ARM Community: Smart Connected Devices - ARM Community

It’s been a whirlwind week at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES). Throughout the week I had the chance to test drive some of the latest and greatest ARM based technologies that are on their way to making techies across the world very happy! On Day 1, tablets, smartphones and the BiggiFi software platform caught my eye first. On Day 2, my adventures spanned from the coolest Tesla electric car media console to tablets bringing computing to those that normally do not have access to technology via OLPC. On Day 3, I was styling with Wimm Lab’s Wearable Platform and found ‘Tagg – the pet tracker,’ so when my pup runs off I will always know where to find him…maybe I should find out if it works on teenagers too! And now on Day 4, I bring you Nufront and the Droid Angel.

At the ...

我们的一些合作伙伴在今年12月之前就已经把支持AndroidTM 4.0的产品介绍给市场了。下面介绍了几个基于Android 4.0的产品。
PR Newswire首先报道了瑞芯微基于Android 4.0的产品。随后，众多媒体相继报道了瑞芯微和原道，酷比魔方及纽曼等基于瑞芯微芯片的产品。例如，酷比魔方携手瑞芯微（Rockchip）推出基于安卓4.0的U9GT 2平板电脑产品。



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At Red Bend Software, we believe ARM’s newest processor, the ARM Cortex-A7, and ARM’s new big.LITTLE processing technology solidify the future of virtualization in the next generation of smart devices.

ARM’s latest processor is significant because it’s the second ARM processor to support virtualization at the hardware level, showing ARM’s commitment to using virtualization technology in mobile devices. About this time last year, ARM launched the Cortex-A15, the first ARM processor with a virtualization extension in its architecture. Watch me explain more in this ...

Coming back from Computex I figured I had seen the latest and greatest tablets till the back to school season or even CES. There were a number of new devices with innovative features leading up to and during Computex. I pretty much thought we were done for a while. And then comes Archos with their new G9 tablets.

Leading up to Computex we saw a number of Honeycomb tablets with some unique designs and features……. all in the name of differentiation. There was the Asus Transformer that docks with a keyboard or the ...

For the first time, ARM is honored to be invited to join the opening ceremony of COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2011 as the VIP guest. ARM’s president, Tudor Brown attended the opening ceremony in TWTC of Nangang and together with Taiwan’s President Dr. Ying-Jeou Ma, TAITRA’s Chairman Dr. Chih-Kang Wang, TCA’s Chairman Mr. J.T Wang, TCA’s Convener of the Board of Supervisors Mr. John Hsuan, government officials from Taipei City Hall and Ministry of Economic Affairs, and other IT companies’ representatives to slide the tablets and kick-off this year’s COMPUTEX Show.


ARM Powered Products took center stage at this year’s Computex.
The changing face of computing was never so obvious than at this year’s Computex – no doubt that this is the 3rd era of computing. Our roving correspondent ...

It's been a while since the video of my Android MultiCuber 777 cube solving robot was uploaded to ARM’s YouTube channel - ARMflix. Since then, I’ve also demonstrated the Android Speedcuber at a number of events including ARM TechCon 2010. However, I've finally found enough spare time to create a new robot. For those of you who've been following my blogs and have read this far hoping to hear about another LEGO Rubik's Cube puzzle solving robot, I'm sorry to disappoint you... my latest creation does not solve a Rubik's Cube puzzle. In fact, it doesn't even solve a cube-shaped puzzle at all! Take a look at t...

Here is my report from the first day of the Mobile World Congress held here in Barcelona where the global mobile industry is gathered for its biggest annual conference and trade show. On my first day, I took a look at the latest mobile technology and talked to a number of ARM Partners about their exciting new semiconductor products; and in particular, mobile baseband processors. Baseband processors are the chips that run the communications inside a mobile smartphone or tablet and right now we are seeing a new wave of capability introduced in them as ARM’s Partners begin to implement the new LTE, or Long Term Evolution, mobile standards. In fact ARM’s LTE announ...

At first glance I had to wonder why one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s mobile beat reporters, Olga Kharif, was writing an article on household appliances. But after reading the first sentence it all made sense. Kharif’s piece explores the new world of smart, connected appliances and how traditional manufacturers like Whirlpool will now have to slug it out with new entrants hailing from the mobile / telco world, like Samsung and LG.

These upstarts from the land of smartphones, apps and mobile web browsers bring a different take to the world of white goods – and the potential for profit is huge. According to Kharif’s article, the market for connected appliances may reach $6.2 billion by 2015 – that is a big pie. Ironically, the key to success in this market will be similar to what makes companies competitive in the cell phone and ...

