Armada610
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OLPC sees bandwagon, hops on with XO tablet based on Marvell Moby design
Eh, those kiddos don't need no physical keyboards and power cranks, right? Right! In a presumed effort to both keep with the times and take advantage of what's being served to them on a silver platter, the philanthropic souls over at One Laptop Per Child have teamed with Marvell in order to develop the next OLPC -- which, predictably, will be a tablet. The forthcoming range of XO tablets will be based on Marvell's newly loosed 'Moby' reference design (which we recently toyed with), and given that purported $99 price tag, you can see why the tie-up makes sense. The slate will require but one watt of power to operate (compared to ~five watts on the existing XO laptop), and it'll include a multilingual soft keyboard with touch feedback in order to serve various regions of the globe. As for specs, we're told that the device will boast an ARMADA 610 application processor, "gigahertz processor speed," 1080p encode / decode capabilities, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radio support, a GPS module and the ability to play back 3D graphics and Adobe Flash videos (zing!). There's also an integrated camera for live video conferencing, not to mention Moby's ability to support Android, Windows Mobile and / or Ubuntu. All we're told about battery life is that it's designed "expressly" to last a good, long while, and scarily enough, there's no confirmation anywhere that these will actually cost less than a Benjamin whenever they ship. Fingers crossed, though.
Marvell debuts quad core Armada ARM processor for kicking your mobile apps in the face
Marvell's already been showing some pretty great devices (like Spring Design's Alex, pictured) based on its Armada 500 (smartbook / nettop) and 600 (mobile) processors, but apparently that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The real meat is in Marvell's newly announced quadcore versions of those very same GHz+ chips, which should put mobile devices into a different league power-wise -- at least until Marvell's competition hops on board. There's no telling how much these will cost or when they'll show up, but Marvell says they're aimed at the "mass consumer market" and "high volume gaming applications." Gaming, huh? Perhaps Tegra 2 has a little bit of competition in the prospective DS 2 chip race.
Marvell goes Snapdragon hunting, announces Armada 610 mobile processor
Qualcomm's Snapdragon is king of the mobile hill right now, but you just knew that wouldn't last long, right? Marvell is now after its throne, announcing the Armada 610. It's a "gigahertz class" mobile CPU that can not only do 1080p decoding but can handle encoding too, even able to pump pixels to four high-res (2,000 x 2,000) displays at once -- you know, just in case you have a pocket full of pico projectors. Open GL ES 2.0 is on tap, so 3D gaming should be a cinch, and while there's no specific specs given, the chip is said to need "extremely low power." It certainly sounds like a good combo to us, and that the chip is now shipping in limited samples to OEMs is even better news.
