USB3.0 shipment starts

NEC Electronics starts shipping the industry's first Universal Serial Bus (USB) host controller (part number µPD720200) for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard (see TI below, which ships at the end of the year).
The µPD720200 device is a host controller for PCs and other digital devices, and is based on the new version of the SuperSpeed USB standard that supports transfer speeds of up to 5Gbit/s. This aims the part not only at PCs but also digital TVs and DVD recorders, transferring 25 GBytes of video content on a blu-ray disc in 70s, compared to 14 minutes to transfer the same content when using the high-speed USB 2.0 with 480 Mbit/s transfer.
Perhaps surprisingly, NEC has been leading in USB chips, shipping the world's first USB 2.0-compliant host controller in 2000.
NEC Electronics expects the market for USB 3.0 to begin a rapid expansion, with monthly production expected to reach approximately 1,000,000 units in September 2009. It intends to market the $15 µPD720200 controller aggressively, and to offer a range of related products by incorporating USB 3.0 communications as an IP (intellectual property) core function in various application specific ICs.

Intel buys Wind River

Intel is making a serious play into the truly embedded market with a $884m deal to buy real time operating system (RTOS) company Wind River Systems.
The board of directors of Wind River has unanimously approved the transaction which is expected to close this summer and then Wind River will report into Intel's Software and Services Group, headed by Renee James.
This is a key part of Intel's strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices, and Wind River is already a close partner with Intel, making use of its hardware virtualisation technology.
Wind River will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel and continue with its current business model.
"This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities," said James at Intel. "Wind River has thousands of customers in a wide range of markets, and now both companies will be better positioned to meet growth opportunities in these areas."
"As a wholly owned subsidiary, Wind River will more tightly align its software expertise to Intel's platforms to speed the pace of progress and software innovation," said Ken Klein, Wind River Chairman, president and CEO. "We remain committed to continuing to provide leading solutions across multiple hardware architectures and delivering the same world-class support to which our customers have grown accustomed."
The acquisition will deliver to Intel robust software capabilities in embedded systems and mobile devices, from in-car "info-tainment" systems and other automotive areas, networking equipment, aerospace and defence to energy and thousands of other devices.

Netbooks - the next generation

Freescale has been working on new form factors for the next generation of netbooks - story and more pictures at The PortableMultiMedia blog

Android moves into home equipment

MIPS Technologies has ported Google's Android operating system to its processor cores, aiming to drive the software, and Web applications, into more areas such as digital TV and set top boxes.
With Android and the open source development community around it, developers can easily and quickly create new applications and OEMs can leverage the growing set of applications for their devices, says MIPS. With the MIPS ecosystem around Android, OEMs will be able to quickly optimize Android for their specific platforms.

"In the future, almost every consumer device will be connected to the Internet and its wide array of content," said Rich Wawrzyniak, senior analyst for ASIC and SoC at Semico Research Corporation. "Leveraging Android to quickly and easily bring new and innovative applications and user interfaces to devices beyond the mobile phone is a very appealing proposition for consumers. Android also removes applications from their ties to specific hardware systems and opens the market for companies like MIPS Technologies to move into new market segments. I can understand why MIPS’ partners and licensees are excited about Android on MIPS. It is a potential game changer."

MIPS Technologies is establishing development tools and system integration partnerships with service providers to help its licensees with porting, integration, and testing. Partnerships initially include those with Embedded Alley and Viosoft.
Embedded Alley, a leading provider of embedded Linux solutions, is offering support for SoC implementations from MIPS Technologies’ licensees. The Embedded Alley Development System for Android-based Devices includes processor and board support as well as a version of the Android Dalvik virtual machine (VM) optimized for the MIPS instruction set and CPU cores; extending the Android bionic library, linker and other software infrastructure for the MIPS architecture; and providing integration and testing board support industry-specific device drivers, CODECs and other middleware. Embedded Alley is already enabling Android on devices built with the Alchemy Processor family from RMI—providing an Android-ready Linux kernel for RMI Au1250 and the Embedded Alley Development System for Alchemy reference platforms.

“Embedded Alley and MIPS Technologies have been working closely to deliver value to our mutual customers,” said Matthew Locke, COO, Embedded Alley. “Following the success of Android in the mobile phone market, many companies have been looking at the potential of Android beyond mobile handsets, but it just wasn’t clear how to make Android a reality for other types of devices. Embedded Alley, together with MIPS -- a strong leader in the digital home marketplace -- has determined what it will take, and we are making it happen. We are enabling OEMs and developers to create new Android-based designs."

Viosoft Corporation is a key partner for MIPS based software development tools. Viosoft’s Arriba tools deliver comprehensive support for single and multi-core platforms. The tools support Android, and are available today.

“The MIPS architecture has consistently delivered high-performance Linux platforms with low power consumption, making it ideal for VM-based environments such as Android,” said Art Lee, vice president of business development, Viosoft Corporation. “To enable the porting, debugging and deployment of the Android platform on MIPS, Viosoft provides a set of unique and very powerful tools that dramatically reduce development time, risk and costs. Working closely with MIPS Technologies, we are focused on helping OEMs quickly and easily bring their Android platforms to market.”