http://www.spreadtrum.com/en/

Apparently a whole new startup generation of Chinese Cheapie Guys has quietly sprung up while our backs were turned.  

The old Chinese Cheapie guys have become HUGE and have started up their own chip plants, etc and have actually outgrown some of the old line companies like AMD, Texas Instruments and some of the other ARM world dropouts who have dropped off the face of the earth recently.   This has left room for a whole new generation of Chinese Cheapie Guys to pop up out of the cracks in the linoleum.

Let's talk about Spreadtrum as a newbie a bit, I never heard of them before but they are making news in Barcelona Spain as a FABRICATOR CHIPBUILDER WHO IS CUSTOMIZING HIS ARM CHIPSETS (shamelessly patterning after the Qualcomm 200 series) to specifically meet the needs of Firefox OS phones.

Everyone at the show was fondling respectable looking $25 Firefox OS phones and feeling their butt-holes tighten up at the pure atavistic fear and terror type sensations it created.   They can run on 3G or 4G networks, sim card or no sim card.   They can sell retail for $25 or be given away free in pairs with a data plan from a carrier.

They also noted the first Firefox tablets were out on display and that they ran quickly even with the very very screwed up Wifi out on the Barcelona display floor.



There were a lot of folks who perused through the low end side of the telephone world and came away shocked and shaking -- there is some real change, innovation and competition out there boiling up from the low end of things.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57619336-78/what-mattered-at-mobile-worl...

"Firefox makes a $25 smart phone possible
Think the mobile OS wars are over? Maybe in some parts of the world, Android and iOS can claim near-total victory, but Mozilla plans to elbow into developing markets with Firefox OS, which may just drive the price of a basic smartphone down to $25. An avalanche of partners including Alcatel, ZTE, and Huawei showed off inexpensive, global Firefox phones. And while many amount to a simple proof-of-concept, we're convinced that the browser company is on to something."   People spent time looking at phones, tablets and a few all-in-ones that would have to count as a desktop PC equivalent Firefox based device.


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http://liliputing.com/2014/02/bq-meizu-launch-ubuntu-smartphones-2014.html

Let's talk about another brand new Chinese Cheapie Guy phone builder,  this one is named Meizu.   They currently make more of an upper end phone for the domestic Chinese market and are just starting to do a large export business with yet another sort of phone OS you might remember -- this being one that is "approved by the Chinese government for secure government use".

Meizu is going to be the first ones to export an Ubuntu phone from China to the USA and Europe.  

It is Mark Shuttleworth's dream come true .... a moderately priced commercially supported version of his Ubuntu Edge phone that has a built-in market acceptance in the country it is built in.

    Meizu using Android

   Meizu using Ubuntu

We will look forward to reading the reviews on using this phone as a PC when docked,  the general run of the mill ARM chipsets must have really improved a whole lot in the last few years if this phone can pull that trick off as of yet.

(but they really really have you know -- heptas and octas and 64 bit chips and all that)

http://liliputing.com/2014/02/qualcomm-launches-2-5-ghz-snapdragon-801-chip.html

Qualcomm still hasn't announced their 64 bit replacement for the Krait 400 core.   They announced that they aren't announcing it yet.  

They will tell you they are going to call the chipsets Snapdragon 610 & 615 when they are ready for production & sampling at the end of this year off the new 16/18nm lithography line which will likely only run at 20nm when they first crank it up.

The aging Krait 400 core apparently still has legs enough to be stretched speed-wise a bit more to STILL clearly be the fastest CPU core out there, with the most complete, most energy efficient best integrated on chip phone and tablet system in the world.

Qualcomm 801 and 805 are STILL the very best mobile chips out there and everybody knows it.    

Best battery life, nothing on the motherboard is needed except the chip itself, actually makes for the lowest entire system cost for a top end product when you use it.   Many of the best do use it, including SAMSUNG, in their very best products.

Look at the die map, see how a complete computer on a single die chip really looks like.   Compare this to Intel, who can't even put the basic stuff like the gpu on the same die chip.  

This is your market leader and Samsung fully intends to follow what they did idea-wise with the Infinity chipset that is being announced later on today at their presentation.

Also worth noting is that Qualcomm is building on a new 16/18nm lithography line and the current 801 and 805 are still being done at a porky 28hnm which is just plain porky compared to the current released chipsets being put out by their competitors.  

Yet the 801 & 805 are still clearly kicking everybody's butt right now for energy use, utility and speed.  
Good design counts  ---  yep, it indeedy does ....

 
http://liliputing.com/2014/02/meet-allwinner-ultraocta-a80-processor.html



Chip maker Allwinner is launching its first octa-core processor. As expected, the AllwinnerUltraOcta A80 features 4 ARM Cortex-A15 CPU cores and 4 ARM Cortex-A7 cores. Thanks to the chip’s heterogeneous design, it can use all 8 cores at once, or just as many as needed to complete a given task.

The processor also feature Imagination PowerVR Series6 graphics.  The chip features PowerVR G6230 graphics and supports 4K video encoding and decoding in the H.265 codec. It can also support up to three displays at once.

OK, so we got the first of the new generation of ARM laptop/desktop chipsets showing up on the playing field -- and this one is able to energize up to three monitors at the same time right off the stock on chip video system.

Gee, I wish there was a general purpose ARM OS or two to run this wonderful Allwinner advancement effectively.

But there isn't one out there yet -- and this chipset is WAY WAY OVERKILL in any battery powered Android tablet.  

It is really a laptop/desktop chipset.



However, in years past Allwinner cooperated well with Ubuntu and Ubuntu did fully support the A-10 generation of Allwinner chipsets ....  so a pathway exists .....

IF VR graphics would just cooperate with Ubuntu and Allwinner and Linaro, etc. there could be a laptop/desktop future for this chipset.

It would make a good chipset for a Chromebox ..... or a big screen Android all-in-one.

Allwinner likes VR graphics because in China VR graphics is a strong selling point.  

The rest of the FOSS world, not so much.

Marvell introduces PXA1928 64-bit chip for mobile devices

Marvel has been frightfully quiet for several years now, sticking to their own knitting with their embedded devices business and keeping their noses clean and totally out of the fray.

Why they are jumping back in at the 64 bit level, I don't know -- unless they see their embedded business going away soon unless they do go 64 bit in a timely fashion.

You will never know you bought a Marvel chipset inside something unless you go look at the motherboard, Marvel is just that quiet.

http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/02/public-evidence-samsungs-64-bit-soc-d...



Well, I was not the only one to notice the missing 64 bit Bull Dance  portion of the big Samsung chip announcement.  
Several sources have been digging to see What The Heck Samsung and ARM are up to.

They found the chip mask that is going to be used and a few lines in a Linaro code update -- and that is it.  

Lotsa silence though, whole bunches of it.   Really loud deafening silence.

THE BIG SILENCE CONTINUES ....        i.e. it ain't real, it ain't ready