Imagination Mobile Gadget Spread at GDC 2010

Texas Instruments OMAP4 Demonstration

Product manager in OMAP4 based Linux soloutions, Eric Thomas, talks to us about OMAP4 and shows us the cool looking OMAP4 based development board doing all kinds of awesome things

Thanks Charbax at ArmDevices.net

Google’s Chrome OS supports x86 and ARM

Everyone and most likely even their dog got excited by Google’s announcement that the company is working on a Chrome OS. However, one of the most interesting aspects of it is the fact that it’s cross platform, with support for both x86 (Intel, AMD, VIA etc) and ARM.

What does this mean? Well, possibly nothing, but most likely a lot. Think of it for a while. Where do you most often find ARM based processors? In your mobile phone or Smartphone, or in other words devices that have days worth of battery life. Sure, the screen is part of the issue when it comes to netbooks and battery life compared to Smartphone’s, but for anyone wanting a device with long battery life, ARM has the upper hand on x86.

This might also have some huge ramifications for Nvida’s Tegra platform, at least if Nvidia is willing to work with Google to create good support for its Tegra platform in the Chrome OS. Then there’s of course Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and TI’s OMAP processors to mention but a few of the many ARM processors in the market and both companies are busy working on better, faster processors that offer even longer battery life.

Beyond this, Chrome OS might well end up being cloud based, much like Jolicloud, at least if you consider the field in which Google is strong. Hopefully this will lead to better off-line modes for many of Google’s online applications, even under Windows.  The cloud factor makes even more sense when you read the press release which states “The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web” with heavy emphasis on the latter part.

The press release continues “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.” All of this sounds great, but let’s hope that Google doesn’t go too light weight and forget about the moments when you can’t be connected to the internet. Cloud based operating systems have their place, but so far, there isn’t an affordable way of staying connected to the internet 24/7 and until that becomes a reality, a cloud OS has its limitations.

One interesting aspect is that applications for the Chrome OS will also work in other web browsers which should make it very interesting for developers to come up with applications for it. Of course Google mentions that all web based applications will work, although we’re sceptical about this on the ARM platform as yet, as ARM based processors doesn’t offer the same kind of raw processing power that you get from an x86 processor.

Still, it’s an interesting start and Google expects to start shipping the Chrome OS in the middle of 2010 on netbooks from various manufacturers. You can find the press release here which is an interesting read in itself.

ECS T800 8.1-inch Android netbook pictures

ECS was showing off its new super slim 8.1-inch Android netbook at its booth and we have a video coming of it shortly.

Not only does it run Android, but it also has a choice of two different Texas Instruments OMAP processors clocked at either 800MHz or 1GHz. It also has 512MB of RAM, choice of hard drive or SSD, two USB 2.0 ports, a card reader, a headphone jack, a web cam and two mini card PCI Express slots for WiFi/3G or WiMAX modules.
You can find the rest of the pictures here and stay tuned for our hands on video.