Freescale
Latest
Wireless charging for tablets is finally coming next year
We're still waiting for the Rezence standard to bring wireless charging to laptops, but Freescale is taking a big step towards making that a reality. It just announced a new wireless product that's powerful enough to recharge tablets, portable medical devices, and other large gadgets. The 15-watt system, which should hit the market early next year, offers three times as much electrical power as Freescale's phone charging solution. It also plays nicely with other standards like the Wireless Power Consortium's Qi technology, VentureBeat reports. (Unfortunately, existing 5-watt devices won't get any upgrade from the 15-watt setup, FreeScale tells us.) If you've ever used a USB battery pack to recharge your gadgets, you've probably noticed that tablets typically need to be plugged into higher wattage USB ports to get juiced up. The same basic idea applies here. Increased power could also mean that tossing your phone on a wireless charger before you run out the door could actually be useful. After all, when charging your phone over a USB cable is three times faster, the minor convenience of wireless is a lot less compelling. [Photo: A Lumia phone on a Nokia wireless charging pad.]
AMD's new CEO has a background in mobile technology
It feels like just yesterday that AMD brought in Rory Read to turn around its ailing fortunes, but today there's another changing of the guard. The chip designer has announced that chief operating officer Lisa Su is its new CEO, effective immediately; Read will stick around as an advisor until the end of the year. The company isn't going into detail about the reasons behind the shift, but it does say that Read has been planning a succession with the board of directors. It's an "ideal time" for Su to take the reins, the board's Bruce Clafin says.
Freescale makes the world's smallest ARM controller chip even tinier
Apparently, Freescale didn't think the diminutive Kinetis KL02 was tiny enough -- it just unveiled the KL03, the new world's smallest ARM microcontroller. At 1.6mm by 2mm, the Cortex-M0+ chip is 15 percent smaller than its ancestor. That's miniscule enough to comfortably fit inside the dimple of a golf ball, folks. Despite the shrunken profile, it's both easier to program and more energy-efficient. The size isn't just for bragging rights, of course. Freescale sees the KL03 helping out the internet of things, where a fraction of a millimeter can make a big difference. Companies can't start using the chip in earnest until it enters full production this June, but it may lead to very compact smart appliances and wearables once it arrives.
Meet Utilite, a $99 quad-core ARM-based PC running Ubuntu
That box you see above? It's a quad-core ARM-based PC running Ubuntu called Utilite. The desktop system, made by Compulab, will be available next month starting at $99. While there are plenty of Android dongles built on ARM SoCs out there, few (if any) can truly offer a PC-like experience. The company -- best known for its Trim Slice, Fit-PC and MintBox products -- wants to change this. Utilite packs a single-, dual- or quad-core Freescale i.MX6 Cortex-A9 MPCore processor (up to 1.2 GHz), up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM (1066MHz), an mSATA SSD (up to 512GB), WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI and DVI-D outputs, two Gigabit Ethernet sockets, four USB 2.0 ports, one micro-USB OTG connector, audio jacks (analog and S/PDIF), a micro-SD XD slot and two ultra-mini RS232 interfaces -- phew! Rounding things up is support for OpenGL ES, OpenVG and OpenCL EP plus multi-stream 1080p H.264 on-chip decoding. All this fits in a chassis mesuring just 5.3 x 3.9 x 0.8 inches (135 x 100 x 21mm) and only consumes 3-8W using a 10-16V supply (unregulated). Those are impressive specs for the price, and the system sure looks positioned to compete favorably with some of the x86 boxes out there.
Freescale fashions world's smallest ARM-powered microcontroller
If you're looking for an exceedingly tiny ARM-based microcontroller, Freescale says it's just cooked up the world's smallest. Dubbed the Kinetis KL02, the piece of kit is 25 precent smaller than the previous record-holder and measures up at a 1.9 x 2.00 x 0.56 millimeters. Having trouble visualizing exactly how small that is? Just take a gander at the photo above. A 48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ processor has made it onto the wafer-level chip-scale package and it's paired with 32KB of flash memory and 4KB of RAM. The outfit reckons it'll be a good match for 'internet of things' devices that are tight on space, and says it beats its older L Series kin in power efficiency. Manufacturer sampling for the KL02 is slated for March, while wide availability is penciled in for July, and it'll set buyers back 75 cents a piece when purchased in 100,000-unit loads. Hit the jump for more details in the press release.