I’ve lived a reasonably happy life with my 3G network and the support I have for the three Smart Mobile Devices that I carry with me pretty much at all times. Ok so buffering is a drag when I am streaming music or video, and yeah pulling in that large presentation that my colleague just sent can cause some interruptions but basically I felt functional. That was until I visited the Verizon booth at CES 2011 to get an inside view on their recently launched 4G LTE network. To say that I (and my devices) felt a tad out of date is an understatement.



So how fast is Verizon’s new 4G LTE network?
Verizon launched their new 4G LTE network in early December. If you are lucky enough to liv...

Another holiday season is upon us. As I look back over the years, there are certain holiday gifts I’ve received that really stand out in my mind: my first CD player, cell phone, mp3 player, digital camera, laptop… Are you sensing a theme here? Gadgets make for fun, memorable gifts that everyone enjoys and most of the time make our lives easier.

I’ve put together a holiday gift list, divided into 3 categories, of some of my favorite ARM Powered Gadgets. Let’s kick it off with Part 1:

Fun Gifts for Kids, Teens & College Students
Air Hogs Hawk Eye – Keep your kids entertained for hours with this Cortex-A8-based remote controlled helicopter. It has a camera mounted on the front that allows in-flight video recordin...

While the tech blogs over the last few months have been filled all sorts of tablet devices covering a range of sizes, capabilities, and price points from numerous manufacturers, Archos stands alone this week by launching 5, yes FIVE, different tablet devices, simultaneously, all centered around different levels of tablet experiences. All include great multimedia, connectivity, web browsing (including Flash 10), and touch interfaces each in their own form factor. Their tag line is “Entertainment your way” and they seem to be delivering on offering choice within their new product line. With 2.8” devices for less than $100 to 10” tablets starting at less than $300 and 3 models in between, Archos is asking “How do you Tablet”?

You can read their press release and check out their website to see the detailed features and specifica...

Netbooks, smartbooks, tablets ... Lots of buzz but where is the beef? I for one thought they would be here sooner. Until recently, netbooks and eReaders were the real things that stuck with the consumer, but it came after the UMPC and MIDs which were misses. In addition, when it comes to tablets, there were many attempts over the years that, to be kind, were not very successful. For tablets, it took Apple to break the code and deploy a product that resonated with the consumer and overnight define a new product classification.

So I get asked where are the ARM tablets and smartbooks, and why they have taken so long? Well it all comes down to timing and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). Let me explain.

Google, Android or Chrome OS? A year ago it was clear that Android was the OS for these new...

From 3x3x3 to 4x4x4 LEGO Rubik’s Cube Solver
About 18 months ago I was inspired to design and build my first LEGO robot (video) controlled by a Nokia N95 mobile phone that could solve a regular 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube. While demonstrating this robot to a few colleagues at ARM, I had some other puzzles lying on the desk including 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 Rubik's Cubes. A number of...

I love this industry. Day in and day out you hear about the next great device that is going to hit the market. Handset, tablet, eReader or something in between, there is always innovation on the horizon. And then when all the speculation is over and the actual launch occurs, we rarely seem to be disappointed. This week it was Motorola and Verizon’s turn with the unveiling of the Droid X and they did not let us down.

As the official press release says, this is a “Pocket Sized Home Theater” and more apparently. Not only do you get the HDMI connectivity and 720P video encode you might expect in the top of the line devices these days, but you also get access to Verizon’s new Blockbuster On Demand presented by V CAST and NFL Mobile for all your TV, Movie, and football viewing. They have even added DLNA support so you can access all of your personal content.

The great innovation continues in the communicati...

I arrived in Taiwan late Sunday night for Computex 2010 after what is seemed like a weekend commute from Austin. I have been traveling to Taiwan for the last 18 years; not much has changed on the travel side, American still has the “Narita Express” from DFW, AA 60 over and AA 61 back from DFW … trying to figure out the trips, must be over a hundred. This trip is for the yearly migration of the computer world to Taiwan for the Computex tradeshow … should be named the geek express especially going through passport control at the Taipei airport.

Eighteen years ago I came here for the first time as part of a team focused on creating a new PC platform. I was part of the newly minted powerhouse of Motorola, Apple, and IBM that had a processor and the dream to offer choice in the computing marketplace. Consortiums were formed with the Taiwan government, we built a design center with IBM/Motorola, worked closely with the ODMs, we all worked very hard but at after a couple of years it didn’t happen after billions of dollars of investment. Looking back it wasn’t the technology that doomed it, it was the close relationship and interdependencies that Intel and Microsoft had … it was called “Wintel” for a reason. The short term c...

