Freescale offers take on tablets, 3-D units

The microprocessor company Freescale takes a look at the future and predicts what kind of processors would be required. They aim to have them ready when the time comes. As described in this news release, their Director of global consumer marketing feels there are four trends visible. One is that future tablets are going to provide augmented reality. For example, you may be standing near a shop in a mall and yet find out what's happening around you in other shops. The second thing that is going to happen is the #D video will be common. Future tablets can take 3D video with two cameras and let you view 3D video.. Third thing that's going to happen is that the tablet will become a gaming platform and will need the necessary power to let you play the games well. And finally, tablets will be used for content creation too rather than just content consumption as is done now.
Freescale offers take on tablets, 3-D units

Freescale quad-core for CE space

Freescale is going to offer pretty sophisticated quad-core processors for high-end consumer electronic devices. And you thought consumer electronics were high end toys for grown ups!  Actually, the way these things have grown, particularly smartphones came on the scene, they need a lot of processing power. What with CE devices doing recording/playback of 3D video, augmented reality, mobile gaming and driver-information systems. HD video combined with 3D is a true heavy load on any processing system, considering you need real time MPEG compression/decompression (particularly the H.264), lightning speeds are called for here.  What is interesting is that the company's new i.MX6 series offers three price/performance points on the same ISA. Thus designers can design devices once and get higher performance versions simply by moving the design to the higher performance processor. These levels will be met by one, two and four core models.


Freescale aims quad-core at consumer apps

Microcontroller Market Starts to grow

Looks like the effects of the economic downturn is over as far as the micro-controller market is concerned. According to this report the market is slat3d to grow to $18.5 billion by 2015. It has already increased by 14% to $12.3 billion compared to 2009. That's encouraging. considering that the micros get into so many segments of the industry that indirectly shows the growth in other areas and corresponding growth in the demand for these devices.

Renesas holds the number 1 spot in terms of market share according to the same report. It is at 29% followed by Freescale at 10%. Other players in this market area include Infineon Technologies, Microchip Technology, and Fujitsu etc.