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Tegra 2 Tablets/Slates Impress At CES
MartinSchou writes "At this year's CES it seems that everybody and their cousin are talking about tablets, slates or smartbooks. This year, however, might be the year of Linux — if not on the desktop, then at least on your other computing devices. Amongst this years top contenders are slates running nVidia's Tegra 2 chipset, boasting 10+ hours worth of 1080p playback, with entries from Quanta, Mobinnova, ASUS, MSI and Boxee (though this is a media computer). Notion Ink have brought their Adam slate, complete with a Pixel Qi transreflective, multi-touch capable screen."
It would appear that Nvidia has(as was more or less inevitable) moved away from their WinCE support only stance on Tegra.
What remains to be seen, though, is what their linux support looks like. If all there is is "enough binary blobs to get whatever version of Android the OEM decided to install to boot, and nothing more", that is largely useless. A bunch of OEMs get cheap software. Yay, I'm so happy for them.
Given that this is Nvidia, I'd be shocked if any but the barest GPU driver support is OSS; but if the support isn't good enough to produce third party firmwares and upgrades for these devices, they might as well be Tivoized.
This year, however, might be the year of Linux if not on the desktop, then at least on your other computing devices.
2009 was the first year of linux dominating on TVs and STBs since 2009, and probably the year of *nix on smartphones as well.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
So when they make a Pixel Qi Adam Slate that can be charged wirelessly, it will be called Qi Pixel Qi Adam Slate? Gee, Pikachu's late, too.
It's a fantastic chip. Low power and really fast. I'm seeing about 2x the CPU performance on benchmarks over an Intel Atom N270. And the GPU performance is just amazing compared to the intel GMA stuff.
I often joke that Tegra 2's ARM could emulate x86 in software faster than an Atom could run it natively. Put that in your Windows pipe and smoke it!
This will leave a lot of filipinos unhappy...
If nvidia were to use the same driver model as for their other GPUs, the community could continue writing their own drivers via nouveau.
I had never seen the term "smartbook" before. This article defines a "smartbook" as a netbook with a non-x86 processor (likely ARM).
I guess it's a portmanteau of "smart phone" and "netbook". Or maybe it means "smart enough finally to use something other than x86 for an ultra-portable device".
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357758,00.asp
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
To wrap it up: I took the laptop for a spin with Ubuntu 9.10 and I got the 3d effects working hunky dory, no fuss, no muss, no downloading special drivers etc. So yeah, I do prefer my drivers with a Free(dom) license. I've had better experiences with Free(dom) software than not.
BTW, I think calling those of us who agree with RMS stance on software as "Maoists" is kind of perverse. I think a good argument could be made that GNU is compatible with democracy (FREEDOM) whereas proprietary is compatible with Communism (Do as we say or get shot.)
Are any of these going to feature an active digitizer as opposed to just touch sensitive? I had a quick look through them, but they didn't really have much info. At this price point, they are looking attractive as a digital notebook for college.
TFA seems to suggest that the Quanta, Mobinnova, ASUS, and MSI are capable of playing 1080p video. I would like to see a single spec proving that it is possible without attaching to an external monitor. Otherwise, it is not very useful to travelers, which paradoxically appear to be the primary target of these devices.
Also, space savings by not including screen cover are an illusion. One will have to carry it in a special protective shell, or your screen won't last very long.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
I heard it can run Farm Ville in 3D.
Best direct sunlight video of Pixel Qi screen it this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=698D-jmk42w
College campus life will never be the same when you can compute on the quad, or anywhere with this screen.
Geeks on campus can make spending money by getting the DIY kit and convert those other screens to the Pixel Qi ones, and it would not hurt to add a dual boot bonus during the modification.
Well even the dhrystone mips of a 1ghz dual-core Tegra T20 (cortex-a9) against a 1.6Ghz dual-core Atom 330 had the T20 coming out a little ahead for us.
Atom is the only thing Intel has brought out to compete against ARM. Also the T20 was 1Watt against an Atom's 4W, and the T20 is an SoC with GPU and other peripherals. It's not that ARM is fast, it's that Atom is just a real dog.
