Comcast rolls back IPv6, after telling Netgear users they must buy new modems.

This is a follow up to our article Comcast abruptly cuts off users of Netgear DOCSIS 3.0 modems. To briefly recap, on Wednesday - March 21st, Comcast cable broadband customers in the San Francisco Bay area, who were using the (then Comcast approved) Netgear CMD31T DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) modem, suddenly had their internet service disconnected.

Comcast's Retail DOCSIS Tiered Levels of Certification

One Star

A One Star designation indicates that the device has undergone DOCSIS testing by Comcast and has received the relevant Underwriters Laboratory ("UL"), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and CableLabs certifications. Comcast's DOCSIS certification supplements CableLabs testing by adding things like performance and interoperability tests. This helps to ensure that, for example, a given device can support a given service tier's speed.

At the return counter of a local Frys Electronics store on March 22, an employee reported that they had been experiencing a surge in returns of the CMD31T from Comcast customers.

• On the Netgear Community Forum, on March 22, a CMD31T user reported that Comcast instructed him to purchase a Motorola modem to solve the problem.
• At online retailer Newegg (which has stopped selling the Netgear modem), on March 27, a CMD31T user also reported being told by Comcast to purchase a Motorola modem. This, despite the fact that on March 28, Netgear reported

"We were immediately in touch with Comcast regarding the issue and within a day corrective action was taken. Comcast had rolled back to the older system and all customers were online"

Also on the 28th, Comcast, who on March 23 had said "we support the Netgear DOCSIS 3.0 CMD31T cable modem" (and had granted it the 1-star rating above), issued a new statement:

“We recently identified that the retail NetGear CMD31T device ships with and runs an uncertified version of firmware that exacerbates a critical IPv6-related defect. To ensure Comcast customers with these devices will continue to have uninterrupted Internet service, we have rolled back IPv6 temporarily in some parts of our network to give NetGear more time to address the issue. Comcast anticipates NetGear will soon address the issue for their retail devices, which we will test and deploy on an emergency basis.”

IPv6 is the next generation internet addressing system, which will replace the current generation IPv4 that is running out of available IP (internet protocol) addresses. In Comcast's statement, which came one week after they began telling customers to buy Motorola modems, they claimed to have restored CMD31T functionality. However, Comcast did nothing to address the expenses that their customers had incurred as a result of their failure to perform a simple IPv6 test prior to launch, per their Certification Process.

To make matters worse, Comcast withheld that explanation for more than two days. On March 26, Charlie Douglas, the Senior Director of Public Relations and Communications at Comcast Corporation, told the EE Daily News:

We have (uncovered an explanation) and Netgear plans to contact you. I have passed along your contact info. Pls stand by. You should hear from them shortly.

Since Comcast knew what the problem was, and had (according to their official statement) restored the functionality of the Netgear modems, why would they withold the information until Netgear offered their own explanation on March 28? 

"Last week Comcast upgraded their Cable Internet head-end systems in select cities which caused the Internet connection failure for a few customers who had the NETGEAR CMD31T Docsis 3.0 Cable Modem. We were immediately in touch with Comcast regarding the issue and within a day corrective action was taken. Comcast had rolled back to the older system and all customers were online."

Neither Comcast or Netgear has said how many "a few customers" is. Comcast has now reversed themselves once again, stating on their device information website:

The retail NetGear CMD31T device has a known IPv6-related software defect. This prevents the device from being provisioned on the Comcast network.

We asked Comcast's Douglas - "What is Comcast's response regarding compensating customers for the expenses they incurred in unnecessary modem replacements?"

To which he tersely replied:

They should contact Netgear.

We did contact Netgear, and on March 29 we received this response from Courtney Furia, Account Supervisor at Netgear's PR firm of Weber Shandwick:

I wanted to let you know that we do not have an update on compensation at this time. We will be sure to provide you with any additional details as soon as they are available.

