One of the things that makes Android so attractive to consumers is the 60,000+ applications in the market. Its been a pivotal point for the Android eco-systems rapid development and its important for Android on Intel that developers can get their applications running on the x86 architecture.

So it was interesting to receive word that during Computex 2010 Aava Mobile announced Virta Android, a hardware-enhanced software developer kit for Android developers wishing to write applications for smartphones and tablets running the newest Intel Atom Z6xx Series processors.

The Virta Android is x86 smartphone with a tailored Android SDK ported to the Atom processor. It comes loaded with a capacitive touch screen accelerometer, GPS, haptic feedback, and video/still camera, modem, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and all connectivity for complete platform and application testing.

It has been developed by Aava Mobile in cooperation with Intel to accelerate development for Android on the x86 platform and is slated to ship in Q3 of this year.

More information can be found at Aava’s website www.aavamobile.com/ and check out JKKmobiles video from Computex 2010;

Lets wind back to June last year, the web was buzzing with the news that Google had announced it was releasing an operating system, well a browser that acts like one. The software architecture is simple Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel, its open source, lightweight  and Google intend to get to consumers in the second half of this year. When they announced the project 12 months ago Google stated “Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. inch

Now come to the present day and Computex 2010, the perfect theatre to show physical devices running your shiny new operating system, be them prototypes or final products and there are none?

To make matters worse, the news of Meego and demonstrations of the Tablet Experience user interface have left lasting impressions on not just me, but the likes of Joanna Stern of Engadget,

“We saw a lot of new technology demoed at Intel’s Computex keynote this afternoon, but the most impressive thing may have just been Meego running on a 10-inch Moorestown Quanta Redvale tablet. While the demo on stage was very brief, we caught up with some of the product managers right after the presser and convinced them to give us a peek at what is coming in 2011. To say we’re impressed with the “pre-alpha” version of the software is a huge understatement. inch

Acer’s president Gianfranco Lanci pointed out at Intel’s e21FORUM 2010 meeting that Acer will launch netbooks and tablet PCs that adopt Intel’s latest Atom processor and will also preload the MeeGo platform on them.

Its obvious that MeeGo and Chrome OS are fundamentally different but given today’s age of publicity, advertising and hype, Google could have really done with having something to show at Computex.

[This was posted live during the Intel Ultra Mobility Event. 2nd June 2010. Excuse the formatting, brief analysis and spelling mistakes please!]

I’m ready to go into the ultra mobility event which starts at 1400 here in Taipei

Stay tuned for updates on Moorestown, Oak trail, MeeGo and AppUp…

We’ve just been given the fact sheet..

Acer Backs MeeGo, ASUS supports Intel AppUp Centre and MeeGo, MeeGo Tablet Demos, MeeGo V1.0 based products (9 demos listed) , Service providers Rally Around MeeGo, MeeGo Enabling Center.

More from fact-sheet:

Mandriva, Linpus (Lite), Novell (SUSE MeeGo), Red Flag (Red Flag inMini), Turbolinux (Great Turbo IVI) to release OS builds based on MeeGo.

1325 Doors should open soon.

Fact-Sheets uploaded to Flickr.

1333 We’re heading in…taking pics of display. brb!

Just had a quick peek into the demo area. Aava smartphone is showing 3D, video, gaming demos and girls…

1345 Seated at the front. The show starts in 15 minutes

Sascha from Netbooknews.de sitting next to me.

Open Peek Moorestown-based products on-stage.

2-minutes to go. Execs seated to the right of me. More importantly, Nicole from netbooknews just arrived.

Power usage demo on stage. Lights down. Here we go…

1404 Events kicks off, as usual, with a ‘thank you’ to Taiwan.

Anand Chandrasekhar (sp?) now on stage.

Anand talks about video consumptions. Content is getting richer. Sharing. Live sharing.

Matt Serletic from Music Mastermind on stage to demo a very cool studio on an X70

That was a cool demo. He basically layered up a track by using vocal input to set the sequence.

14:17 Anand continues, talks about Intel’s compute continuum and ‘a little bit of magic.’ This is where we go to the power drain demo I guess…

Nope, we’re going into a video…about 1954 and the 4 minute mile. Breaking barriers is the theme I guess.

Anand goes on to talk about to the power barrier!

Anand holds up an ARM-based Blackberry and says ‘that’s a platform.’  goes on to talk about the 50x power reduction figures and how they related to a platform and not to silicon.

Video highlights smartphone and tablet. Talks about 8-10 hours battery life on the tablet.

Andy [?] of Open Peek now on stage demoing the product.

