Rockchip RK3288 vs RK3188 Performance Comparison

We were expecting some new processors at CES 2014, but this CES turned out to be mostly disappointing, and the vast majority of reporters present at the conference, do not seem interested in covering Chinese SoC vendors. Some information however surfaced on several foreign languages blogs and news sites about Rockchip RK3288. First, RK3288 is indeed based on ARM Cortex A12 as initially announced, and not some mysterious ARM Cortex A17 cores, but somebody at Rockchip likely made an embarrassing mistake, and Edward Weinert reported it was corrected at Rockchip booth with  pieces of paper as shown below. So Rockchip RK3288 has four of these Cortex A12 core, a 4L2K H.265 / HEVC video decoder, and an high-end Mali T764 T624 GPU supporting OpenGL ES3.0 and OpenCL 1.1 that vastly outperforms Mali-400 MP4 found in RK3188, and is even significantly faster than Adreno 330 GPU found in Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 […]

100W USB Power Delivery Solutions Coming Later This Year

Beside 5Gbps, USB 3.0 specifications promised the capability to deliver 100 Watt (20V, 5A) of power to charge laptops, monitors, and other relatively power hungry devices directly via USB. The USB IF is currently showcasing a prototype based on DisplayLink docking station capable of both charging a laptop and connecting to a display via the same USB “power delivery” cable, and is expecting retail products to become available by the end of the year. 100 Watt are only achievable for a full USB port, although micro USB power delivery is also possible but at lower power. The dock combines ROHM BD-92101 USB power delivery chipset with USB Graphics and docking chipset solutions from DisplayLink according to that press release. The main advantage of this system is that you don’t need to carry your power adapter without, you’ll just need to bring your laptop,  and plug it into a compatible USB […]

OLEDCOMM LiFi System Transforms Your LED Light Bulbs into Wireless Access Points

Oledcomm, a French startup, has designed a system based on LiFi, part of IEEE 802.15 standard, that quickly modulates your existing LED lights and deliver wireless networks in a similar manner as Wi-Fi, and delivers up to 1Gbit/s bandwidth. The modulation is fast enough so that it’s invisible to the human eye, and all your need is a LiFi enabled router that will power and transmit data to your LED lights, as well as device with a LiFi receiver, such as a LiFi enabled smartphone. Transmission is somehow bidirectional. Charbax filmed a demo by the company at CES 2014, and he seems to be in a state of disbelief during the interview, just as I did. The company did not want to provide technical details, as they are still looking for investors, but this appears to be real. In the video, they mention up to 10MB/s throughput, lower than the […]

Nvidia Tegra K1 Reference Tablet and Graphics Demo

With Tegra K1 and its Kepler GPU, Nvidia brings OpenGL 4.4, and not only OpenGL ES, to mobile devices, and the company is demo’ing OpenGL games such as Trine 2 on Tegra 4 reference tablet at CES 2014. Nvidia Tegra K1 Specifications In my initial post about Tegra K1 announcement, I missed some key features about Nvidia new processor which has now popped up on their website such as support for up to 8GB RAM, 4+1 configuration, etc and so listing a summary of the technical specifications of the 32-bit version may be useful: GPU – 192 NVIDIA CUDA cores using Kepler architecture CPU – NVIDIA 4-Plus-1 Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A15 “r3” up to 2.3 GHz Memory – DDR3L and LPDDR3, up to 8 GB with 40-bit address extension Display – LCD: Up to  3840×2160, HDMI: Up to 4K (UltraHD, 4096×2160) Package – 23×23 FCBGA, 16×16 S-FCCSP, or 15×15 FC PoP […]

ZOTAC to Sell ZBOX Nano mini PC based on Freescale i.MX6 SoC

ZOTAC, a company known to provide small x86 Linux PCs, is currently showcasing an ARM based version at CES 2014, part of their ZBOX nano series, running either Ubuntu 12.04 or Android 4.2 on a Freescale i.MX 6Quad processor. ZOTAC ZBox nano “ARM” specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX 6Q quad core Cortex A9 @ 1 Ghz with Vivante GC2000 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, SATA 3Gb/s interface with 2.5″ HDD support, and SD card slot  (SD/SDHC/MMC) Video Output – HDMI 1.4 USB – 4x USB 2.0 host port Connectivity – GbE Ethernet, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n via mini PCIe module. The computer currently runs Android 4.0.4 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but Android 4.0.4 will be upgraded to Android 4.2. ZBOX nano “ARM” mini PC will be available in Q2 2014 for a price between $100 and $150. Via Liliputing Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX […]

Media Player SoCs at CES 2014 – Qualcomm Snapdragon 802 and Sigma Designs SMP8756

Apart from Nvidia Tegra K1, CES 2014 has been somewhat disappointing when it comes to new mobile SoCs announcement. On the media processor front, we’ve had Marvell announces Skyworth Android TV set-top boxes and HDTV based on their ARMADA 1500 Plus SoC, and we’ve got at least two new processors for media players with Qualcomm Snapdragon 802, and Sigma Designs SMP8756. Let’s have a look at some of the details. Qualcomm Snapdragon 802 Qualcomm has started to enter the media player space with MPQ8064 / 8064M last year, but I haven’t seen actual products based on this SoC, except Qubi, which is not shipping yet. This year, the company announced Snapdragon 802 SoC designed for next-generation smart TVs, smart set-top boxes and smart digital media adapters. As usual, the company gave very little details in the press release, but here’s what we know: Quad core Krait processor @ 1.8Ghz with […]

Skyworth Announces K100 Smart TV, GS100 and GS300 Set-Top Boxes with “Google services for Smart TV” Powered by Marvell ARMADA 1500 Plus

What do company executives do when a product is not selling as expected? They organize a board meeting, deliberate for hours, and come up with a brilliant idea like “Let’s change the name!”. If I count correctly, this year would have been the release of products based on Google TV 4.0, but the company decided to scrap it, and this year, we have devices with “Google services for Smart TV” thanks to Skyworth K100 Smart TV, as well as GS100 and GS300 set-top boxes, all powered by Marvell ARMADA 1500 Plus SoC. Marvell published a press release yesterday detailing the news: Continuing its leadership in the Smart Home ecosystem, Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) today announced a partnership with Skyworth, a global TV maker, to deploy Smart TVs and set-top boxes with Google services for Smart TV. The new offerings are powered by Marvell’s ARMADA® 1500 Plus (88DE3108) system-on-chip (SoC) platform, a […]

Asus Transformer Book Duet Hybrid Laptop / Tablet Runs Android and Windows Simultaneously

During CES 2014 pre-opening keynote, Intel showcased a laptop capable of instantaneously switch between Windows and Android by the press of a button, and separately, AMD also announced dual OS support with Android and Windows 8 running simultaneously on a computer thanks to a version of Bluestacks optimized for AMD APUs.  So we can expect several hybrid laptop + tablet computers, let’s call it a “lapblet”, running Windows 8 and Android this year, and one of them is Asus Transformer Book Duet. Transformer Book Duet (TD300) Specifications: Processor – Intel Core i7 processor GPU – Intel HD graphics System Memory – 4GB DDR3L 1600 RAM Storage: Tablet – 128GB SSD + Up to 64GB Micro SD card Dock – Up to 1TB HDD Display – 13.3-inch Full HD IPS multi-touch display Connectivity – 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR, and 10/100M Ethernet Camera – Front-facing HD camera with a built-in […]

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