Having recently been bit by the Netflix STB bug, I couldn’t resist checking out Roku’s latest SoundBridge “network music player.” In less than 10 minutes of fooling around with the device after its arrival, I was ensnared!
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Via Technologies has launched gen 2 of its signature mini-motherboard standard. Mini-ITX 2.0, an evolutionary update to the seven-year-old 170×170mm form-factor, introduces new and emerging buses and interfaces such as PCI Express, SATA, Gig-E, and HD A/V, while preserving backwards-compatibility with the original standard.
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Market researcher Gartner Inc. has come out with its prognostication of the top ten disruptive technologies for the next five years. Included on the list are multicore processors, social networking, web mashups, cloud computing, augmented reality, and more.
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Netflix and Roku have jointly announced a tiny set-top box (STB) said to offer unlimited streaming of DVDs and TV episodes on Netflix members’ TVs. The $100 “Netflix Player by Roku” is confirmed to run a customized version of Linux, along with robust DRM (digital rights management) technology.
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Researchers at the University of Glasgow claim to have created a molecule-sized switch that offers vast increases in solid-state storage for devices such as MP3 players. The “breakthrough” molecule-sized switch can theoretically increase the number of transistors per chip from today’s limit of around 200 million to “well over a billion,” the team says.
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Two competing stackable PCI Express standards are being unveiled this week at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif. Targeting slightly different slices of the market, the mutually incompatible standards threaten to disrupt next-generation embedded device design much as 4-track/8-track, Beta/VHS, and HD-DVD/Blu-ray rivalries impacted consumer electronics.
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Eight “revolutionary” embedded technologies have been selected to be showcased in the “Disruption Zone” at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) April 14-18 in San Jose, Calif.
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Microvision will showcase a tiny laser projector — small enough to be embedded in a mobile phone — at the CTIA Wireless show next week in Las Vegas. The company claims its mobile pico-projector technology produces highly focused DVD-quality WVGA (848×480 pixels) images of up to 100 inches in size (depending on distance).
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Developers thinking of using Linux as an embedded operating system won’t want to miss the annual Embedded Linux Conference in Silicon Valley next month. The event features keynotes and technical sessions on topics such as Maemo, real-time performance, power management, embedded graphics and multimedia, mobile phone technologies, fast boot, and much more.
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MIT’s Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies. Dubbed the TR10, these “revolutionary innovations” are “poised to have a dramatic impact” on computing, medicine, nanotechnology, our energy infrastructure, and more, say the magazine’s editors.
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Microsoft showcased “pseudo translucent” display technology last week at its annual TechFest conference. LucidTouch creates the illusion of a semi-transparent device by allowing users to interact with the display from the rear of the device.
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Intel and Micron Technology have unveiled a high-speed NAND flash memory technology claimed to offer up to five times the performance of conventional flash memory. The new high-speed flash reportedly can achieve read and write speeds of 200MB/sec and 100MB/sec, respectively.
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While the x86 architecture reigns supreme in the PC market, a range of other CPU architectures are generally preferred in embedded devices due to cost, space, and power constraints. One of these — the ARM architecture — has now shipped in more than 10 billion devices.
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Via Technologies is readying a compact, storage-oriented mainboard optimized for home server applications. The NAS7800 is powered by a Via C7 processor and is sized to stack with optical and hard disk drives.
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An industry tradeshow focused on multicore microprocessors and related technologies will take place April 1-3 in Santa Clara, Calif. The Multicore Expo will feature keynote talks, panel discussions, in-depth technical sessions, case studies, and a vendor expo.
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Startup Bug Labs, which aims to turn the task of constructing smart devices into a non-technical, lego-like affair, will begin accepting orders for its Linux-powered electronic building blocks later this month for shipment starting Mar. 17.
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A team of electrical and computer engineering students at Calvin College is developing an electronic stethoscope based on an embedded Freescale system-on-chip (SoC) running Linux.
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In his Jan. 7 keynote talk at CES in Las Vegas, Intel CEO Paul Otellini focused on the continuing disruptive influence of the Internet on consumer electronics and entertainment. These changes create business opportunities for “those who embrace it,” he suggested.
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Kopin Corp. claims its new fingernail-sized display is the world’s smallest SVGA resolution (800 x 600 pixel) color LCD. The 0.44-inch diagonal CyberDisplay SVGA LVS microdisplay targets PC- and HD-related video eyewear applications.
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Over 4 billion embedded systems and devices shipped worldwide in 2006 and the market is expected to grow significantly through 2009, Venture Development Corp. (VDC) reports. These devices increasingly contain out-sourced commercial and open-source embedded operating systems, the market analyst firm adds.
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A University of California Berkeley research team claims to have created the world’s smallest radio, a fully functional radio receiver built from a single carbon nanotube one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair.
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A Japanese company has developed an innovative Bluetooth headset that combines both a microphone and earphone element within an earbud. Ns-Elex Co. Ltd’s “e-kun” headset can be used with a mobile phone, or for specialized mobile handheld data collection applications (its high price positions it more for the latter).
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Intel has just unveiled a tiny solid-state disk (SSD) that it says is “smaller than a penny and [weighs] less than a drop of water.” The Z-P140 SSD uses a parallel-ATA (PATA) interface and targets handhelds, digital entertainment devices, and embedded systems.
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This month, the world celebrates the 60th anniversary of one of the most significant developments of the 20th century: the transistor.
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A new kit from chip and board vendor Via Technologies makes it easy to embedded Via’s teeny Pico-ITX micro-motherboard technology into all manner of devices.