2:29 we’re getting a demo of the ‘Open Peek’ home energy app.

2:32 Talking about performance. There’s that sub 2 second SunSpider figure again.

These figures look correct to me. iPad is running 10 seconds on SunSpider.

Graphics and video slide highlights 1080p performance. (High Profile at 30fps) and 3D performance.

Interesting slide shows the battery life improvements over Menlow.

1437 Now watching a demo of battery drain. 100mw audio playback. Not bad!

1440 Comparing against competition now….

Quite some power in Anand’s voice at this stage. He’s pushing this point home.

In performance we’re “In a league by ourselves inch with an average power consumption for the smartphone space.

World Of Warcraft being demonstrated on the Aava smartphone (on Moorestown) but the demo isn’t that impressive. Low FPS.

Quake demo shown. I have no idea if it’s good or bad!! Looks fast.

Mutitasking demo…of course….and a nice textured interactive 3D demo. Yeah, it looks quite impressive.

14:46 Video conferencing demo. Ofer Shapiro of Vidyo comes in live over a conference. 2 live screens shown. quality very good. 3rd video conference screen now added. It’s coming in via a Moorestown phone.

1452 We move into MeeGo. Sounds like this is a summary of what we heard this morning. I’ll have a post about that later. Doug Fisher steps up on stage

Tablet demo now. Oops. Didn’t work. Backup device sent to stage. Doug breaths again! (See out tablet demo from yesterday)

Brief slide on Medfield which is ‘on track’ closes up the event here. Anand rounds up with ‘best is yet to come’

That rounds it up. We’re off to the demo area and then to a private Q&A. Anyone got questions? Put them on twitter to @chippy and I’ll try and ask Anand.

Updated: Q&A Session reveals timeframes.

In a Q&A session following the event we had the chance to ask Anand questions about Moorestown and related products.

Chippy: “Premium performance, premium price? inch  Anand responded to the effect that Intel will be aggressive with their pricing in order to get into the market saying that Intel will be ‘competitive’ and following up with ‘expect us to be hungry but not stupid.’

Sascha (netbooknews) asked about timeframes for products. Anand responded saying that products will ‘trickle’ in within a 6-12 months timeframe with tablets coming first. It’s not clear if he’s referring to MeeGo/Moorestown tablets or WIndows7/Oak trail tablets. We get the impression that there’s been a slight slip in the Moorestown program.

On Android: I asked about the project both to Anand and Doug Fisher.Was Android was just an internal project or something that is being worked-on with Google? It appears that the X86 branch of Android will become an official branch although some work will needs to be done on the power elements by Intel for its platforms. Medfield (the next generation after Moorestown) was mentioned so I assume that Android-on-Intel will be a late 2011 product.

Dadi Perlmutter is on stage now and we’re waiting for the important Intel Atom news. Stay tuned because we’re expecting Oaktrail and some MeeGo and tablet talk.

14:03 Dadi explains the compute continuum. The same device architecture across many computing categories.

ASUS tablet appears

Rene James appears to talk about software on Atom.

Again, talking about the continuum….

‘Product choice’ is an Intel software strategy.

Windows, Meego and Android officially supported on Atom

MeeGo: Intended to run across tablets, handhelds, TV and in-vehicle solutions.

Rene highlights the importance of developer programs.

IADP: 10’s of thousands interested in building for Atom.

Rene highlights AppUp (the app store framework.)

Announcement: AppUp will be pre-installed on ASUS for Windows and MeeGo starting today.

14:15 Dadi Perlmutter takes-over to talk about data numbers this is the big numbers segment! Dadi talks about data centers. We take a breather!

2:23 Home theater and 3D talk…standby for more Atom news.

2:25 Sandy Bridge Intel Core processor 3D demo.

2:28 Here we go. Atom talk. Dadi talks about netbooks.

“Driven by Taiwan industry and Intel inch

“Is there anything better inch?

2nd wave of netbook innovation coming soon.

Dadi shows 1KG prototype.

“Could contain dual-core inch

Demo of a dual core Pineview netbook shows fast browsing with three tabs, flash etc.

Now demonstrating 720p video playback This is not hardware-decoding enabled, just a demo of dual-cores at work.

Dadi spins rounds a cabinet full of Atom based products from robots to home automation. “Intel Aton Everywhere. inch

2:37 Dadi now talks about the Atom family [this is how far Atom has come: Chippy]

2:38 Smart TV is being highlighted. Atom in TV’s.

We’ve just seen a promo video for Google TV.

2:41 Embedded market. Atom is involved in over 3000 embedded designs at the moment.

Moorestown being highlighted in this section.