It's difficult to say which company, Comcast or Netgear, has handled this situation more poorly. Comcast has contradicted themselves repeatedly, and deliberately withheld information that would have explained the problem earlier. In our communications with service technicians, in person and at the company's call center, Comcast repeatedly denied that any change had been made to their network. Netgear, on the other hand, has simply stonewalled, taking 7 days to respond to our request for information. It would appear that both companies are trying to avoid any liability for the expenses their customers incurred.

This does not bode well for the upcoming worldwide launch of IPv6, on 6-6-12.  This week, at the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) meeting in Paris, a panel - which included representatives from Comcast and Time Warner Cable, met to discuss the IPv6 Launch. Cable modem manufacturer D-Link was also represented, but not Netgear. Hopefully, before the world launch day, the ISPs (internet service providers) will conduct a thorough set of tests on all approved modems. Imagine the chaos that will occur if customers around the globe get dropped off the internet, multiplying the problem that occurred in Silicon Valley last week many times over. It might not be a bad idea to call your ISP now, and ask them if they have tested your modem for IPv6.

Comcast abruptly cuts off users of Netgear DOCSIS 3.0 modems

On Wednesday, March 21, we lost our cable broadband internet connection here at the EE Daily News. Power cycling our Netgear CMD31T DOCSIS 3.0 did not help, as the modem continued a futile attempt to synch up with Comcast servers. The company's field technicians had just been out to repair cables and adjust signal strength in our neighborhood a few days earlier, so our initial assumption was that the connection failure was related to that work.

Comcast sent out a technician once again, but not until the next morning. Immediately upon his arrival, Comcast's technician informed us that he had some bad news. "Netgear CMD31T modems are not designed to work in California", he said, adding that they are only designed to work with Time Warner Cable systems. The technicians had just been informed of this in a meeting they had that morning, he said.  We had installed our Netgear CMD31T more than two months earlier, and it had been connecting to Comcast just fine up till then, so what had changed?

We checked Netgear's documentation on the modem, and found that Comcast had their facts backwards. According to the CMD31T Data Sheet, all major providers except for Time Warner, are supported.

It could have been that the out-of-specification signal levels on the local cable caused the problem, perhaps resulting in damage to the modem. So, we visited our local Frys Electronics store to attempt an exchange.

"Let me guess.. Comcast. Right?"

Apparently we were not the only ones affected. These are the exact words of the Frys Return Desk staffer, immediately upon seeing our CMD31T. "We must have had twenty of these come back just yesterday, and more the day before", he said. He kindly accepted our return for store credit, however, even though we were past the normal return period.

In looking for a replacement, we learned that the Netgear cable modem was now the only cable modem that particular Frys store sells. Pretty odd, for a modem that is "not designed to work in California". Since there was no other choice, we decided to do a straight exchange for another sample of the CMD31T.

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 67.164.14.59

Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.252.0

Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 67.164.12.1

Upon installing our 2nd Netgear modem, we observed from the front panel lights that it very quickly established an internet connection, within minutes after startup. To check, we executed an ipconfig command from our PC, with the results shown above. Clearly, there was no electrical problem in the cabling. Nor was there any problem with the modem, dispelling Comcast's claim that they don't work on their system. The 2nd CMD31T had no problem at all seeing Comcast's servers.

Pinging google.com [68.87.91.199] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 68.87.91.199: bytes=32 time=91ms TTL=53

Reply from 68.87.91.199: bytes=32 time=91ms TTL=53

Reply from 68.87.91.199: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=53

Reply from 68.87.91.199: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 68.87.91.199:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 91ms, Maximum = 93ms, Average = 92ms

To confirm that we had a good connection, we pinged Google.com, successfully. In order to completely restore our service, the next step was to call Comcast to "provision" the modem. The process requires providing the MAC address of the modem, so that it can be added as an allowed connection on the company's network. We monitored progress while on the call with Comcast, by continuing to ping Google.com.

Ping request could not find host google.com.

