The fifth edition of Freescale Semiconductor’s annual Technology Forum in India, got underway in Bangalore, Tuesday, providing an impressive showcase of Indian ingenuity – from smart electricity meters to smart notebook PCs all fuelled by the company’s power-efficient range of processors.

CEO Rich Beyer introduced Freescale’s Sensor Toolbox, a unified set of software development tools to streamline embedded designs that used their acceleration, pressure or proximity sensors. With their own focus increasingly on the automotive sector, Freescale showcased its own strong repertoire of auto electronics and safety systems,, eyeing the burgeoning small car market here.

In the exhibition space, the event offered the first opportunity to look at early realizations of cost effective – that is below $ 200 – notebooks powered by the Freescale IMX515 chip with an ARM Cortex A8 core. Freescale prefers to call them smartbooks. ( www.digilink.in )

One such notebook was used by Mumbai-based Digilink -- formerly D-Link (India) – to create a cost effective video phone-cum conferencing solution.

Melange Systems, Bangalore ( www.melangesystems.com ) has created a custom chip that when embedded in domestic and industrial electricity energy meters enables them tp be read from a few ms away – and also remotely switched on and off.

Another Bangalore-based developer, iWave Systems showcased their own video and voice over IP phone based on the Freescale iMX27 processor, running on Google- Android as well as a variety of small form factor hand held and portable touch PCs. Mohammed Qayyum, member, business development, explained that iWave is the first in the industry to port VXWorks 6.6, Win CE 6.0 and Google-Android 1.5 on Freescale IMX 27 architecture.
( www.iwavesystems.com )

The combo of ARM cores and Frescale processors is enabling a number of Indian developers to create reference designs in the video phone/conferencing, netbook and PDA space that can be priced more aggressively than hitherto thought possible. This has to be seen in the background of last week’s input to us from Intel that they did not see Atom-based netbooks becoming much cheaper than $ 250.
The Freescale event continues for a second day, Wednesday

(Sep 2 2009)