Posted 11/03/09 at 01:30:00 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

There’s good news and bad news for eBook fans. First up: new eBook readers using Marvell’s ARMADA 166E chip could see triple the frame rate of first generation devices. The bad news: the faster frame rate of 3 fps won’t exactly have you playing Doom just yet but low frame rate animation will possible.

Marvell doesn’t mind though. The company’s new chip isn’t meant to just increase performance, it’ll also offer a cost reduction and power reduction by shrinking what is now a multi-chip board controller board down to a single chip. Marvell showed off several OEM designs including Spring Design’s upcoming dual-screen Alex.

This dual-screen eBook puts Kindle's web-browsing features to shame.

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Posted 10/20/09 at 09:42:29 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Santa Clara-based chip maker Marvell has launched a new range of CPUs called ARMADA. Based on the ARM instruction set, the new processors will power “smartphones, smartbooks, consumer and embedded devices, and displays.”

The largest producer of ARM chips in the world claims its ARMADA chips will enable mobile devices to deliver PC-like performance. Support for Adobe Flash and Blu-ray functionality should also enable ARMADA-toting mobile devices to deliver a rich multimedia experience.

Based on their intended device segment, the new application processors fall into four different series: the ARMADA 100, 500, 600 and 1000. "Launch of the ARMADA family represents a watershed event in mobile computing,” said Marvell’s co-founder and VP, Ms. Weili Dai.

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Posted 02/24/09 at 08:00:00 AM by Paul Lilly

If Marvell has its way, plug computers will soon become commonplace. The company today announced its Plug Computing initiative, which seeks to make always-on computing not only more flexible and easy-to-use than it is today, but also more environmentally friendly compared to a typical desktop or laptop PC.

A plug computer is essentially a small embedded computer that plugs into a wall socket and hooks into your home network via an Ethernet cable. It can then run network-based services that would typically be handled by a desktop or laptop. Marvell's SheevaPlug platform, for example, comes equipped with a Kirkwood embedded processor based on an embedded 1.2GHz Sheeva CPU, 512MB of flash memory, and 512MB of DDR2 memory.

Hit the jump to find out more.

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Posted 01/12/09 at 02:56:08 PM by Andy Salisbury

Marvell’s ambitions have gotten pretty substantial as of late, as they’re currently placing claim on the ability to pack a 1GHz processor into a cell phone. Using their Sheeva Technology, their PXA168 is looking to change the way that consumer electronics operate.

"Marvell prides itself on being at the forefront of innovation, and developing products that give consumers what they want before they even know it can exist," stated Roawen Chen, vice president and general manager of Communications and Computing Business Group at Marvell. "For the first time, consumers can utilize the processing power of Marvell's Sheeva technology in their low-power digital devices. With the Marvell PXA168 they get gigahertz plus processor speeds, coupled with a WMMX2 SIMD co-processor, creating the opportunity for whole new markets such as low-cost mobile computing devices."

While the first device that this seems it would impact would be Apple’s iPhone, the PXA168 currently only supports Linux and Windows CE (as well as all standard audio and video codecs and Adobe Flash). It hasn’t been mentioned when we can expect to see the chip in consumer devices, but it is said that Marvell is already working with third-party developers to port their applications.

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Posted 07/30/08 at 08:00:00 AM by Gordon Mah Ung

Think a 30-inch monitor at 2560x1600 resolution is amazing? Then you haven’t seen Merdian’s 810 Reference Video System that gives you a 4096 x 2160 projected image for the low price of $185,000. But we have.

We got to touch and see the 810 up close and personal last week in a private demonstration held at Dolby Laboratories headquarters. Why Dolby? The company has a famous 90-seat theater in its main building in San Francisco that’s actually nicer than most small screens at the multiplex. And how does this monster of a projector perform? Read on to find out!

 Click through to read our impressions of the 810 Reference Video System

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