Please check the name and try again

As soon as Comcast's Customer Service person completed our modem setup, we were once again cutoff from the internet. It was now apparent that Comcast is blocking the MAC address of the Netgear modems, though the devices have no problem otherwise in establishing a connection on their network.

Our next step was to contact both Netgear and Comcast media relations departments, to investigate this matter. If the unsolicited report that we received at Frys was correct, an unknown number of Comcast customers were suddenly being forced to purchase new modems... with no explanation or forewarning from Comcast.

As of this writing, Netgear has not yet responded to our request. We did get a response from Charlie Douglas, the Senior Director of Public Relations and Communications at Comcast Corporation, in Philadelphia where Comcast is headquartered.

Here is a webpage that lists all the compatible devices we support.

As you'll see, we support the Netgear DOCSIS 3.0 CMD31T cable modem.

http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net/

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

According to Douglas's initial response, there should be no problem using Netgear cable modems. In fact, the CMD31T is on the approved device list!

We have an approved modem, which our current test (and prior months experience) shows is completely functional and capable of providing a high-speed broadband connection on Comcast.  But Comcast in the San Francisco Bay Area is rendering these devices unusable. Why? Has there been some sort of falling out between Comcast and Netgear?  We are currently waiting for an answer.

On Monday, March 26, we once again contacted Mr. Douglas, who had promised to investigate further. The answer we received did nothing to settle the matter, as Comcast has now "passed the buck" back to Netgear.

(EE Daily News) Has your investigation uncovered an explanation for the Netgear modem issue?

(Comcast) We have and Netgear plans to contact you. I have passed along your contact info. Pls stand by. You should hear from them shortly.

Many questions remain. If they have uncovered an explanation, why has Comcast now decided not to share it with us?  

Comcast could conceivably be liable for the unnecessary expense of many returned Netgear CND31T modems. We will update this story as soon as we get new information.

added 03/28/2012

• Purchasers of the CMD31T modem on Newegg also report issues with Comcast service
• Users report same problem with Comcast-Netgear, on the Netgear user forum.  
  

From Netgear's PR firm, via email:

"Last week Comcast upgraded their Cable Internet head-end systems in select cities which caused the Internet connection failure for a few customers who had the NETGEAR CMD31T Docsis 3.0 Cable Modem. We were immediately in touch with Comcast regarding the issue and within a day corrective action was taken. Comcast had rolled back to the older system and all customers were online.

We are working closely with Comcast to ensure that customers do not face Internet disruptions for any such future upgrades to the system."

Update 02/28/2012 at 3:30PM PDT
From Charlie Douglas, Senior Director of Public Relations and Communications at Comcast Corporation:

“Comcast is in the process of deploying IPv6 nationally. We recently identified that the retail NetGear CMD31T device ships with and runs an uncertified version of firmware that exacerbates a critical IPv6-related defect. To ensure Comcast customers with these devices will continue to have uninterrupted Internet service, we have rolled back IPv6 temporarily in some parts of our network to give NetGear more time to address the issue. Comcast anticipates NetGear will soon address the issue for their retail devices, which we will test and deploy on an emergency basis.”

No word yet on how Comcast and/or Netgear will compensate customers for the expenses incurred for unnecessary modem replacements.

Synopsys combines H/W & S/W IP with protoyping tools, for a complete SoC audio subsystem.

In developing their new DesignWare SoundWave Audio Subsystem for System on Chip (SoC) design, Synopsys Inc. has strategically combined the assets from several of the company's acquisitions in recent years. The SoundWave solution bears a lineage born of Synopsys' 2010 acquisition of Virage Logic (ARC cores), and their Sonic Focus audio enhancement software (acquired by ARC in 2008), the CHIPit and Synplicity FPGA hardware prototyping tools, Chipidea mixed-signal IP (from MIPS), and the Virtio virtual prototyping technology for software development.

