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ARM Releases Free DS-5 Community Edition For Android Developers

ARM announced a free version of its Eclipse-based  DS-5 tools for small development firms (with 10 or fewer developers) and individuals who publish applications for Android. The ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Community Edition (CE) helps create performance- and power-optimized native software by integrating a graphical debugger for code generated for the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) and a basic version of the ARM Streamline performance analysis tool. DS-5 CE is designed to work with Android Virtual Devices ( AVDs), development boards and devices that run Android 2.2 and API 8 or higher. ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Community Edition is distributed as plug-in for Eclipse and completes the app developer toolkit with a C, C++ and Assembly graphical debugger that builds on the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), a software performance profiler and system analyzer (ARM Streamline). To get started, you’ll need Eclipse IDE, the Android SDK and the Android NDK […]

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Nokia Developer Day in Chiang Mai – 6-7 December 2011

Nokia Developer Day will take place at Kantary Hills in Chiang Mai, Thailand on the 6 & 7 December 2011. A Separate event will also take place in Khonkaen on the 8 & 9 December 2011. Here’s the agenda for the 2 days event in Chiang Mai: Day 1 – 6th of December: 08:45 – 09:15 – Registration 09:15 – 09:30 – Introduction to Ecosystem Business Updates 09:30 – 09:50 – Development possibilities on Nokia Platforms 09:50 – 12:30 – Introduction of Series 40 Java – Touch & Type with hands-on exercises. 12:30 – 13:30 – Lunch 13:30 – 16:00 – Series 40 Web Apps for the next billion with hands-on exercises. 16:00 – 17:00 – Social Media Marketing Training 17:00 – Q&A Day 2 : 7th of December 08:45 – 09:15 – Registration 09:15 – 10:00 – Overall business direction 10:00 – 12:00 – Introduction to Qt Quick (QML) […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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World’s First Android 4.0 Tablet is based on Rockchip RK2918

Rockchip has announced Android 4.0.1 (ICS) would be ready by the first week of December with Rochchip RK2918 based tablets shipping with the new OS available later in December. The company claims this will be the first Android 4.0 tablet available in the market. That also means that owners of Archos Arnova G2 tablets should be able to run Android 4.0 very soon. The demo below seems relatively smooth compared to other demos I have seen on development boards such as ST Ericsson Snowball, so I suppose Rockchip has already enabled hardware acceleration.

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Turn your TV into a Computer with FXI Technologies Cotton Candy USB Stick

FXI Technologies has unveiled a USB stick that turns any screen into an a computer running Android or Ubuntu, and in the future Windows 8 will also be supported. The Cotton Candy will include a Samsung Exynos 4210 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz, with a Quad Core Mali 400MP  GPU, like the Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone. It will also feature 1GB of RAM, a microSD slot capable of holding up to 64GB of flash memory, Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity and an HDMI port. This small device (it measures 8cm x 2.5cm) has decent multimedia capabilities as it can support 1080p decode of MPEG4-SP/H.263/H.264 AVC/MPEG-2/VC1, as well as MP3, AAC, AAC+, Real Audio decoding and JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG pictures. Extra third party codec can also be added. There are 2 main use cases for the Cotton Candy: Connection to a HDMI-capable TV or Display: Connect an HDMI monitor/TV […]

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Technologies and Techniques to Accelerate Embedded Development

I’ve recently attended a webinar entitled “Accelerate Your Next Embedded Development Project: Essential Tools and Techniques for Every Phase of Your Project Lifecycle”  presented by Wind river and VDC Research. The two speakers were: Marc Brown, Wind River VP, Tools and Marketing Operation. Christopher Rommel, Senior Analyst at VDC Research. The webinar was composed of three sections: Industry Challenges. (Wind River) Embedded Development: Data and Trends. (VDC Research) New ways to accelerate development (Wind River) Industry challenges Marc describes the new challenges for device software drivers: Increased security, safety and quality requirements for connectivity Performance scalability: multi-cores, many cores and SoC support. Pressure to lower OPEX (Operating Expenses) Companies are now pushed to increase performance,  become more cost effective and provide a better connectivity while at the same time decrease time to market, project risks and security issues. Data and Trends Christopher first present a slide showing there are still […]

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Embedded Hardware & Systems Trends for 2012 and Beyond

VDC Research currently has a research program called “STRATEGIC INSIGHTS 2012: EMBEDDED HARDWARE & SYSTEMS” where they analyze potential opportunities and give forecasts for embedded systems market through 2016. Some recent insights from their ongoing coverage of the Embedded Hardware & Systems market include: The Communications / Networking market is engaged in a period of dynamic change that is redefining the sector’s processing requirements. FPGAs & Linux are redefining embedded market growth requirements. The smart grid is creating new opportunities for embedded processors. Single board computers are enabling next-generation computing for military / aerospace applications. The Institute for Supply Management’s PMI index continues to demonstrate isolated pockets of regional growth, suggesting that new project starts and sustained unit shipments will maintain embedded market growth in 2012. The final reports should be available in 2012 as follows: TRACK 1: FASTFORWARD: INSIGHT FOR LEADERS Volume Number Volume Title Publication Date 1 Generating […]

AAEON Intel Arc
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Enable OpenGL 2.0 and WebGL for Intel GMA3150 in Ubuntu

I wanted to use WebGL in my Acer Aspire One D255E netbook that uses an Intel GMA 3150 onboard graphics card, but it did not work in Chromium nor Firefox. WebGL requires OpenGL 2.0 support, but I found out I only had support for OpenGL 1.4:

But I found out it was possible to enable OpenGL 2.0 for GMA 3150 in Linux by installing and running driconf:

and clicking on “Enable limited ARB_fragment_shader support on 915/945.” and “Enable stub ARB_occlusion_query support on 915/945.” options. They are not enabled by default because they do cause problems. After those two options were enabled, OpenGL 2.0 was enabled.

But I still could not use WebGL in either Chromium nor Firefox, so I decided to install the latest version of Mesa (7.11) with indirect rendering (software) enabled with libOSMesa:

Even with the latest Mesa library, I could not use WebGL […]

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OpenMAX (Open Media Acceleration)

OpenMAX (Open Media Acceleration) is a royalty-free, cross-platform set of C-language programming interfaces that provides abstractions for routines especially useful for audio, video, and still images. OpenMAX standard is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. OpenMAX allows developers to take advantages of hardware media decoding/encoding. For example, If you want to play video using Raspberry Pi hardware (VideoCore IV GPU in Broadcom BCM2835) you’ll have to use OpenMAX IL. OpenMAX provides three layers of interfaces: Application Layer (AL): Open standard for accelerating the capture, and presentation of audio, video, and images in multimedia applications on embedded and mobile devices. Integration Layer (IL) : API defining a standardized media component interface to enable developers and platform providers to integrate and communicate with multimedia codecs implemented in hardware or software. Development Layer (DL): APIs containing a comprehensive set of audio, video and imaging functions that can be implemented and optimized […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC