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A faster processor from chip maker Freescale could help cut down the cost of components for e-readers, paving the way to a $150 device later this year.

Freescale’s latest system-on-chip, called the i.MX508, integrates an ARM Cortex A8 processor with a display controller from E Ink. It will have twice the performance at a significantly lower cost, Freescale claims.

“This is the first chip that has been designed just for e-readers,” says Glen Burchers, director of marketing at Freescale. “Earlier, we had general-purpose processors being used in e-readers so they were not completely optimized.”

From the Kindle to the Sony Reader, Freescale’s chips power most e-readers today. The chipmaker claims to have nearly 90 percent of the market share among the burgeoning e-reader market. Research firm Forrester estimates 3 million e-readers were sold last year and sales are expected to double this year.

But the high cost of e-readers has kept many consumers from rushing to stores to get the device. An Amazon Kindle costs $260, which is what most such readers cost. The cheapest e-reader currently on the market, from Sony, is still $200. And that doesn’t include the price of buying e-books. Another limiting factor has been kludgy user interfaces and displays that are slow to turn from one page to the next, which has turned off some potential users.

Freescale’s latest chip has an ARM core running at 800MHz and can render electronic ink pages at almost twice the speed of earlier e-reader processors, the company says. This results in faster page turns and a more snappy feel to the device.

“Today page flips on a Kindle are in the range of 1.5 to 2 seconds, while the Nook (which uses a processor from Samsung) it can take up to 3 seconds for a page turn,” Burchers says. “With our new processors, that can be cut down to about half a second.”

In Wired’s testing, page turns on the current-model Kindle took about half a second while the Nook took about one second.

The increased processing capability also gives e-reader makers greater computing power so they can add better touch capability and run more apps on the device, says Freescale.

For consumers, all this could come with some cost savings. Freescale’s chip could reduce the overall cost of materials because the chip itself will cost about $10 when ordered in large volumes (greater than 250,000 units). Overall, this could reduce the price of an e-reader by at least $30-$50. The most expensive component in an e-reader, however, remains the E Ink black-and-white display.

E-readers based on the new Freescale processor are expected to be available in the third quarter of the year.

See Also:

• Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users
• Slim, Large Screen E-Reader Skiff to Debut on Sprint
• Dual-Screen Device Combines E-Reader, Netbook
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Why E-Books Are Stuck in a Black-and-White World
• Qualcomm Aims to Bring Color, Video to E-Readers

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

E-readers are getting better without a doubt. But cheaper? Not so much. The upcoming Spring Design Alex will sell for $359 — way out of reach for those who cruise the used book store scene. Freescale’s i.MX508 processor might finally make these things more of a smart buy, an 800MHz ARM-based chip that includes, among other things, USB host functionality and dedicated circuitry for controlling E-Ink panels. It’s effectively a system on a chip for the next-generation of would-be Kindle killers and it’ll sell for just $10 at volume, resulting in more advanced readers that could, according to Freescale, retail for $150. That’s the kind of price point that might just make Grandma stop digging through piles of dog-eared Stephen King books and get with the times.

Freescale’s new i.MX508 processor could mean cheaper, faster e-readers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos has just announced its brand new 7- and 8-inch Home Tablets, which both run Android and cost €149 ($203). For that layout, you’ll get a 600MHz ARM 9 processor, which won’t be breaking any (positive) records, but the Archos 7 you see above is a very svelte 12mm thin and weighs only 350g, making it an ideal web reading device if not a particularly potent multimedia consumer. You also get WiFi, 2GB of integrated memory on the cheaper versions and a battery that will last for seven hours of video or 44 hours of audio playback. The Archos 8 (pictured after the break) comes with a huge old bezel, hinting at its ability to double up as a picture frame, while sharing the 7’s other features, including price and thickness. The smaller device will be coming out in Europe this April, to be followed by its larger sibling in May.

Continue reading Archos 7 and 8 Home Tablets are cheap, but you get what you pay for

Archos 7 and 8 Home Tablets are cheap, but you get what you pay for originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It may not be as big a surprise as the A4 itself was, but Apple has now confirmed via the latest iPad SDK Beta 3 documentation that the iPad does indeed use PowerVR SGX graphics hardware as part of its custom system-on-a-chip, which flatly contradicts previous reports of A4 using Mali, and lines up with what our pal Anand Shimpi has been telling us lately. What Apple doesn’t confirm, unfortunately, is exactly which chip in the PowerVR SGX family the iPad uses, so it’s still at least possible that it could pack a bigger punch than the iPhone or iPod touch.

In related news, a recent Apple job posting has now also offered up the first hard evidence that Apple might actually be putting its huge investment in A4 to use other platforms besides the iPad — shocking, we know. That job is for an Engineering Manager, who would lead a team focused on the “bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms,” and would otherwise be responsible for “low level platform architecture, firmware, core drivers and bring-up of new hardware platforms” — experience with ARM-based SoCs is also an “additional success factor.” Sound like the job you’ve been waiting for? Then hit up the link below for the complete details.

iPad confirmed to use PowerVR SGX graphics, Apple job posting suggests A4 chip will hit other products originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ll be forgiven for just glazing over during CES and ignoring all those ebook readers that were raining down, but Liquavista‘s attempt at marrying the endurance of e-paper with the desirability of color is well worth another look. The company has now furnished its LiquavistaColor dev kit with a QWERTY keyboard and also recruited Texas Instruments into the fold, whose OMAP system-on-a-chip is doing the grunt work under the hood. The video after the break indicates that touchscreen interaction is also planned, but the most impressive thing has to be the total lack of any redrawing pauses, which may be the considered the biggest drawback to the many E Ink devices out there. For the more conventional monochromatic crowd, we’ve also grabbed video of the LiquavistaBright, which replicates the rapid refresh skills, but omits the keyboard and OMAP in favor of a more compact form factor and Freescale iMX5x hardware. Slide past the break to see it all.

Continue reading Liquavista demos its color e-paper display with a new QWERTY-equipped dev kit (video)

Liquavista demos its color e-paper display with a new QWERTY-equipped dev kit (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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