One of the very exciting elements of consumer electronics today is the rate of change and re-invention. ARM’s strategy is to be at the center of the continuum of internet enabled devices – from smartphones to tablets and netbooks, to DTV and STB’s. The form factors and the software and applications running on these devices will continue to shift with consumer preference and technology innovation, but ARM will be at the heart of these great devices (continuing my thoughts from my CES blog). Having seen for myself at the recent web 2.0 show products such Palm Pre, Motorola Droid, Nexus One and the Nvidia Tegra 2 Android tablet...

As you may be aware, my ARM-Powered LEGO robotic Rubik’s Cube solver “Speedcuber” was demonstrated live at Mobile World Congress ’10 in Barcelona in February this year (actually it almost didn’t happen because the LEGO robot fell apart while in transit and as I didn’t attend, a few other ARM Engineers had to roll up their sleeves and work out how to piece it back together – thanks guys). I had anticipated that after the push to prepare the robot for the its first public outing, I could re-focus my energy on my regular day job and relax a bit more in my spare time... but things don’t often go as expected in my life!

Speedcuber was a very popular demonstration at MWC so it was natural to consider demonstrating it again. However, someone (I won’t name the “guilty party”) suggested that we should switch to more relevant, contemporary technology; after all, the Nokia N95 phone controlling the first robot was launched almost four years ago in 2006. It was proposed that we show the robot again in April at the Embedded Systems Conference in Silicon Valley (time to forget relaxing in my spare...

This is part 2 of my CTIA blog looking at the network challenges, and the unexpected gadgets of CTIA 2010. Part 1 covered the best Smartphones, Android from 2G to 4G, multimedia capabilities in phones and screen sizes.

It’s All About The Network
At CTIA there was a lot of talk of how the “data crunch” is going to be addressed over the coming years and how the rollout of Wimax and LTE will help address this issue. Technical note in defense of AT&T; their HSPA+ network will have the spectral efficiency almost equal to LTE. However before you think the data capacity challenge is solved, here are some interesting data points from the Femtocell forum:Increased spectrum will give a 2x increase in data capacityLTE/Wimax will give you 3-5x increase in data capacity.Combined these two improvements will give a 10x increase in data capacity over the next four years, which sounds rather go...

Coming back from CES and MWC, I found that Android is not a handset OS any more; I have seen Android in so many different form factors: handset , eReader, tablet, smartbook , STB etc. Since Android is an open source platform, anyone can customize it based on their own needs. Some of our software partners are providing Android customization service to the device manufacturers.

ThunderSoft spoke with me at MWC about their work with an Android tablet:

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In preparing for my very first MWC, I was thinking: is this just going to be a mini CES? I started by looking into the number of attendees and who the exhibitors are and saw that this is a much more targeted show focused on mobile phones. Then I really started to dig and realized I couldn’t have been more wrong, there is so much more to it than the term “mobile phones.” Looking at session topics and the news in the mobile space today, it became clear that maybe we should be thinking of MWC as the up and coming computer show of the new decade. Yesterday’s mobile phone ecosystem is tomorrow’s computer ecosystem.

Today, the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone market is the smartphone. What seems to be some of the most compelling features to consumers are the instant access to their email, the ability to get to the web wherever they are, and the huge availability of applications addressing specific individual needs. Aren’t these the things we used to do on our PCs? Essentially today’s smartphones are small computers in our pockets or purses. While they are not our historic PCs, these smart mobile devices do most of what we used to do on our PCs but they do it anywhere and anytime, they are always on and always connected, they have int...

When I started out in the industry, I worked for Intel as they were transitioning from 386 to 486 and then onto Pentium; all guided by the hand of the great Andy Grove. In his book Only the Paranoid Survive, he described this time as an inflection point in the PC industry. This was because of the innovation, diversity and growth of this new industry. From my point of view, CES this year also marked a major point of inflection in the industry, but this time not in the PC world but in the consumer electronics world. Three major trends are clearly happening:

Glass is becoming connected - If you went to the Sony, Samsung, Panasonic stands you were struck by the amount, size, shape, diversity of DTVs that are being produced. From 3D images to ultrathin devices this show was a coming out party of all that’s good in the DTV area, but the most over riding memory is how many of them have Ethernet, wifi or s...

