Nufront Dual-Core Cortex-A9 Laptops And Tablet Unveiled At Ces

[Exophase]

Been waiting for this since the announcement in September. Was really hoping for netbooks/laptops and I am not disappointed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luB2G...layer_embedded

Alarmingly, Engadget missed this entirely and I found it by googling for it.. I was actually worried that they ended up not showing up. Shame on you, Engadget (or maybe it's there and not showing up in my searches somehow??)

Running Ubuntu instead of Android is the best possible situation for me. HDMI-out is another major plus, and 14" is quite nice, although the 10" one is pretty ugly and I hope they optimize the size down more to have a smaller screen bezel. The tablet looks pretty good too. The software probably need some work, but that's to be expected.

6 months away, so still quite a ways out, but I'd much rather have this than a Tegra-2 laptop. At 2GHz + NEON and 64-bit memory controller it'll pack much more raw performance, and with SATA it's more suitable for a laptop.

 

[Titcher]

Looks quite nice. What are your potential uses for it?

 

[WizardStan]

I actually groaned, quite loudly, when the guy mentioned running Windows on it. Other than that, it looks like ARM is finally making a real push into the laptop market. I'm probably not going to be looking for a new laptop for another 2 or 3 years at least, but it's nice to know there will be more options when I am.

 

[Exophase]

Looks quite nice. What are your potential uses for it?

I'd personally like to replace my 10" Atom netbook with it. I want something inexpensive with really good battery life, a decent resolution screen (hoping the 14" will have much higher than 1024x600), hard drive, and HDMI out. But one other thing I'm potentially interested in is using something like this as an intermediate development platform for mobile ARM devices. A decent sized laptop with a keyboard is a lot easier to develop on than something like Pandora, but since it has ARM v7a including NEON and two cores it'll be good for staging software optimized for Tegra 2 and OMAP4 (and other dual-core Cortex-A9s). Having access to NEON is important to me, something that the Tegra 2 AC100 laptop lacks. Being potentially over twice as fast as the mobile chips is nice for when you need the extra power over what you're targeting as a baseline.

 

[hmn]

Looks interesting, but there have been a bunch of prototypes like these presented in the past that never made it to the market, so I would remain cautious ;-)

 

[Exophase]

Looks interesting, but there have been a bunch of prototypes like these presented in the past that never made it to the market, so I would remain cautious ;-)

It would be quite a commercial failure if Nufront released a chip that no one, including Nufront themselves end up putting in a device. If this tanks as a product then not only is the company screwed, but it wouldn't be very good for ARM who has only so far been pushing their high performance design in this chip and has openly endorsed it.

I dunno what prototypes you're thinking of, but I would be careful about lumping this in with any other ARM laptop concept. Compared to that i.MX51 laptop, for instance, or even Toshiba AC100, this is in a completely different performance league and far more competitive with Atom netbooks out today (IMO, potentially considerably more powerful than the single-core ones). Won't have an easy time standing against Bobcats, but those will use a lot more power anyway.

 

[hmn]

I was thinking for example of the Pegatron prototype, which turned into the Lenovo smartbook, which ended up being canceled in favour of an Android tablet...

 

[Exophase]

I was thinking for example of the Pegatron prototype, which turned into the Lenovo smartbook, which ended up being canceled in favour of an Android tablet...

Yes, that's the only example I know of. In this case, we're talking about a company with a broad portfolio of netbooks experimenting with ARM by using a SoC made for mobile/embedded, that's grossly outclassed by the rest of what they were selling. It's not surprising that they'd axe it after realizing there isn't enough market interest for it.

Nufront, on the other hand, made this SoC specifically to be competitive in the market these devices compete in. They're not experimenting with a fringe and risky idea that can afford to get scrapped. If they don't launch products with this chip in it that entire part of their business will be jeopardized.