Phone ringing over speakers. Here comes a Moorestown phone demo.Brief 10 seconds of Android on a Moorestown phone

MeeGo tablets being shown. No specifics.

MeeGo for tablets UI is completely different.

‘Panel view’ being shown.

[taking video of this section]

‘Simple mode’ being shown with an application bar. It looks sweet.

Multitouch is being demonstrated. MeeGo coming along!

App store being shown. 5-finger touch. demo.

X3T tablet showing 1080p video on MeeGo.

Oak Trail now being talked up. Windows capable tablet platform. This is the next-step on from Menlow. See our previous posts on Oak Trail.

Acer now on stage…..[and breath Chippy]

Dadi summarizes and closes.

2:58 I’m editing up a few short videos now. Thanks for watching and see you on the next post!

Last Wednesday and Thursday I spent quite a few hours (clearly now wasted!) to analyze the Intel position relating to tablets buy taking that ‘tablet silicon’ rumor ‘Moorestown-W’ tips and previous rumors about an ‘Oak Trail’ platform. It turns out that it was on the money because Intel have just announced Oak Trail, the next generation ultra-mobile platform.

Oak Trail = Moorestown-W = Tablet Silicon optimized for Windows 7.

In the information I’ve been given so far, there isn’t much more detail but tomorrow I’m doing a Live Blog of Intel’s Ultra Mobility event at Carrypad [at this time in your location] which will give us more clues and allow me to work out some more details. You’ll probably find more details on Intel’s Computex press page too but note one thing. Just as Intel made a surprise announcement about Android on Moorestown, here they are announcing Chrome OS support. That’s three Google/Atom products in just one month. Obviously Intel aren’t just forming strategic alliances with Nokia.

Here’s a summary of my prediction.

The ‘tablet silicon’ is likely to be Oak trail/Moorestown-W, another UMPC-style platform. It could enable 10 inch, 15mm tablets weighing 600gm running Windows 7 and giving 6hr battery life. Not only would it enable tablets of 600gm but it would enable very thin and light netbooks, slider and clamshell handheld devices running Windows 7 to a point where it could be a better Windows 7 experience than on current netbooks (assuming 1.9GHz max clock, double GPU power) and therefore, could evolve in to the next netbook platform at higher clock rates in a 32nm process. Note that the Intel AppUp store would run on this platform. Its sister product, Moorestown, will continue to be aimed at even smaller devices with ‘always-on’ capability. I.e. ‘smart’ devices. These would only be able to run Android or Meego however. All products are likely to have CPU’s in the Z6xx series and are likely to be marketed as a family that fits inside Intel’s idea of a ‘continuum.’

See you over at Carrypad for the live blog and on both sites for more Computex news.

There are a lot of Intel-related rumors and unqualified information that fly about and one of my jobs is to mash all that up and try and work out what’s happening so that I can ‘skate to where the puck is going to be’ as Steve Jobs would say. It allows me to do a lot of predicting. Device battery life, OS strategy, performance estimations and more.

A version of Moorestown that supports Windows will be announced in 2010 and it will allow UMPCs running desktop operating systems to shrink another 20% while gaining another 20% battery life but products using this may not appear in 2010. They could also be focused at the embedded market which puts a question-mark over price and small production runs for UMPCs. [Predictions for 2010]

There are three lose ends relating to Intel’s ultra-low-power platforms and it’s time to tie these up and make a prediction before I head to Computex (Where all will be revealed anyway. Why do I bother?)

1 Mooly Eden announces a ‘tablet’ platform.

2 Oaktrail will replace Menlow

3 Rumors of ‘Moorestown-W’ that will allow standard builds of Windows and Linux distributions to run on the latest Intel ultra low-power platform.

I have two trains of thought right now. Either Intel will announce a new netbook platform or a new Menlow-like Win7-optimised platform for ultra mobiles.

New netbook platform.

Intel have to improve the video capabilities of their netbook platform. There’s no video playback acceleration at all and with flash 10.1 enabling smooth YouTube video on devices that do have video decoding, the netbooks are going to start to look dated. Battery life needs to be improved too. Smartbooks will, again, make netbooks look old and dated. Always-on battery life is also a consideration. If Intel want to unify the architecture from smartphone through embedded, TV and netbook platforms they’ll also need to drop the GMA3100 GPU and put something like an enhanced GMA500 in. GMA600 lives in the Moorestown platform, how about GMA700 with 800Mhz clock and VP8 decoding on board for 2011?

But is it too early for a new netbook platform? I think so. Cedar Trail is likely to be a more realistic thought. Late 2011.

New Win7 ‘handhelds’ platform.

