January 2012 - Page 8 of 8 - CNX Software

January 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Intrinsyc Launches OPEN-6 Platform for Freescale i.MX6

Intrinsyc Software International announced the OPEN-6 Design and Production Platform that leverages Freescale i.MX 6 multi-core Cortex-A9 processors. Intrinsyc’s OPEN-6 DPP product line will deliver a platform for device makers focused on tablets, eReaders, automotive infotainment (IVI), and industrial handhelds. The platform will include support for: Android 4.0 or Windows Mobile 6.5 Production BSP Advanced Power Management 3G and 4G communication module options, with Intrinsyc’s RapidRIL technology Combination Bluetooth, WLAN, and GPS Capacitive multi-touch display with multiple options including daylight readability Multiple high resolution cameras Full suite of sensors Device Management through Intrinsyc’s i.Device Manager The OPEN-6 DPP product line includes the following solutions: Licensable Production Package – includes production software in source format and cost optimized hardware design that can be licensed by OEM’s and ODM’s for device acceleration Development Kit – solution for application developers and device manufacturers to evaluate, develop, test, and deploy applications that utilize the […]

January 5, 2012January 9, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Ziilabs ZMS-40 Quad Core Cortex A9 SoC is now Available

Ziilabs has just announced the availability of its 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor optimized for Android tablets. The ZMS-40 combines 96 of ZiiLABS’ StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs. The number of StemCell Media processors has doubled compared to the dual core ZMS-20. Ziilabs’ own GPU benchmark called MandelMark shows a 2X increase in performance or a 50% reduction in power consumption. The benchmark is not yet available for download, but the company plans to release it in Q1 2012 as an apk file. This processor competes directly with the Nvidia Tegra 3 in terms of CPU and GPU performance. It may actually beat it, as it can support dual independent displays (see below for details). Here are ZMS-40 Key Features: Quad 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 cores with Neon ZiiLABS flexible Stemcell media processing capabilities Low-energy SIMD architecture for high performance media acceleration 96x 32-bit floating point […]

January 4, 2012January 4, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Video Demo of XMBC on Raspberry Pi

XMBC is a free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. Some people are currently working on porting it to the Raspberry Pi board. They posted a video demo on their forum and I uploaded the video to YouTube for those interested in seeing the progress. The video just shows XMBC booting, then accessing the menu and showing the Videocore GPU is detected. This is still work in progress, but it looks promising. 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

January 4, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

MIPS Releases Android NDK 7m

MIPS has just announced the release of the Android Native Development Kit version 7. It has the same APIs as the Android NDK revision 7 released in November 2011 (for Android 4.0), but adds support for MIPS architecture and the MIPS ABI . The NDK is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS. The NDK allows developers to use C/C++ code either to reuse existing C/C++ code or to improve the performance over code developed with Java. Note that MIPS states that “using native code does not result in an automatic performance increase, but always increases application complexity. If you have not run into any limitations using the Android framework APIs, you probably do not need the NDK.” The NDK can be downloaded for: Windows Linux Mac You’ll also have to download the Android MIPS SDK, if you want to use the NDK. Strangely, the Mac SDK is not available for […]

January 1, 2012January 1, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Are Being Auctioned

The Raspberry Pi foundation has setup an Ebay account and made some of the Raspberry Pi Beta Board Model B (Ethernet + 256 MB RAM) available on Ebay. This is for charity so you won’t be able to get them for 35 USD… The current bid is 1,320.00 GBP (2050 USD). They’ll add 2 boards on Ebay each day. The goal of this auction is to gather funds in order to hire a full-time staff and give as many Raspberry Pi away to kids as possible. If you win the bid, you’ll get one of the 10 boards for sale, a USB power, an SD card with Debian, and some kind of certificate showing you were one of the first to get a board. If you are interested, you can bid at http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Raspberry-Pi-Model-B-beta-board-10-limited-series-10-/180786734741?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2a17baa695 Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as […]