Fixed Mobile Convergence

Cavium Networks, a provider of highly integrated semiconductor products and MontaVista Software, a dealer in embedded Linux commercialization, announced the availability of a reference platform with Android (News - Alert) on the ECONA dual core ARM processors.

The reference platform is supposedly available with a complete commercial grade software stack to enable fastest time to market for ECONA CNS3XXX customers targeting the digitally connected home and office applications such as FTTX broadband gateways, Networked Storage, Internet streaming devices and SMB Gateways.

With dual and single ARM (News - Alert) CPU cores, flexible architecture, range of glueless interfaces for wired wireless connectivity, and purpose-built hardware accelerators the ECONA ARM SoC processor family is claimed to be well suited for a number of applications in the networking, wireless, storage and consumer space.

Android is an open source delivery platform that features a rich set of APIs using which third-party developers can create media-rich apps and offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key applications. These help device manufacturers reduce prototyping time. Android’s open source nature has also generated lot of interest in markets outside of the original target of mobile phones such as MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), PNPs (Portable Navigation Devices), Internet-connected Home Entertainment/Digital Media Devices, Medical and other consumer devices.

The newly unveiled reference platform includes a commercial quality Linux port to the ECONA CNS3XXX ARM processor platform and support for the appropriate on-chip hardware acceleration blocks including graphics acceleration. The drivers for peripherals including Bluetooth, 802.11n and Touch Panel Display are also integrated into it. The reference platform also has provisions to make the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) blend with the Android ver2.2 ("Froyo") framework and also to realize a complete combination of the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) Digital Media Server (DMS) library with Android. Users can also utilize the reference platform to carry out detailed test and produce quality assurance reports for the full system.