Tizen Shows Up in Smartphones, Ultrabooks, and Cars

I’ve seen a lot of tweets about Tizen in the last fews days, mainly because Tizen Conference 2013 just took place. First there’s been Tizen 2.1 SDK release, and few demos have surfaced,  showcasing Tizen in their target devices: smartphones, tablets,smart TVs, laptops, and In-vehicle infotainment devices. Beside all the work done, the companies behind the project will also offer $4 million to developers who publish apps on Tizen store. There will be 9 categories. The best 3 games will get $200,000 each, and the best apps in the other 6 categories $120,000 each. Tizen App Challenge will start on June 3, 2013, and you can see details for this program here. Let’s see the demos. First Tizen in Samsung developer smartphone running Qt 5.1, and the usual Qt5 Cinematic Experience demo, as well as 2 others apps, both super smooth. (via TizenExperts). You can find more information in Qt […]

Intel Takes on ARM with Silvermont Microarchitecture for Low Power SoCs

Intel has launched Silvermont, a new microarchitecture for low power SoC targeting smartphones, tablets, and servers in data centers. Silvermont SoC will be manufactured using 22nm Tri-Gate SoC process, and the company claims 3x times more peak performance than current generation Atom processors, or 5 times less power consumption at the same performance level. Silvermont will be used in Bay Trail, Avoton,  and Merrifield processors: Intel’s quad-core “Bay Trail” SoC is scheduled for Q4 2013 tablets, and variants of the “Bay Trail” platform will also be used in market segments including entry laptop and desktop computers. Intel’s “Merrifield” is scheduled to ship to customers by the end of this year, and actual smartphones will show up in 2014. Intel’s “Avoton” will be used in low power microservers, and provide full server product capability that customers require including 64-bit, integrated fabric, error code correction, Intel virtualization technologies and software compatibility. Intel […]

Embedded Linux Conference 2013 Schedule

The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2013) will take place on February 20 – 22, 2013 at Park 55 Hotel in San Francisco, California. ELC consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting, and that did not get presented at ELCE 2012 (AFAICR). February 20 11:00 – Anatomy of the arm-soc git tree by Olof Johansson, Google We are now two years into the new maintainer model for ARM platforms, and we have settled down into a workflow that maintainers have adjusted well to. Still, when new platforms arrive, or when maintainer ship changes hands, there’s sometimes a bit of ramp-up in getting used to how we organize our git tree and how we prefer to see code submitted to fit that model. This presentation will give an overview of […]

Yocto Project Overview and Update – ELCE 2012

Last post about ELCE 2012 videos… David Stewart, manager of the Yocto Project team within the Open Source Technology Center at Intel, gives an introduction to the Yocto Project, as well as a status update at ELCE 2012. Abstract: The Yocto Project is a joint project to unify the world’s efforts around embedded Linux and to make Linux the best choice for embedded designs. The Yocto Project is an open source starting point for embedded Linux development which contains tools, templates, methods and actual working code to get started with an embedded device project. In addition, the Yocto Project includes Eclipse plug-ins to assist the developer. This talk gives a walk-through of the key parts of the Yocto Project for developing embedded Linux projects. In addition, features will be described from the latest release of the Yocto Project, v1.3. The talk will include demos of some of the key new […]

Near Field Communication with Linux – ELCE 2012

Samuel Otiz, software engineer at the Intel Open Source Technology Center, talks about NFC support for Linux at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe in , on November 5, 2012. Abstract: Linux recently gained support for NFC (Neard Field Communication), and this presentation will describe the status of the current NFC stack in terms of actual features, hardware support and also distribution availability.After showing how this stack is architectured, we will also explain what our long and short term plans are. NFC hardware is typically found on mobile devices, many of them running Linux or Android. Up until recently, only Android provided a real and viable software support for those chipsets. During this presentation I will show how the Linux NFC stack is now getting on par with the Android stack features and API wise and how its design allows for an already broader range of supported chipsets. The presentation is divided into  […]

Intel Unveils Atom Z2420 Processor for Entry Level Android Smartphones

Today was Intel & Qualcomm turns to have their keynotes. One of Intel announcements is the Atom Z2420 1.2 GHz processor (codenamed Lexington) that comes with PowerVR SGX540 GPU, 1080p video decoder & encoder, and features hyper-threading technology. This processor manufactured with 32nm process technology targets low cost smartphones for emerging markets. Here are the key specifications of Intel Atom Z2420: Process technology – 32nm HKMG Co-Pop Package – 12x12mm, 617 balls, 0.4mm pitch, LPDDR2 PoP package Intel Atom Architecture – 512KN Intel Smart Cache, Enhanced Deeper Sleep, C6/Low Power Audio State, Smart Idle Technology and Digital Thermal Sensor (DTS) 3D Graphics Engine – PowerVR Sgx540 with 2000 MPPS peak fil rate, 40 MTSm with support for Open VG 1.1, OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 Hardware Accelerated Video – 1080p30 video encode and decode Display Controller – Supports up to 4 DSI lanes at 800 Mbps per lane Memory Interface […]

Ramos W32 Android Tablet Powered by Intel Atom Z2460

One of my reader, Alex, pointed me to Ramos W32 Tablet, which appears to be the first Android tablet built around Intel Atom Z2460 (Medfield), although the processor has been unveiled in January 2011, and smartphones such as Lenovo K800  have been available for nearly half a year. I suppose the delay between tablets and smartphones releases is because whereas the first smartphones could be based on Android 2.3.x (gingerbread), tablets would have to use Android 4.0.x (ICS) or greater to have a proper large screen interface. Here are Ramos W32 Tablet PC specifications: SoC – Intel Atom Z2460 @ 1.6GHz with PowerVR SGX540 GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 16GB Nand Flash, microSD card socket (Up to 32GB) Display – 10.1″ Capacitive Screen IPS Display (1280×800) Connectivity: Bluetooth WIFI 802.11 b/g/n 3G via external 3G dongles such as E1916, ZTE AC2736, HUAWEI E1750, HUAWEI EC122, HUAWEI EM770W […]

Intel Announces 3 Atom S1200 Low Power Server SoCs: S1220, S1240 and S1260

Intel has recently introduced the Intel Atom S1200 product family (Codename: Centerton) targeting high-density microservers (1000+ nodes per rack), and energy-efficient storage and networking systems. These new processors includes features such as error code correction, 64-bit support, and virtualization technologies required for use inside data centers, and consume as low as 6.1 watts. Three models are currently available: Intel Atom S1220 @ 1.6 GHz  – TDP 8.1 Watts Intel Atom S1240 @ 1.6 GHz – TDP 6.1Watts Intel Atom S1260 @2.0 GHz – TDP 8.5Watts The SoCs include 2 physical cores and 4 threads enabled with Hyper-Threading Technology. The SoCs also include 64-bit support, a memory controller supporting up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, Intel Virtualization Technologies (Intel VT), 8 lanes of PCI Express 2.0, Error-Correcting Code (ECC) support, and other I/O interfaces integrated from Intel chipsets. Atom S1200 processors are manufactured using 32nm process technology. Intel also announced that […]