14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that the slate market has proven fast-growing enough that Freescale put together a strategy meant to help it secure a slice of this segment, with March as the expected period for availability.
As end-users know, the MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2011 trade show was the site where many tablets were released.
Most of them were powered by an ARM platform of some kind and used the Android 3.0 operating system, otherwise known as honeycomb.
Meanwhile, Intel is doing its best to promote its Oak Trail series of chips, which are meant to take on ARM's low-power chips on their own turf.
Since it doesn't want to be left out, Freescale figured it may as well show its own cards, so it developed the SABRE platform.
Short for Smart Application Blueprint for Rapid Engineering, it is based on i.MX53 technology and has an i.MX53 chip based in the ARM Cortex-A8 core, which works at 1 GHz,
Slates based on it should support Windows Embedded Compact 7, Linux and Android operating systems alike and will feature 10-inch screens with high resolutions, among other things.
“Freescale’s newest i.MX53 products and development resources demonstrate our uncompromising commitment to deliver the technology and support our customers need to differentiate and win in highly competitive markets,” said Ken Obuszewski, product marketing director for Freescale’s Multimedia Applications Division.
“Ease-of-use is a hallmark of Freescale’s i.MX products, and our latest i.MX53 development solutions and market-specific products underscore this distinction.”
Provided Freescale meets its own schedule, the SABRE tablet platform should be ready this March.
“The iMX53 platform’s powerful multimedia capabilities such as HD video are ideal to enable quality playback of video content from popular websites,” said Anand Joshi vice president of the Digital Home Technology business unit for Calsoft.
“2D/3D graphics acceleration will further enhance the user experience of the industry’s top multimedia player technologies.”