Freescale's i.MX515 netbook chip now supports Android and Xandros
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Feb 18th 2009 2:11AM
posted Feb 18th 2009 2:11AM
When we first laid eyes on Freescale's five-core i.MX515 processor this January, we hoped it was all it claimed to be -- promising an extremely cool machine with a low power budget and a price point that'll take your next netbook down near the fabled $199 range. So far, so good: the Pegatron machines we peeped at CES fit the bill quite nicely, and now ZD Net is reporting that the Cortex-A8-based chip supports the HyperSpace instant-on OS, specially optimized 3G HSDA data modules from Option and Wavecom, and both Android and Xandros. Of course, none of this will be of any help to you if you're married to Windows -- but then again, even if you are we wouldn't really blame you for wanting a little Linux on the side. Especially if it comes in a sweet package like this.
5-core!?!? I wonder how this will stack up against Tegra/Snapdragon powered babies like Qualcomm's netbook reference design: http://www.xhibitingblog.com/2008/12/the-qbook/
It's really five cores? (a) that's a weird number, and (b) I thought, like somebody else said, A8 was the single-core design and it wasn't until A9 that dual and quad core were happening with the ARM stuff.
Are they doing something dubious like counting parts of the processor as different cores, or counting other components that are integrated onto the chip?
They're counting different parts of the chip as cores, which is really screwy. If you do that, I think there's ways to count a quad-core Cortex-A9 as having 12 cores.
Nice, i cant wait until they make a netbook powered by this chip
I fail to see freescale newbook to take off when you can find dell netbook similar to the price. Most people are marry to window because they are marry to a certain software that can only be found on window plateform. For me it is a good tts program where the voice engine sound more like a person than a robot.
FYI Amazon Kindle2 is running Linux and its TTS software ("Tom") is perfectly smooth!
Yes, Linux for all Win!!!
this is awesome, totally what netbooks need to return to, cut out the windows fat, get that price back down and really release something competitive and functional.
It's true that most people are married to the software that can only be used with windows.. Let's take vista for example, when XP is upgraded to Vista, most people, including myself refuse to switch because of the lack of supporting software..
not on a netbook...What software do you use that absolutely can't be replaced by software running on Ubuntu??
browsers, photo/video editors, office suites, IDE/development, RSS/podcast/, media organization/media players, etc etc..
1.0Ghz Cortex-A8 FTW!
Seriously though, the Cortex A8 will be an excellent processor for cellphones and MIDs, not sure about netbooks. It may cut it for some, but surely the dual-core/quad-core Cortex-A9 (with out-of-order processing) will put Atom in the dust!
This quite a stupid title/statement.
If I'm correct Xandros and Android are based on linux kernel, if this chip gets android support it gets Xandros support and whatever-linux-distros-you-want support.
The correct title to this news is "Freescale's i.MX515 netbook chip now supports Linux"
Not necessarily. Though the linux kernel supports different architectures, the specific patches for different distros don’t - you’d need to fix them. Also the repositories for software are specific for each architecture. Dell f. ex. built its ubuntu for the mini on the lpia (Atom optimised) architecture - you need to convert packages built for normal x86 to use them with the lpia built kernel.
Since i don’t know if (but don’t think that) this is even x86 compatible, it’s at least not trivial to use a different linux. But if this processor keeps its promisses other distros might add support for its architecture.
When working in limited storage/memory situations the kernel will be built with the smallest number of drivers possible. On the desktop every possible driver will be built as modules but the final product is quite large. This means each SoC will have it's own kernel patch set and since each distro uses their own patchset/configuration not to mention kernel version this means each distro has to build a kernel for each SoC they want to support. The final piece of the puzzle is userland utilities since many devices require specific tools to be installed apart from their driver in order to fully function.
Xandros? Uggh.
While i really like a move towards "better" chips than the standart boring atom, this also poses quite a lot of problems.
IT is nice that xandros and android are supported, but i guess thats just the core os and some programms.
There will be a lot of programs that you simply can not get for your architecture (just like what is happening to the ppc using mac folks), so you have to use mediocre alternatives, or (if its open source) translate it yourself, which many people (including me) cant do.
qwert
You have a point but as I understand it, ARM architecture isn't exactly obscure and is supported by standard compilers etc; a lot of simpler programs will probably just work. And Unix people have been here before - the relative dominance of Intel architecture is quite recent, used to be that you'd expect to have programs running on Sun and HP and whatever else.
The Mac situation is a bit different (and really just goes with the way Apple typically handle upgrades anyhow - Mac apps drop support for old OS versions extremely quickly, regardless of the processor. On the Mac, applications are distributed as binary, rather than built with a C compiler, so they definitely can only work on the architectures the developer intended.
There is an interesting Mac-related point, though; a very large number of Unix open-source projects have Mac versions, mainly because (with some tweaks) those programs 'just compile' on the Unix-based Mac OS... so I think we could expect something similar for ARM on netbooks if it becomes popular.
I do have to admit that im not an expert, but i think i see your point.
But i still would say its not practical for the average user.
Just take my standart programms that i use on all my computers: Opera (browser), digikam (KDE photomanagement), google earth, openoffice.
I havent checked thoroughly, but i think none of those is available in an version that "just runs" on an ARM based OS. That might change, should this plans to get ARM popular work out, but for the time being, i cant use that stuff.
With digikam and openoffice i could port it myself (theoretically speaking) since they are opensource, but google earth and opera would be problematic.
The dominance of x86 is not neccesarily a good thing, but at the moment i dont see a way around that. The only "big thing" (for the average user) on another platform that could have brought competition also moved to intel :(
qwert
Opera is available in ARM versions, but the only ones that Opera distributes are for platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian. If there's sufficient demand, though, I'm sure Opera could compile an ARM version of their Linux/X11/Qt browser fairly easily.
Digikam... as Canonical is giving full support for ARM, I suspect there'll be a Kubuntu version... and, it might exist already.
Google Earth... agreed.
OpenOffice... this will DEFINITELY be available on Ubuntu. IIRC, it's already available, actually, on a third-party Ubuntu ARM port.
Canonical will be releasing an ARM optimized version of Ubuntu this spring. I imagine we should see some ARM based repositories to go with that. Granted, that requires running Ubuntu which isn't everyone's cup of tea.
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And we're held back by windows again? When windows fanboys going to rebel?
Demo of the HW platform – anyway we can demo the Z501 and iMX51 – any products in the industry that uses these platforms ??
have samples??thanks very much.
Demo of the HW platform – anyway we can demo the Z501 and iMX51 – any products in the industry that uses these platforms ?/and the praparation of the two??Thanks very much,