Lenovo IdeaPad smartbook appears, powered by Freescale and Pegatron

When Lenovo decided to shelve the Skylight smartbook, there were many tears here at Engadget HQ, but it seems the company's ambitions continue in the smartphone-turned-netbook realm. Notebook Italia reports that a new Lenovo IdeaPad has surfaced at the Freescale Technology Forum this week, powered by a Freescale i.MX515 SoC with an 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, smartphone-esque battery life, and a power management system reportedly robust enough that it doesn't even need to be cooled. If all this sounds rather familiar, it might be because you've seen it before -- it appears Lenovo simply tweaked the low-power Pegatron reference design that we wrote about early last year. Not that we're complaining or anything.

[dcoaster Posted Jun 23rd 2010 11:58AM]

USA won!!!

[dcoaster Posted Jun 23rd 2010 11:58AM]

@dcoaster Just thought you all would appreciate this bit of off-topic news. =)

[deadaim Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:03PM]

@dcoaster

heres some more off topic news

noone cares about this laptop!!.. make a google/motorola/verizon/adobe conference live blog already

[techee44 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:11PM]

@deadaim

I care about this laptop. Downrank.

[Godfather Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:26PM]

@dcoaster
And a well deserved win it was.

Back on topic. If Freescale is not marketing their PowerPC products, who in the world will?

[Ducman69 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 2:48PM]

@dcoaster USA! USA! USA!

But seriously, why would anyone want a cellphone processor in such a humongous device?

The N450 absolutely obliterated the Cortex A8, and is still plenty frugal and inexpensive to manufacture. Here is the N450 benchmarked against the Cortex A8:

"Languishing across all of the JavaScript benchmarks, the ARM Cortex-A8 was only one-third to one-half as fast as the x86 competition. However, this might partially be a result of the very slow memory subsystem that burdened the ARM core.

More troubling is the unacceptably poor double-precision floating-point throughput of the ARM Cortex-A8. While floating-point performance isn’t important to all tasks and is certainly not as important as integer performance, it cannot be ignored if ARM wants its products to successfully migrate upwards into traditional x86-dominated market spaces."

[Ducman69 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 2:50PM]

@Ducman69 And btw, 1/3rd the performance was on a 1Ghz clocked ARM.

Reduce that by another 20% for a 800mhz A8. OUCH!!!! O_O

[MaTdg Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:06PM]

@Ducman69 I want. They might have more raw power, but no atom can match the performance/watt of an ARM.

[xxxsam Posted Jun 24th 2010 12:15PM]

@Ducman69 Doesn't N450 still consume significantly more power than a typical ARM-based SoC, and don't these SoCs also include additional built-in controllers that still aren't integrated into N450?

Maybe this is wrong now, but I was under the impression that Intel netbooks often still include cooling fans...

This particular smartbook however is disastrously underpowered - A8 is okay for phones but for a netbook? Please. Dual-core A9 uses less power than an Atom CPU core, and ought to be about equally fast depending on what it's doing. Whenever I read a smartbook story I just look at the processor code - A8? Move quickly on.

With the first A9-based smartbook (supposedly) coming out, there should be more soon. A processor as slow as an A8 will only give them a bad name. At least A9 compares to Atoms...

[bob e Posted Jun 23rd 2010 11:59AM]

Looks quite nice :)

[cdf74dc9 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:02PM]

Goal US!!!

[SolidSnake Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:04PM]

Autobots, assemble!

[WebOn Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:20PM]

@SolidSnake
damn you beat me to it

[jayayess1190 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:04PM]

USA USA!!!

[taylorsmith246 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:11PM]

Damn you fat, black bezel!

[techee44 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:12PM]

Please uprank me.

[WebOn Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:21PM]

@techee44
whats in it for me? nothing?

downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!downrank!

[techee44 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 2:14PM]

@techee44

My experiment is complete! If you tell the people to uprank you, they shall downrank you. If you tell them to downrank you, they shall uprank you!

[dardub Posted Jun 23rd 2010 3:10PM]

@techee44 Yes I was following your experiment. I have a new question, what if you say please downrank me as the first comment of the post?

[techee44 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 7:21PM]

@dardub

Hmm... Good question dardub. I shall have to figure this out. I've only ever been first once, but with school out, maybe I will be able to accomplish it.

[Prestidigitator Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:29PM]

Freescale? Pegatron? Just when I thought I was good knowing words like pinetrail or froyo... I'm so glad I come to this website so I can know what I don't know. Awaiting pictures of this pegasus from cybertron.

[neglewis Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:41PM]

@Prestidigitator
new words? hmm
you can find a freescale chip in... basically ... all modern devices...
I guess Intel is a strange new word... too?

[solarsea Posted Jun 23rd 2010 12:52PM]

So this is basically like the Genesi's EFIKA open client ot smartbook.

Same i.MX51

[HikaKao Posted Jun 23rd 2010 1:34PM]

Bleh, waiting for a superbook.

[bigcow05 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 1:36PM]

Does anyone know what the OS is? The Pegatron notebook seemed to be running an ARM version of Ubuntu, but if this is the descendant of Skylight, then maybe it's running Android?

[brokensticks Posted Jun 23rd 2010 2:54PM]

I saw this laptop somewhere else running ubuntu

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/ubuntu-netbook-edition-1007-demoed-on.html

[Kobaljov Posted Jun 23rd 2010 3:22PM]

A classic matte ThinkPad styled touchscreen tablet/slate will be much more interesting from Lenovo..

[Jamuflaknu Posted Jun 23rd 2010 7:15PM]

@Kobaljov I totally agree. This one looks like those glossy HP ProBooks. If Lenovo comes with a durable ThinkPad styled version, I will seriously consider buying one.

[retarded commenter Posted Jun 23rd 2010 7:04PM]

Install Meego, problem solved

[grobbo Posted Jun 23rd 2010 10:56PM]

I want this (but what size is the screen?)

Engadget, why haven't you reviewed the Toshiba AC100 yet?

[dhatch Posted Jun 24th 2010 1:25AM]

What, no TEGRA?!?!?!?

NOOOOOOOO!!!

[sola Posted Jun 24th 2010 12:02PM]

I don't know why OEMs are even trying to create systems with single-core Cortex-A8 SOCs. It will obviously not be fast enough for the average user.

A solid smartbook/tablet offering needs at least Tegra2-level computing power (dual-core Cortex-A9) with fast RAM access to beat Atom based netbooks.

And I wouldn't mind a decent Linux on them like MeeGo or Ubuntu instead of Android.