Freescale ARM Cortex-A8 tablets! Some less than $200! The future! Now!

You know what’s so hot for Y2K10? Tablets. If you want to get just about anybody in the technology journalism industry all riled up, just talk about tablets. It’s also a good way to make small talk. Texas-based Freescale, purveyor of fine ARM Cortex chips for various mobile devices, is getting in on the tablet madness full force by promising to demonstrate strange and wonderful $200 smartbook tablets running Android and Linux at CES this week.
Consumers will be able to purchase the aforementioned tablets “as soon as the summer of 2010,” according to Freescale’s recent press release. Ah, summer. That’s such a hot time for tablet computing. Summer Y2K10 will always be remembered as the Summer of Tablet.
So what can we expect?

“The Freescale tablet includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and also features a 3D desktop framework with touch screen/QWERTY keyboard support. 3G modem and RF4CE protocol options are available. The tablet’s modular approach to 3G connectivity lets systems designers select carrier-specific air interfaces appropriate for different regions. Modules can be pre-certified by carriers and selected to match a range of features and performance targets. This method makes it easy to migrate quickly to new modem technologies as they are introduced.


Example smartbook platform applications intended to run on the tablet include a web browser with Adobe Flash Player and multimedia plug-ins, a media center, PDF and image viewers, a mail client, an RSS reader, an office suite, handwriting utilities and various widgets for Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Weather SMS and other applications.”

Sounds a bit like the common smartphone, except for the whole “web browser with Adobe Flash Player and multimedia plug-ins” part. They’ll be a bit larger, too. The reference design from Freescale features a 7-inch display with 1024×600 resolution and a weight of just over 13 ounces. Other specs include 512MB of RAM, between 4GB and 64GB of built-in storage, various connectivity options, USB ports, webcam, and an accelerometer.

And perhaps most importantly, Freescale is ballparking the price tag at around $200. While I’m still not personally sold on the idea that we need something to fill the imaginary gap between smartphone and laptop, there are plenty of others out there who are ready to buy a tablet.



[TechCrunch via BusinessWire]

Samsung Opens the Door to PC-Level Performance on Mobile Devices with 1GHz Low-power Application Processors

There is hope my friends, yes there is! Samsung announced today two new 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 application processors the S5PC110 and S5PV210 capable to able High Speed 3D graphic rendering video as well as support of both HD Videos and the possibility to output video with HDMI 1.3 interface…

These 2 new CPU are good news, finally HTC will be capable to propose less sluggish device from now on! If only they could focus on ROM optimization rather than wasting their time on UI Eyes candy.

Seoul September 22, 2009 -- Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced two new 1GHz ARM® CORTEX™-A8 based application processors, the S5PC110 and S5PV210, for advanced mobile devices at the sixth annual Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum held at the Westin Taipei Hotel. The S5PC110 is targeted for small form-factor connected devices such as multimedia intensive smartphones, while the S5PV210 is aimed at portable computing devices such as netbooks that demand high performance and design flexibility.

“More and more, user generated contents currently accessed via the PC will be spread to mobile devices,” said Dr. Kwang Hyun Kim, senior vice president, strategic marketing team, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics. “PC-level performance with lower power consumption will become mainstream requirements for advanced mobile devices. Samsung developed S5PC110 and S5PV210 application processors to satisfy these conflicting requirements to enable a new level of user experience not previously possible.”



Both the S5PC110 and S5PV210 ensure longer battery life for mobile devices running on standard size batteries through a variety of low power technologies, including the use of a 45-nanometer (nm) Low Power fabrication process and intricate low power architectures. Each of these application processors comes with 32KB data and 32KB instruction caches, and is equipped with a 512KB L2 cache. With the 1GHz clock speed and large size L2 cache, these processors enable real-time applications such as web browsing and user interface (UI) to run smoothly with a fast response time.

High speed 3D graphics rendering and high resolution video support are two key differentiating features for advanced mobile devices. Both the S5PC110 and S5PV210 are equipped with a powerful built-in 3D graphics engine to support sophisticated 3D UI and high-caliber games. In addition, the two processors integrate a1080p full HD codec engine that supports 30fps full HD video playback and recording. A built-in HDMI1.3 interface allows output of captured or downloaded mobile multimedia contents to an external high definition digital display.

These two new application processors also feature a wide variety of interfaces and peripherals to maximize design flexibility and reduce system BOM cost of targeted mobile devices. In particular, a high speed USB 2.0 host interface is integrated for hosting various USB peripheral devices.

Targeted for small form factor mobile devices, the S5PC110 is housed in a 0.5mm pitch, 14X14mm2 FBGA package that allows package-on-package vertical stacking of low power, multiple chip package (MCP) memory such as OneDRAM™, mobile DDR and LP DDR2, greatly reducing the overall foot print of the memory and processor combo.

Designed for portable computing applications, the S5PV210 is packaged in a 0.65mm pitch, 17X17mm2 FBGA package with a high performance 2-channel 32-bit DDR2 memory interface that is essential for computing devices.

Customer samples of both products will be available in December, 2009. ...

ARM breaks 2GHz barrier with dual core Cortex-A9 processor

Great Neptune’s trousers!

ARM has just announced the development of a dual core mobile processor capable of breaking the 2GHz barrier. The 40nm Cortex-A9 CPU will use conventional silicon chips and each CPU core will consume less than 0.25 watts of power.