Ca-Fi Dashlinq upsizes in-car Android infotainment, arrives in January
There may be a size war brewing among Android-based infotainment system builders. Ca-Fi thought it was sitting pretty with its 6.2-inch unit earlier this year, but we're starting to think it was rankled by similarly-sized devices like Parrot's Asteroid Smart -- that would help explain its upcoming, 7-inch Dashlinq. Along with one-upping a nemesis, the double-DIN system brings multitouch zoom to a heavily customized (if slightly creaky) Android 2.3 interface. Otherwise, we're looking at a familiar, if fairly sophisticated approach: there's a dedicated media DSP, GPS navigation, an SD card slot for local content and internet access through 3G or WiFi. Ca-Fi expects the Dashlinq to arrive in January for €499 ($657), at which point we hope there's at least a momentary truce in the battle for the car's center stack.
Hands-on with Kobo's Glo and Mini e-readers (video)
Earlier today we had a nice sit-down with Kobo, where we got some quality hands-on time with the company's Arc Android tablet. As you can imagine, that was the marquee product on display, but we also had the chance to handle the outfit's newest e-readers: the Glo ComfortLight, which has built-in frontlighting, and the Mini, which is exactly what it sounds like. Both will be available October 1st, with the 6-inch Glo going for $129 and the 5-inch Mini priced at $79. Neither will have ads, which might be one of the biggest differentiators between these and some of Amazon's offerings. If you're short on time, we've got some hands-on photos below, but if you've got a few minutes to spare, a walk-through video awaits after the break.
Freescale's new industrial touchscreen tech even works in the rain
Freescale is announcing a new industrial touch sensing technology that'll even sense your swipes and prods through a film of water. Xtrinsic 3.0 is designed to be used in industrial, medical and in-car systems, with pre-built user interfaces ready to be added to any device its jammed inside. In addition to being able to work through water, it can withstand noise, detect electrical interference and reduce false touches. It's being demonstrated at the company's technology forum in India from today, presumably ready to be licensed by passing equipment manufacturers in short order.
TakkTile turns digital barometers into open-source robot touch sensors
Freescale Semiconductor's MPL115A2 is a tiny thing that will sit quite comfortably on the tip of your finger. It's hard not to marvel at the engineering that went into the creation of something so small, yet so sensitive. The little metal square is minute enough to be plunked into a cell phone, offering up location pinpointing technologies that supplement GPS, gauging positions based on changes in atmospheric pressure. Harvard's Biorobotics team was clearly impressed when it discovered the technology, devising a fascinating implementation that extends beyond the walls of the cell phone. The sensors would go on to form the core of the department's TakkTile open-source boards capable of bringing sensitive touch sensing to robot hands. The I2C bus / USB-compatible boards incorporate several of the sensors, with the whole thing covered in 6mm of rubber, to help protect them. The rubber lends some durability to the TakkTile -- in fact, if you click on after the break, you can see footage of the team placing a 25 pound dumbbell on the board and banging it with a hammer (which seems to be a fairly popular activity over there). Even with that extra layer, the TakkTile is still quite sensitive -- as evidenced by the five gram weight in the video. In fact, it's even possible to get it to detect a pulse by placing it against your wrist, though the team was unable to recreate that during our visit. Also compelling is the price -- bought in bulk, the tiny barometers will run you $1 a piece, making the tactile array relatively inexpensive to assemble. Once you buy one, you can also get the most bang for your buck by snapping off the rows for individual use, a possibility given the symmetry of the design. Or you can just make one yourself, as the department has opted to open-source the technology, to help make it even more readily accessible to interested parties.%Gallery-161777%
Rambus planning appeal after losing ITC patent case against LSI and STMicroelectronics
Rambus has lost the ITC dispute it filed with most of the electronics industry back in the day. Only LSI and STMicroelectronics remained as respondents after the company negotiated settlements with Freescale, Broadcom, MediaTek and NVIDIA. In its decision, the court found that some of the patents were unenforceable, while others ceased to be under the "clean hands" doctrine because Rambus had allegedly destroyed relevant documents. Company general counsel, Thomas Lavelle, has said in a statement that its next move might be to make an appeal to the Federal Circuit -- where it's hoping for better luck.
