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This afternoon (and yesterday) we had a chance to meet with a number of SoC vendors who have partnered with Microsoft for Windows 8. Each of them has their own individual reference tablet running Windows 8, and today we had a chance to survey the landscape and get photos of all the tablets. We started with ARM, then looked at x86 based tablets. Of course, the real goal with Windows 8 is to abstract as much of the difference between these two platforms away. 

Unfortunately, all of the ARM vendors were required to keep their tablets under glass and out of the way of physical contact per Microsoft instruction. Microsoft isn't ready to show off the ARM version of Windows 8 for a variety of reasons at this point (at least without a Microsoft rep. present), but we still got a chance to at least take a look at what there is now. Microsoft is encouraging tablet makers to target either a 10.1" or 11.6" form factor with 1366×768 resolution (ed: Metro will require 1024×768 as a minimum, so 1280×720 displays don't meet Microsoft's requirements).

Texas Instruments

First up is TI, whose development platform was demoed playing back the 1080p30 H.264 baseline video shown in the keynote fluidly in windows media player with a split-screen view. One tablet displayed the start menu, another displayed two split screen games. TI's development platform as shown right now is running on OMAP 4430, which again consists of two ARM Cortex A9s at 1.0 GHz and PowerVR SGX 540 graphics. Windows 8 won't launch on OMAP 4430, however, instead it'll launch on the more powerful OMAP 4470 platform with PowerVR SGX544 graphics and a 2D display compositor. The reason is partly due to SGX544 having full Direct3D 9.3 compliance, partly because it's an all around faster platform. I'm told that right now there's some Direct3D emulation going on as well for all the SoCs that don't support Direct3D 9.3. 

I also recorded a short video showing the TI Windows 8 tablet in action.

Qualcomm

My next stop was Qualcomm, whose current development tablet runs on an MSM8660 SoC, which consists of two scorpion cores and Adreno 220 graphics. Qualcomm took the tablet out of the glass box for us and showed a quick demonstration of the start menu scrolling back and forth, and the IE10 mobile view working and scrolling around. 

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to shoot video of the tablet while that demo was running, but we did grab some photos of the tablet without the glass box. Performance on the start menu looked to be above 30fps the whole time but not buttery smooth like the x86 tablets we've seen so far.

Just like TI, Qualcomm won't go to market with the SoC they're demonstrating Windows 8 working on today, instead they'll use the more powerful dual core Krait MSM8960 at first and quad core Krait APQ8064 later on. Dual core krait SoCs (eg 8960, 8270, 8260A) come with Adreno 225, quad core krait (APQ8064 and others) come with Adreno 320, both of which are Direct3D 9.3. 

NVIDIA

We've seen NVIDIA's Kal-El quad-core A9 based tablet a few times now, and found it out on the floor, also behind glass. Unlike the other vendors, NVIDIA hasn't said anything about going to market for Windows 8 with anything but Kal-El, and I don't see any reason why they should either.

The Kal-El development tablet was seated in a nice looking dock with what looks like one USB 3.0 port and a full size HDMI port.

AMD

Switching over to the x86 camp, we have AMD, who showed us two tablets running on Brazos – the Acer Iconia Tab W500 and MSI WindPad 110W, which use a C-50 and Z-01 APU, respectively. Displays on these are 1280×800 and support capacitive touch just like you'd expect for Windows 8.

Both the MSI WindPad and Iconia Tab felt snappy and responsive running the same Windows 8 Developer Preview build that we've used on the Samsung developer hardware. Subjectively, the WindPad's capacitive panel was more responsive and less prone to errant touch recognition than the Iconia, though both were more than useable with Windows 8. 

Intel

Last but not least is Intel's own development tablet, which is running an unnamed 32nm SoC. Intel was suspiciously silent about which particular SoC was inside this device, and you'll notice that it too is locked down in a plastic box, lumping it squarely in the next-gen SoC category for Microsoft.

It's possible this is Medfield, it's also possible this is some 2nd gen 32nm Atom SoC. Hopefully we'll find out more as Windows 8 starts getting closer to launch. 

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Electronic noses that can check blood/alcohol levels and detect gasses in the air will be coming to smartphones in the next three to five years, delegates at Semicon West were told.

Luc Van den hove, president of nanoelectronics research firm IMEC, said that the technology had now reached the point where the necessary sensors could be built simply and small enough for the technology to be widespread in the smartphone sector.

“It’s a logical step,” he told the Inq.

“You’ve already got a lot of sensors in a smartphone and electronic noses are a logical addition. You can already get the devices as an add-on for regular phones.”

Within a decade advances in nanoelectronics will make holograms an integral part of modern communications he said. Micro-mirror technology and advanced processors will bring down the cost and increase effectiveness of holographic technology and bring it mainstream.

Plastic processors are also going to become increasingly common. In February scientists demonstrated a plastic processor that could be printed into flexible labelling on foodstuffs or be built into a flexible health monitoring patch that can be worn in hospital. There will be 400 million such medical devices by 2015 he predicted.

“Plastic will never replace silicon, but if you look at these designs and the first microprocessors there are some very real similarities,” he told delegates.

It also has the advantage of being relatively cheap, and could play a vital role in the health of people in developing economies, by linking ‘body area networks’ into mobile and Wi-Fi access points. There are many more phones than doctors in most of the world he said, and such sensors could significantly help global health.

Overall the industry was in no danger of running up against manufacturing problems for at least the next decade he said. The limits of scaling down traditional transistor technology reached its limit around ten years ago, but advanced materials design and 3D stacking technology were making it possible to get around this.

Intel’s tri-gate technology could take up the slack and would be scalable all the way down to 10 nanometres. Beyond that tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs) were looking very promising, but more work needed to be done he said. High-K metal gate took ten years of research and the learning curve is only getting longer.

Flash memory has a solid roadmap to to scale down to 11 nanometres by 2020, and DRAM technology would go down to 16-20 nanometres within the same time period.

As for networking technology all the pieces are in place for silicon photonics – linking optical pickups directly into the processing heart of computers. Intel has been investing heavily in this technology, which will drastically increase the speed and efficiency of data transfers.

Intel has been talking about using optical interfaces in computing for years. So much so, that silicon photonics sessions at IDF became a regular stop on our coverage tour each year. The demos were always showcasing something too far out in the development cycle to get immediately excited about however. The first time we met Intel’s hybrid laser in silicon was 2006, and even then we were told that it’d be years before we’d see it productized.

Four years later, and we’re seeing Intel make good on its promises of delivering the technology necessary to put together real products.