Menlow has been with us in products since mid-2008. It got a refresh last year but during its lifetime we’ve gone from mainstream XP to mainstream Windows 7 and it’s time for an update in order to keep up. As with Lincroft (the CPU on the Moorestown platform) and Tunnel Creek (the CPU on the Queensbay platform) optimisations in size and performance can be made by bringing the GPU and memory controller on-board with the CPU and into a 45nm process. Interestingly, Queensbay/Tunnel Creek does this and has been already been labeled as the follow-on to the embedded (extended lifecycle) Menlow products so if we think about the similarities between that and Moorestown, it’s difficult to imagine the platform being anything other than a variation on this. What was rumored as the Oaktrail platform should look very similar to Queensbay and should be just enough for a smooth Windows 7 multi-touch performance in a handheld form-factor. In effect, another ultra mobile PC platform.

Here’s what I estimate the platform will look like: Highlights, highlighted.

• Integrated Atom CPU (optimised to give 20% more per-clock performance than Menlow) with GMA600 graphics, Display controler, Memory controller
• Connected to controller (USB, I/O ports) via Intels DMI bus in a similar fashion to Moorestown.
• GMA600 will be clocked at 400Mhz (double the performance of Menlow)
• GMA600 will include h.264 video ENCODE (720p) and up to 1080p decode. Flash 10.1 will be supported under Win-7
• Hardware encryption/decryption for SSL.
• 5mp camera interface.
• Turbo Boost features will allow the system to run at higher-clock for short periods.
• SATA 300 Interface (meaning much faster SSD speeds)
• 4GB DDR2 RAM at 667 or 800Mhz
• HDMI output
• Hyperthreading
• Intel VT support
• TDP 5W (platform) Unchanged from Menlow.
• Average power drain down by 30-50% (effective TDP lowered)
• CPU speed with turbo boost to 1.9Ghz.
• No power-gating support as on ‘smartphone’ Moorestown
• Standard BIOS support
• Windows 7, Linux and MeeGo support.
• Availability 2H 2010. Products early 2011

If Intel and Microsoft have been working well together, we might even see some special Windows-7 always-on state but that’s possibly too much to hope for. I don’t expect Intel to say anything about netbooks but to me, this look like a platform that could evolve to 32nm and dual-core easily and thus would become the next netbook platform for 2011/2012. Current target markets for the product would be unchanged from Menlow. I.e. MID and UMPCs but the marketing will change and you’ll see a lot of ‘tablet’ talk. I don’t see it as a huge segment but it was something that Intel was doing anyway so it makes sense to ride on some of the hype around at the moment.

Summary:

The ‘tablet silicon’ is likely to be Oaktrail/Moorestown-W, another UMPC-style platform. It could enable 10 inch, 15mm tablets weighing 600gm running Windows 7 and giving 6hr battery life. Not only would it enable tablets of 600gm but it would enable very thin and light netbooks, slider and clamshell handheld devices running Windows 7 to a point where it could be a better Windows 7 experience than on a netbook (assuming 1.9GHz max clock, double GPU power) and therefore, could evolve in to the next netbook platform at higher clock rates in a 32nm process. Note that the Intel AppUp store would run on this platform. Its sister product, Moorestown will continue to be aimed at even smaller devices with ‘always-on’ capability. I.e. ‘smart’ devices. These would only be able to run Android or Meego however. All products are likely to have CPU’s in the Z6xx series and are likely to be marketed as a family that fits inside Intel’s idea of a ‘continuum.’

Note: This is all educated guesswork. All will be revealed next week at Computex. I’m attending under the ‘Intel Insiders’ program and should get some great access to products, information and people.

Brad at Liliputing has put up a first-look video of Meego 1.0 for netbooks. Clearly the UI is based on Meego as is still using clutter instead of Qt and there don’t seem to be many major changes apart from Chrome being used as the browser. Brad does report that it’s fast though

As I write, i’m installing to an MSI Wind and will do some testing. I’ll also test the image out on a Menlow device. I doubt it will work but let’s see!

First look at MeeGo v1.0 netbook operating system.

In a press conference today, Intel presented their processor range for ultrathin laptops. Naturally, many of us want to know if the processors will reach down into the tablet space so I put the question forward to Mooly Eden (right.) It was given a surprising answer. Intel will disclose a special tablet solution at Computex.

Here’s the question and Mooly’s answer as an audio file.

Click to play the audio segment.

I can only assume that Mooly is talking about something in the ‘Atom’ family of processors. This could be Moorestown, Moorestown-W or perhaps, something completely new. We’ll find out next week.