VIA makes its first ARM-based Pico-ITX board, adds dual graphics for your in-car pleasure
VIA has only ever really had a dalliance with ARM; the VAB-800 might be a sign that it's willing to go steady for awhile. As the company's first Pico-ITX board with an ARM chip, the 800 stuffs up to a 1GHz, Freescale-made ARM Cortex-A8 and 1GB of RAM into a tiny, 3.9 x 2.8-inch board. Somehow, it still fits up to four USB 2.0 ports, mini HDMI, VGA and as much as 64GB of storage. The board's real tricks are its dual integrated graphics processors: the VAB-800 can independently steer two displays, just in case your in-car infotainment system can't be contained by merely one screen. You'll likely have to be a car designer or an industrial device maker to make an order, although the 5W power draw and support for Android, Ubuntu Linux and Windows Embedded Compact 7 should soon see the VAB-800 crammed into logic-defying spaces everywhere.
Kinetis L Series MCUs use ARM Cortex-MO+ to sip least power, cost 49 cents each per 10K order
Freescale aims to drag 8- and 16-bit manufacturing into the modern era with a 32-bit MCU that's cheaper than a cup o' Joe. The ARM Cortex-MO+ based Kinesis L series MCU is now available in alpha to interested parties, it's capable of sipping a scant 50 µA/MHz of power and will cost just $0.49 when you buy 'em in lots of 10,000. While the cheap chips will no doubt go on to help power the internet of things, the associated debut of a $12.95 development board coming in August will also be a boon to developers and hobbyists. The platform will allow "quick application prototyping and demonstration" according to the company, and provide a GUI tool for generating start-up code and device drivers. So, if you've gotta have that new beer dispenser mock-up running at a full 32-bits, check the PR after the break.
Toshiba mystifies tablet-buying world with LT170 'budget' 7-incher
We'll be the first to admit that we don't understand Toshiba's tablet intentions. There are plenty of tantalizing prototypes and an abundance of confusingly branded models, but there's no overarching reason to pay much attention. The LT170 is a case in point: it's nominally a budget Android device, with a Freescale 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 8GB internal storage, but by now the €299 ($400) asking price could pick up something far, far nicer, like the heavily discounted 16GB HTC Flyer or 32GB BlackBerry PlayBook. Anyway, there it is. Bewilderment.
Invoxia unveils the AudiOffice, a $299 speaker dock for iDevices (video)
The last time we heard from Invoxia, the company was showing off a desktop VoIP phone with iPad and iPhone docks, allowing you to use the familiar iOS interface to manipulate all the phone's controls -- mute, volume, speakerphone, et cetera. As Mobile World Congress kicks off, the company's back with a product that looks very similar, but does quite the opposite. Designed for business use, the AudiOffice isn't a standalone VoIP phone but rather, a speaker dock for your iDevices. Here, your sweet telephony comes courtesy of your iPhone, while Invoxia's hardware is mainly there to enhance the call quality, with the help of four wide-bandwidth speakers and two digital microphones. And though those docks were built with the iPad and iPhone in mind, you could, if you were so inclined, connect another device using the dock's USB socket or Bluetooth 2.1 radio. In addition to FaceTime, too, you can place calls through more OS-agnostic apps, such as Skype. The AudiOffice will sell for $299 -- quite pricey for what's essentially an iDevice dock -- but that's still far more affordable than the $599 the NVX 610 is fetching. We'll be back with hands-on photos soon enough, but in the meantime we've got pictures of the official sort below.
Fujitsu announces Stylistic Android tablet for taking care of business, working overtime (updated)
The BlackBerry PlayBook blues got you down? Fujitsu thinks you should consider riding the Android train to work. The company today announced the awkwardly named Stylistic M350/CA2 Android tablet, a seven-inch enterprise-focused slate aimed at folks looking for a sales terminal, catalog displayer or e-reader. The Stylistic has a WSVGA display and a battery that should give you around six hours on a charge. You can pick one of these guys up in mid-February, if you're in Japan. An equally exciting press release can be found after the jump.Update: Residents of Hong Kong may recognize this 1GHz Gingerbread slate as the MH350, which was launched way back in September. To be honest, the build quality isn't that impressive in real life, but given that this new version weighs a tad more than its Hong Kong counterpart (420g vs. 385g), there may still be hope. Oh, but it is still Gingerbread.
