The CES 2010 Conclusion - SoCs, Motherboards, Cases & More
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 9, 2010 5:44 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Texas Instruments Pushes SoCs Even Faster
A huge player in the SoC market, TI is found in the Palm Pre and Motorola Droid. The OMAP 3430 is the current top of the line but TI just introduced the OMAP 3630:
The 3630 is a 45nm shrink of the 3430 and runs the Cortex A8 at 1GHz. The SoC has a 32-bit 166MHz LPDDR1 memory interface, up from 140MHz in the 3430. TI believes it's faster than Qualcomm's Snapdragon thanks to a faster memory bus interface, but Qualcomm doesn't appear to have any public info on that.
I asked TI about their Tegra 2 competitor - the OMAP 4 series. They didn't have any public demos of OMAP 4 but TI has opted to go with a very large 1MB L2 for the Cortex A9s and has a 800MHz 32-bit memory interface. The cache and memory bus should result in a very high performance solution. Keep an eye out for it.
TI also had their eReader platform on display:
Unlike Marvell's eReader SoC, TI doesn't integrate an EPD controller into its SoC - instead it drives the e-ink display in software. The performance seemed at least as good as the Kindle 2, but TI implied that it would offer better battery life than anything on the market today. The SoC is TI's OMAP 3621, a 45nm Cortex A8 based solution running at 800MHz.
OMAP sending audio over FM to a radio
The other thing that TI's eReader platform offers is TI's wireless solution which has integrated Bluetooth, WiFi and FM transmitter. The latter lets you do text-to-speech and play it over your car speakers.
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Calin - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
I'm just saying...Entry level card (6200 based) - 350 MHz clock, 64-bits, 256 MB video RAM (DDR2 275 MHz) with access to up to 512 MB of computer RAM.
Compare with an IGP (Radeon 1250, AMD 690G) from AMD: 400 MHz clock and 64-bits access to lowly PC-5300, DDR2-667 MHz in a base configuration.
jigglywiggly - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
eee keyboard == uselessTotally - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link
yeah, it just dumb. There was a lot of uses that I could think of until they said it can only drive the embedded pc, which limited all uses I had for it to zero. Now raises the question why stuff it in a keyboard in the first place and just make it some kind of Ultra SSF nettop with a screen?GeorgeH - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
More like a missed opportunity. Had they integrated a KVM so that the keyboard could also drive a regular PC, this could have been a useful, if niche, gaming accessory. There are a few low-intensity apps (such as IM'ing and browsing FAQs/Walkthroughs) that it would be nice to run on a little "side screen" so that you aren’t constantly tabbing out of your game. If they made the screen able to "break out" and position anywhere, so much the better.As it is, though, calling it useless is being charitable.
ksherman - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link
I dunno... With the built-in ability to stream video to a TV, I could see people using it like those old skool Internet Browsing on your TV devices. Niche, sure. Useless, no.Taft12 - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
Thanks for providing some pictures Anand, we haven't seen enough yet of CES coverage. This has been the most memorable show since the dot-com bust daysThe features in those Antec ATX cases are fantastic, shame the looks are hideous :(
buzznut - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link
Nice article. I have to agree, I don't care for the direction Antec is going with their cases. The whole plastic grid thing just looks cheesy. Ugly.AznBoi36 - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link
You can see pretty much everything about CES at Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/ces">http://www.engadget.com/cesLocut0s - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
I wonder who's idea it was to place the screen on the side of the E-Keyboard? It looks extremely awkward to use that way. You'd think you'd automatically place the screen on top as a detachable unit.afkrotch - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link
or just get rid of it all together, which is what I think the other keyboard next to it is. I don't need extra buttons on a random screen on my keyboard.