Henk Hamoen, Senior Product Marketing Manager for ARC Sound and IP Subsystems at Synopsys, says that SoundWave represents ten staff-years of development and integration effort, which involved more then 200,000 hours of functional verification testing, and development of 500,000 lines of code. Designers can configure the subsystem with a single or dual ARC 32-bit audio processor cores. Dual cores can be used to process multiple audio streams, such as in Blu-ray disc player applications. Hamoen says that the cores do not need to be identical, and some customers differentiate their end-product SoCs by using a second core to implement customized audio post-processing.

By taking a subsystem approach, Synopsys was able to eliminate the DMA (Direct Memory Access) functions normally required in the each of the I2S (Integrated Interchip Sound) and S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital InterFace) interfaces, combining the functionality in the shared Flex FiFo block. This saves area, and also simplifies the design process, says Hamoen. The SoundWave subsystem also provides an interface for customers to connect to Synopsys' HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) IP block. An ARM AMBA (Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture ) AXI (Advanced eXtensible Interface)/AHB (Advanced High-performance Bus) protocol interface facilitates integration of the audio subsystem into a SoC architecture. Customers have the option of including Synopsys' analog audio codecs to provide the connections for line inputs and outputs, microphones, speakers or headphones.

The SoundWave Audio Subsystem software development environment allows users to select from a library of codecs that includes Dolby Laboratories, DTS, SRS Labs and Microsoft, along with open source formats Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. Synopsys provides audio plug-in software for developers to use with the open source GStreamer multimedia framework, for integration of their audio subsystem software with host application software.

The Synopsys Virtualizer prototyping tools enable users of the SoundWave Audio Subsystem to integrate the audio software stack with their application software, before silicon is available. The HAPS (High-performance ASIC Prototyping System) FPGA-based prototyping system provides developers with a hardware model of the SoundWave subsystem for full system integration and hardware-software validation.

For physical implementation, Hamoen says that Synopsys has developed an optimized SoundWave plug-in for the Lynx RTL-to-GDSII SoC Design System. An example layout for the digital components (i.e. standard cells and  memories), in a 40LP process, occupies 0.21mm².

Hamoen indicated that Synopsys will be launching other subsystem offerings, to continue to leverage the range of assets which the company can bring to SoC design, including integration services. By moving further up the design chain in SoC audio hardware-software integration, the company is coming at incumbents such as Tensilica and CEVA with a broader arsenal of tools, at the risk of disturbing their relationships as partners.

The DesignWare Audio Subsystem is available now for Synopsys' early adopters, and the company is planning a general release in April 2012.

Texas Instruments adds to KeyStone product line with new TMS320C665x DSPs

The TMS320C6657 is a dual C66x core DSP, with an Acceleration Pac that includes
Viterbi and Turbo encoders for voice and radio communications applications.

(note: volume pricing information changed from original publication, per Texas Instruments 03/26/12)
Texas Instruments (TI) has added to their catalog of KeyStone architecture Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), with the introduction of three devices in the new TMS320C665x series. Tom Flanagan, Director of Technical Strategy for Multicore Processors at TI, says that the new DSPs fill out the first generation KeyStone 40nm product line, with an emphasis toward high-performance, low-power portable applications.

The top of the line TMS320C6657 integrates dual 1.25GHz C66x DSP cores, and is specified by TI for performance of up to 80 GMACs (billion multiply accumulate operations per second) and 40 GFLOPs (billion floating point operations per second). At a 1GHz clock rate, the nominal power consumption for the C6657 is 3.5W. For voice and radio communications applications, the C6657 incorporates an acceleration pac, with a Viterbi and a Turbo decoder. 

For lower power applications, the TMS320C6655 and C6654 provide single C66x cores, which TI rates at 40GMACs/20GLOPS (C6655), and 27.2GMACs/13.6 GLOPS (C6654). At a 1GHz clock rate, the C6655 consumes 2.5W, while the C6654 lowers power to 2W nominal, at 800MHz.