Freescale Home Health Hub wants to usher in the era of connected medical devices
Freescale has its little silicon hands in all sorts of things: e-readers, smartphones, tablets, even refrigerators. Now the manufacturer is looking to make a dent in the healthcare industry with a connected platform called Home Health Hub (HHH). The i.MX28-based HHH isn't an actual product, but a reference platform for others to build on. The ARM9 processor is connected to a host of networking interfaces, including WiFi, Bluetooth (as well as its low-power implementation), Zigbee, sub-1GHz and Ethernet. The Hub is supposed to be just that, a central point for connecting various medical devices like blood pressure monitors or glucometers that then feeds data to a tablet. Developers and other interested parties can get their hands on the reference platform from Digi International as the iDigi Telehealth Application Kit for $499. Check out the full PR after the break.
Freescale joins ARM A5 and M4 cores at the hip for performance and power savings
You may have noticed a trend recently -- pairing slightly less powerful cores that sip power, with more robust ones that can chug through demanding applications. NVIDIA's Tegra 3 will be packing an underclocked fifth core, while ARM's big.LITTLE initiative matches a highly efficient 28nm A7 with the beefy A15. Now Freescale is planning to use the same trick, but you won't find its asymmetrical CPUs in your next tablet or smartphone. Its platform, which marries a Cortex M4 to a Cortex A5, isn't meant to compete with the latest Snapdragon. These chips will find homes in factories and in-dash infotainment systems which have increasingly sophisticated UIs, but don't need to push thousands of polygons. Software development tools will land before this quarter is out and the first batch of silicon will be announced in Q1 of 2012. Looks like the era of "dual-core" meaning two identical cores has officially come to an end.
Freescale expands its family of i.MX50 chips, goes beyond e-readers this time
We had a feeling that Freescale was onto something when it debuted the i.MX508, a system-on-a-chip that carried the promise of $150 e-readers (and the reality of $129 ones). Given that, we can see where the execs at Freescale would be feeling a bit heady, and might wonder where else they could help push down prices. That's exactly what we have here: the outfit is trotting out three new i.MX50 processors and, as you can see in that handy chart up there, they all sit even lower in the lineup than the low-cost i.MX508. Like the i.MX508, they all pack an 800HMz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, among other similar specs. The new i.MX507, in particular, resembles the i.MX508 in that it's designed to work with E Ink displays, though it lacks graphics acceleration, and Freescale imagines it'll instead find a home in outdoor signs and smart labels. Moving on down the line, the i.MX502 and the i.MX503 were both intended for devices with LCD -- not electronic paper -- displays, with the latter offering OpenVG graphics acceleration. If Freescale's predictions are on the money, you'll find the lower-end i.MX502 in DECT phones and vending machine displays, and the i.MX503 in personal navigators and medical monitoring tablets, among other use cases. For now, companies are sampling the chips, but they'll start shipping later this quarter for a song -- less than $10 for the i.MX502 at volume cost. Full PR after the break, and lots more technical details at the source link.
Genesi i.MX 53 netbooks, nettops to take Freescale machines deeper into the bargain basement
Back in March, Genesi announced its plans to target emerging markets by dropping the price of its Efika MX Smartbook and Smarttop machines. Those devices packed i.MX 51 CPUs, and post-cut price tags of $199 and $129, respectively. Now the San Antonio-based outfit is hinting at any even bigger price break for the developing world with the introduction of its i.MX 53 netbook PCB. According to a Genesi rep at the Freescale Technology Forum, the board, which is significantly smaller than its predecessor, is "as cheap as we can possibly make it," and will likely power even more cost efficient Genesi computers in the near future. No word on just how low Genesi is willing to go, but it's shooting for an i.MX 53 debut sometime this summer. If cheap is your thing, check out the PCB in all its glory after the break.
i.MX 6 quad-core reference board flexes processing muscle at Freescale Technology Forum
Freescale answered our power prayers with the introduction of its i.MX 6 processor suite at CES earlier this year, but left us longing for a demo. Well, the outfit's just given us all our first glimpse at the healthiest processing muscle in the bunch, the quad-core i.MX 6. Sporting four ARM Cortex A9 cores and a 64-bit memory bus, the reference design board can be seen running a 1080p video demo and Quake simultaneously -- and it didn't even break a sweat. Freescale says it's currently working with Google on making the processor Honeycomb-compatible, but don't get too excited; i.MX 6 won't make it into real-deal machines until 2012. If you've got an extra 20 minutes to spare, hop on past the break for a rather lengthy video of the processor at work.
