April 22nd, 2009 ~ by admin

Amazons Kindle 2: A book with 4 brains

Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-book has been a pretty big success.  What many do not know is the amount of processing power in it.  The main processor is a Freescale MCIMX31LVKN5C Applications processor, which is based on a 532MHz ARM11 core (yes it is faster then an iPhone).  The Wireless connectivity is provided by a Qualcomm MSM6801A baseband processor, which at its heart is a 200MHz ARM9 core.  Also included in it is 2GB of Samsung moviNAND which is flash memory, with the controller (itself a processor) built in.  The electrophoretic bistable display uses a controller made by E-ink and Epson, which of course contains a microcontroller.

In modern electronics the question is not “Does it have a processor?”, but rather “How many processor cores does it have?”

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