While ARM’s aiming the chip at “applications such as set-top boxes, DTVs, printers, and other feature-rich consumer and high-density enterprise applications,” the SmartBook and MID movements could probably make some waves by using dual-core 2GHz setups as well.

The technology will become available to hardware builders in Q4 of this year, although “the Cortex-A9 hard macros and the corresponding optimized physical IP used to develop the speed-optimized and power-optimized implementations are available for license today.”

Full press release:

ARM Announces 2GHz Capable Cortex-A9 Dual Core Processor Implementation

ARM Cortex processor technology and physical IP developed in unison to deliver high performance and low-power processing for consumer and enterprise markets

CAMBRIDGE, UK – Sept. 16, 2009 – ARM [(LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMH)] announced today the development of two Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ hard macro implementations for the TSMC 40nm-G process, enabling silicon manufacturers to have a rapid and low-risk route to silicon for high-performance, low-power Cortex-A9 processor-based devices. The speed-optimized hard macro implementation will enable devices to operate at frequencies greater than 2GHz.

The dual core hard macro implementations are the result of ARM’s significant investment in advanced physical IP development in unison with processor and fabric IP technology, and leading-edge implementation flows from the EDA industry. Advanced physical IP techniques have enabled critical circuits within the design to be replaced with highly tuned logic cells and memories, increasing performance while lowering overall power consumption.

Speed Optimized

The Cortex-A9 speed-optimized hard macro implementation will provide system designers with an industry standard ARM® processor incorporating aggressive low-power techniques to further extend ARM’s performance leadership into high-margin consumer and enterprise devices within the power envelope necessary for compact, high-density and thermally constrained environments. This hard macro implementation operates in excess of 2GHz when selected from typical silicon and represents an ideal solution for high-margin performance-oriented applications.

Power Optimized

In many thermally constrained applications such as set-top boxes, DTVs, printers and other feature-rich consumer and high-density enterprise applications, energy efficiency is of paramount importance. The Cortex-A9 power-optimized hard macro implementation delivers its peak performance of 4000 DMIPS while consuming less than 250mW per CPU when selected from typical silicon.

The hard macro implementations include ARM AMBA®-compliant high performance system components to maximize data traffic speed and minimize power consumption and silicon area. Each Cortex-A9 hard macro implementation also includes the CoreSight™ Program Trace Macrocell (PTM) which provides full visibility into the processor’s instruction flow, enabling the software community to develop code for optimal performance.

“The Cortex-A9 MPCore processor has already been widely accepted as the processor of choice for high-performance embedded applications across a broad spectrum of demanding consumer and enterprise devices,” said Eric Schorn, VP marketing, Processor Division, ARM. “ARM’s parallel development of advanced, optimized physical IP components demonstrates a new level of collaborative differentiation while enabling our Partners to expand their penetration into high margin domains traditionally occupied by proprietary architectures.”

“ARM’s long-standing investment in low-power leadership and ability to develop such high-performance devices enables licensees to lower the cost and risk of entering the high-margin markets currently addressed with competing proprietary solutions,” said Will Strauss, principal analyst at Forward Concepts. “With single-thread performance capable of supporting very intensive workloads, the unprecedented level of power efficiency will enable licensees to introduce compelling new products.”

“ARM and TSMC have enjoyed a long standing relationship of collaboration to ensure the development and delivery of best-in-class products optimized for our manufacturing process,” said ST Juang, Sr. Director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division, TSMC. “This provides OEMs developing feature-rich consumer and enterprise devices access to TSMC’s manufacturing excellence and the power of ARM processor IP”

Both ARM dual core Cortex-A9 hard macros will share a common seven-power domain, dual-NEON™ technology configuration supporting SMP (symmetrical multiprocessing) operating systems with up to 8MB of Level2 cache memory and will be delivered with all scripts, vectors and libraries required to integrate the macro directly within any SoC device.

To enable the development of high-efficiency, low risk SoCs using other Cortex-A9 processor configurations, ARM also provides the silicon-proven SoC-level ARM Physical IP platform used to build these hard macros, and a range of AMBA-compliant system development components and tools.

In addition, the ARM Active Assist consulting service, developed in conjunction with the hard macros, enables ARM Partners to efficiently integrate the hardened macro into their SoC design to realize maximum system performance with lowest risk and fastest time-to-market.

Availability

The Cortex-A9 hard macros and the corresponding optimized physical IP used to develop the speed-optimized and power-optimized implementations are available for license today with delivery in the fourth quarter of 2009. ARM’s 40G physical IP platform is also available today at designstart.arm.com.

Info about the Archos Phone Tablet emerges

Details are kind of lacking at this point, but so far the Archos Phone Tablet is shaping up nicely. It should rock Android on a 4.3-inch touchscreen with a 854×480 resolution, 1GHz ARM CPU, HSDPA, and will measure in at only 10mm. The strange thing is that the phone is somewhat large considering the iPhone has a 3.5-inch screen and so we’re curious about how Archos is going to market this bugger.

Is it going to be a pocket tablet computer with an always on 3G connection? Or is going to be a cell phone that can also do just about everything a tablet can? We don’t know. We also don’t know when the Phone Tablet will come out, who will carry it, or how much it will be. But Archos has our attention now. That’s for sure.

[Electronic Pig via Gizmodo]