The original EeePC 701 with its underclocked 630MHz Celeron M has often been shown better at dealing with Flash applets than the N270 and N280 of later EeePC models.
You can expect a press conference in a few days with The Asus board chairman flanked executives from Intel and Microsoft declaring "Non-Windows OS on a non-Intel system? We don't see a future in that." Meanwhile he'll be furtively gesturing pleas for help, but noone will notice.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It seems reasonable to expect given a long history that all of these vendors will show off a bunch of stuff to get us all excited, and then go back to their offices and have a long chat with some rather persuasive gentlemen from Santa Clara and Redmond. And then they'll run into unanticipated difficulties in production that prevent them from shipping more than a few hundred units.
And then Google will go "Oh, screw it." and launch the thing on their online store and reap the billions of dollars from an eager world clamoring for this hot new technology.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It would be unfortunate if you stopped being our special friend and no longer qualified for it. Your competitors who are still our special friends would have an unfair advantage over you.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I took back a laptop with ATI graphics that I couldn't get to run properly, and was an instant convert when the intel integrated video worked perfectly "out of the box" with Linux Mint.
I dislocated my jaw yawning at the offerings. Yes, neat, as long as you only do a couple light-weight tasks at a time. Otherwise, S-L-O-W. Want speed, get a desktop, want to sacrifice speed for portability, tablet/slate is fine, just don't expect it to be a desktop. Effectively it's the revolution of the Kindle-wannabes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I went through the exact same experience 7 years ago. I bought an ATI card under the impression of Slashdot coments... What a disaster that was. After that I buy nVidia for everything Linux. Never had a problem, rock solid, hi-performing gear. Now I know better than to listen to zealots and/or astroturferes. I don't want to mess with a video driver, especially a 3d accelerated one. These beasts are complex and there is never going to be a decent OSS video driver. I would much prefer the linux comunity to spend their time developing useful apps rather than wasting a ton of resources reinventing the wheel of programming every piece of hardware. The driver is part of the hardware . Period.
We have many special friends :)
Jibe!
I can't help but notice the deafening roar of... silence. Lack of buzz. Boredom. Yawn. Sigh. Tablet? This story has been up for over 24 hours and there are only 40 posts. Slashdot generates more comments than that about obscure astronomical phenomena.
Ok, so it's the weekend. Still. The attempts to generate buzz among the planet's English-speaking technorati has flopped. Miserably. If not even Apple can sustain the buzz, 2010 ain't the year of the tablet.
I see only one possible way to salvage the market. A radically low price point would do the job. These things aren't PCs. They're glorified interactive picture frames. Consumer electronics, in other words. If they're priced accordingly, they'll move. Sell them for $100 to $150 and they'll be all over the place. $200 to $250 might be tolerable, but would still leave a lot of units on the shelf. $300 is really pushing it. Anything over $300? Forget it. That's netbook/low-end desktop territory now. A jumped-up picture frame isn't going to sell for that.
The $1000 price that's been speculated for Apple's tablet? It is to laugh. They'll gather dust in warehouses. Not even the Jobs reality distortion field can make people cough up that much cash for a device with no compelling use.
What are we going to do, sit on the couch with a tablet in our lap and watch a movie... while sitting in front of the 50" flatscreen on the wall?
Maybe the kids will sit in the back seat and watch a movie on the tablet... while the overhead display system that requires no recharging stays off? Just so they can fight over who gets to hold it?
Maybe we'll sit in our office chairs with a tablet in our laps and watch a movie... while our desktop PC idles and the boss starts placing ads for an opening?
There's lots of possible uses. None of them can tolerate a $1000 price point. The $700 smart-phone trick only works once.
I'd be really pleased to see Tegra 2 chips emulating x86 fast enough to run XP.
Most wintel killer apps ran on XP and haven't improved massively.
Maybe a 1.2ghz tegra 2 at 32nm could be as fast as an atom?
Maybe one of the Tegra 2's 8 cores could handle the emulation. Ahh... sweet dreams! Nvidia and ARM manage to pay off man's x86 mortgage at last.
Where's Charbax?