Computer (FIC)
Back in January 2011, Freescale announced the availability of its new i.MX 6 Processor series based on Cortex A9 with sample delivery at the end of 2011. Freescale has now revealed that First International Computer (FIC) – 大眾電腦 – a Taiwanese company – has adopted Freescale Semiconductor’s i.MX 6 series microprocessors for use in tablet PCs at the 2011 Freescale Technology Forum China on August 30. FIC will use Freescale’s i.MX 6 MPUs in its new line of tablet PCs with a price target sub-200 USD in order to differentiate itself from major competitors. The Freescale i.MX 6 is based on the ARM Cortex-A9 architecture running at up to 1.2 GHz and come in single core (i.MX6 Solo), dual core (i.MX6 Dual) and quad Core I.MX6 Quad). Currently there are no further information on the FIC tablet specifications. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time […]
Linaro 11.08 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.3
Linaro has just released version 11.08 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.3 with support or TI Beagleboard, BeagleBoard-xM & Pandaboard, ST Ericsson Snowball, Freescale i.MX53 development board and Samsung Origen board. Here are the highlights of the release: Android The Linaro 11.08 toolchain release of GCC 4.6 has compiled the Origen, BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM, PandaBoard and Snowball builds, and are running Android 2.3.5 with a 3.0 Linux kernel. Together with the mainline kernel focused builds for BeagleBoard and PandaBoard and a preliminary i.MX53 build, the Android Platform Team ships 6 builds this month. A first! Android Platform code aliasing violations have been fixed allowing the use of strict-aliasing for better optimizations with gcc 4.6 based toolchains. The Android toolchain 11.08 has been released and has received numerous updates, including updated binutils and current gmp/mpfr/mpc. Benchmarks are available here. libjpeg-turbo 1.1.1 and ffmpeg with support for H.264 and WebM build are available on […]
What is GENIVI ? A Software Standard for the Automotive Industry
I’ve recently read in the news that a few operating systems had achieved GENIVI compliance. So let’s see what Wikipedia says about the GENIVI Alliance: The GENIVI Alliance was founded on March 2, 2009 by BMW Group, Delphi, GM, Intel, Magneti-Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Visteon, and Wind River Systems with the goal of establishing a globally competitive, Linux-based operating system, middleware and platform for the automotive in-vehicle infotainment industry. Since then, the alliance has expanded to more than 100 members who are working together to deliver an open and globally consistent software platform based on Linux for use by the whole car industry. So the clear goal here is to have some set of software specifications and standards (Currently GENEVI 1.0) in the automotive industry in order to speed time to market and reduce the cost of developing Infotainment applications. GENIVI comes from a concatenation of Geneva and IVI (In-Vehicle […]
Hercules eCAFE ARM Cortex A8 Netbooks running Linux
Hercules, a subsidiary of Guillemot Corporation, announced two new eCAFÉ netbooks based on Freescale i.MX515 @ 800 Mhz (ARM Cortex A8) that run a custom Linux distribution and feature a dipswitch for flipping to other user-loaded Linux or Android operating systems: eCAFÉ Slim HD – 229 USD: LED screen: 10.1 inch, 1024*600, high brightness Storage: 8Gb Flash (iNAND), extensible up to 72Gb ARM CortexTM A8 FreescaleTM i.MX515 @ 800 MHz processor RAM: 512 Mb WiFi N technology Battery: 2400 mAh (7.4V) for 4.5 hours’ battery life Comfortable “chiclet” keyboard with flat, separate keys – 88% of a standard keyboard 0.3MP webcam with built-in microphone Connections: 3x USB, 1x Headset, 1x Microphone, 1x LAN RJ45, 1x DC-in 12V, 1x External card reader: SD/MMC/SDHC, 1x Internal card reader: SD/SDHC DIP Switch Weight: 1.9lbs / 0.86 kg eCAFÉ EX HD – 269 USD: LED screen: 10.1 inch, 1024*600, high brightness Storage: 16Gb extensible […]