-
your Windows® embedded community
Windows For Devices
your Windows® embedded community
The choice of a little-known vendor's product to highlight a new chipwas surprising, as Ocosmos acknowledges in its release: "It isunprecedented that Intel provides a start-up company with its mostadvanced chip for the first time. It shows that Intel believes in thepotentials of Ocosmos' technology and OCS1."
Ocosmos says it began its collaboration with Intel back in April, after which the two companies "agreed to forge a strategic relationship with AT&T so that users can play online games such as Starcraft and WoW on the mobile device via AT&T's Wi-Fi networks." As well as Wi-Fi, the OCS1 will feature a detachable HSDPA cellular modem, Ocosmos adds.
The OCS1, reminiscent of many UMPC (ultra mobile PC) designs as well as Sony's PlayStation portable, offers a sliding, 4.8-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels, according to Ocosmos. This is said to be flanked by two gaming controllers, and there's also a miniaturized QWERTY keyboard.
Ocosmos claims its "Omos" technology allows the gaming controllers to double as mice, with "multi-direction choice and drag functions" and even the ability to rapidly enter text characters. However, the OSC1 also has a capacitive touchscreen, the company adds.
According to Ocosmos, the OCS1 runs Windows 7 on the Oak Trail Atom, whose clock speed has not been specified, and is equipped with 1GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD (solid state disk). Further storage may be added via a microSD slot, says the company.
In addition to the Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities already mentioned, the OCS1 offers Bluetooth and a GPS receiver, Ocosmos says. The device is also said to sport a three megapixel camera on the back for picture-taking, a 1.3 megapixel camera for video conferencing, USB ports (one host and one client), and even HDMI output (via a micro connector).
Oak Trail to bring extended battery life
The knock on an x86-based device such as the OCS1 would traditionally be battery life -- likely to have been two or three hours at best. According to Ocosmos, however, the battery life target for its handheld will be approximately ten hours.
Intel announced "Oak Trail" at the beginning of June, touting it as an Atom platform "optimized for tablets and sleeker netbook form factors due to its reduction in power consumption and thermals." The platform includes a "Lincroft" SoC, a "Langwell" I/O controller, plus some additions (below) code-named "Whitney Point."
As it turned out, the Langwell (Platform Controller Hub MP20) chip (above right) gives Moorestown high-speed USB and USB On-The-Go capabilities, cryptographic acceleration (AES, DERS, 3DES, RSA, ECC, SHA-1/2, DRM), and a 24-bit audio DSP, according to Intel. But the forthcoming Whitney Point superset is what will allow Oak Trail to run Windows 7, since it adds SATA, HD Audio, HDMI, and a variety of legacy I/O (below).
The added functionality described above will presumably increase the Oak Trail chipset's size and power consumption compared to Moorestown (otherwise, why omit it in the first place?). Without providing specific information on packaging details or TDPs, Intel promised that Oak Trail will be 40 percent smaller, 35 percent thinner, and have lower power consumption than its first-generation Z5xx Atom.
When it announced the Moorestown platform, Intel said the Z6xx would offer not only 1/50th the idle power consumption of the Z5xx, but also 1/20th the power consumption for audio playback. Power usage during web browsing and video playback has been cut by one half to two thirds, the company adds.
As a result, it was said, "high-end smartphones, tablets, and other mobile handheld products" will be able to offer more than ten days of standby, up to two days of audio playback, and from four to five hours of intensive usage.
Meanwhile, according to an IDF presentation given by Intel and reported on by CNet's Brooke Crothers, the chipmaker plans to transition its Atom processors from the present-day 45nm process all the way down to 15nm, although no timetable for this was mentioned. As Crothers points out, the number of Atoms offered will apparently grow as the process technology gets smaller.
The slide (above) reproduced by CNet also makes the market positioning of the various Atoms a mite clearer than it has been in the past. For example, the N series and D series are for netbooks and desktops, respectively; the Z series is for handhelds; the CE series is for consumer electronics such as TVs and set-top boxes; and the newly announced E-series is for embedded devices.
Further information
Ocosmos does not yet appear to have any information regarding the OCS1 on its website, but information on the Omos controller technology may be found here. Additional coverage of the OCS1 may be found on Rick Lehrbaum's DeviceGuru blog, here, on Laptop's blog, here, and on Engadget, here.
Brooke Crothers' CNet article on Intel's future, smaller Atoms may be found here.