I was travelling in Japan a few weeks ago attending the Embedded Technology Trade Show. There were two things that impressed me - what little the girls wear in winter and how many partners support Android…And I was pleased to find out that within these Android partners, many of them have ARM solutions too. So I invited them to join the ARM Solution Center for Android (SCA) which is a resource for designers and developers of ARM technology-based products running on Android. Today we have more than 45 Partners of the ARM Connected Community that have joined this initiative since it was launched in November. More than 10 Partners have already posted their Android resources such as whitepapers, videos and solutions slides on our SCA homepage. Below, I’ve highlighted some of my favorites.

Below is an Android videos from VisualOn which highlights the performance difference between the default multimedia framework shipped wi...

Making the most of Android on ARM: When and how to use the Android NDK Overview:
The Android platform is designed for and shipped on ARM Architecture. Growing consumer demands for a connected lifestyle, means Android developers need access to the best Android on ARM development solutions for designing digital consumer electronic devices. As a result, the Android on ARM ecosystem is becoming even more varied from both the perspective of devices and applications.

With the recent launch of Android 2.0, learn how using the ARM platform while developing for Android using the Android NDK (Native Development Kit), will help make full use of your CPU and deliver leading edge Android applications. See how the performance of a simple processing intensive Image application improves, moving from a pure Android version, to native C, optimized assembler and finally to a high performance NEON implementation.

Date: Thu., Dec 03, 2009
Greenwich Mean Time...

It has been exactly one year to the day since I held the first production-ready Android handset the HTC G1. Now one year of good fortune presented me with the chance to use the Acer Liquid (Qualcomm’s ARM-powered SnapDragon), well for a few days at least. Not having used an Android handset in the period in between I was very surprised to see how far the bar had been raised by the combination of the physical attributes, thousands of apps available for installation and the Donut release of Android.



The WVGA display was just stunning and is three times the resolution of the G1 and combined with scrolling wheels containing media content and bookmarked web pages attracted a lot of positive comments in the office. The whole ease of us...

My wife thinks my job is to breed worms and develop environmental habitats. While this is obviously not true, there are some parallels to be drawn between her thinking and my real job of enabling a robust graphics ecosystem. For example my job does involve helping develop efficient interdependencies between partners (organisms) who share a common technology culture (habitat). The partners in this case include almost everybody in the software creation value chain of consumer electronics, namely the silicon vendors, OEMs and their 2nd and 3rd party developers. The technology that binds all of my ecosystem partners together is advances in graphic technology with adoption of graphics processing units (GPU), and history has taught us that the early marriage of software and hardware is essential for market success for upcoming technologies.

The software developer ecosystem is facing multiple challenges at this time, when time to market is crucial for everyone including OEMs and 2nd party developers who produce increasingly complicated devices.

Mobile application stores, originally introduced by Qualcomm and perfected by Apple, have produced the right formula for a huge number of 3rd party developers, including “indie” develope...

The current battle in the Intel vs AMD PC war has been highlighted by recent discussions on the relevance of MobileMark2007 to the consumer’s true experience in mobile computing. AMD wants to include 3DMark2006 as another piece of the puzzle (presumable it will help their position) and Intel seems to benefit from the amount of time MobileMark2007 spends in CPU idle. In reality, future changes in this area needs to go well beyond being another battle in the PC wars and instead incorporates the breadth of new smart mobile devices that are coming to market.

The emergence of netbooks, smartbooks*, and other devices that enable consumers to consume, create, and communicate demonstrate that usage models have moved beyond the one size fits all model of the PC. Consumer...

Let’s start at the beginning. Yes, ARM licensees differentiate and it is a good thing for the industry and the consumer. The ARM business model has resulted in a lot of very cool products with industry leading form factors and functions. OEMs love it; consumers love it. The common element is the ARM processor and any differences in the hardware are handled by the OS abstraction provided by the silicon supplier.

Have you noticed that when you download a native app for Microsoft Windows Mobile or Symbian, it doesn’t ask you whose silicon is inside? It just works – amazing. That’s the beauty of the ARM software model and the whole ecosystem loves it. OEMs designing smart mobile devices appreciate the fact that they can source ARM powered silicon from multiple partners. If offers security of supply, a competitive market and a stream of innovative silicon being developed for them. It is quite common to have mobile OEMs with 6 or more ARM powered chip suppliers delivering cost-competitive, differentiated solutions. One silicon supplier might offer a mid range product with basic GPU and Standard Definition video playback whilst another offers a high end product with advanced GPU that can deliver rich graphics, 1080p video and integrated wireless connectivity. This arrangement has advantages to both OEM and silicon supplier. After all, who would want to be limited to a single supplier offering limited choice of silicon, reduced competition an...