Peripheral and I/O support in the C6657/55/54 devices includes a Universal Parallel Port (UPP), which enables  direct connections to A/D or D/A converters, or to an FPGA.  The devices also provide two McBSP (Multichannel Buffered Serial Ports) ports, a PCI Express Gen II single and double lane interface, and Serial RapidIO V2.1 x4 ports (in the TMS320C6657/55 only). Other functions in the Peripheral I/O block, include EMIF 16 (External Memory Interface), a SGMII (Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface‎) Ethernet port, dual UARTs (Universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter), I2C (Inter-IC) bus, SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) bus, and GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output).

The TMS320C6657/55 also support a 1333 MHz (32b) DDR3 interface, and the TMS320C6654 supports 1066 MHz (32b) DDR3. TI's HyperLink bus on the C6657/55 enables chip-to-chip interconnect, and along with Multicore Navigator, enables the DSP to transparently dispatch tasks for execution on other local devices.

To minimize size and weight for portable applications, TI is packaging the TMS320C665x series in a 21mm x 21mm FC-BGA (Flip Chip Ball Grid Array), which is only 2.9mm in height. Flanagan says that TI is offering the devices with an extended low temperature option, guaranteeing performance down to -55C, which is well suited for mounting the DSPs on the skin of drone aircraft. Other application areas that TI is targeting with the C6657/55/54 include embedded vision applications, real-time industrial inspection, avionics, biometric scanners, portable medical diagnostic instruments, and intelligent video surveillance.

Pricing and Availability

TI says that pricing for the C6654 DSP starts at under $30 for 10,000 unit quantities, and they are taking orders now. The company is also offering low cost EVMs (evaluation modules) to help developers get started designing with the C6654, C6655 and C6657. The TMDSEVM6657 is $349, and the TMDSEVM6657LE sells for $549. Both EVMs include a free Multicore Software Development Kit along with TI’s Code Composer Studio IE (Integrated Development Environment).  The kits also include a suite of application/demo codes.

Related Articles

• TI introduces 1st quad ARM A15 core basestation on a chip for LTE/LTE-A at Mobile World Congress
• Texas Instruments extends KeyStone DSP architecture for Cloud-RAN applications
• TI adds security features to DSPs
• Texas Instruments adds basestation SoCs for small cells
• Texas Instruments among founding members of Embedded Vision Alliance

Broadcom introduces new GPS chip, offering a platform for development of indoor positioning applications.

With the introduction of their new BCM4752 GPS (Global Positioning System) chip, Broadcom is enhancing capabilities for outdoor positioning in mobile devices, while also providing a platform for the development of future indoor location-based applications. The potential to more precisely locate a consumer indoors, which is beyond the reach of the geostationary satellites that power GPS,  is seen by many Venture Capitalists (VCs) and mobile industry entrepreneurs as a lucrative opportunity for mobile commerce and social networking applications. Think FourSquare without the check-in, or being able to find that item you are looking for in a department store without wandering up and down the aisles (see Aisle411 for example).

According to Richard Najarian, Broadcom’s Senior Director for GPS, the BCM4752 consumes 50% less power than previous generation 65nm devices, such as the BCM4751. The new chip also adds multi-constellation support, with the ability to simultaneously collect data from the U.S. GPS, as well as the Russian GLONASS (Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema or Global Navigation Satellite System), the Japanese QZSS (Quasi-Zenith Satellite System), and SBAS (Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems).

To determine indoor locations, the BCM4752 platform will utilize Broadcom's software to integrate information derived from WiFi hotspots and NFC (Near-Field Communications), combined with data from smartphone sensors, such as accelerometers, compasses, gyros and barometric sensors. Nokia is developing an indoor positioning system based on distributed Bluetooth beacons, which the Broadcom platform will also support.

Scott Pomerantz, VP and General Manager of GPS at Broadcom, says that the company has developed a worldwide database of WiFi MAC (Media Access Control) address locations, through a combination of crowd-sourcing and licensing of 3rd-party data.  This database can be utilized by Broadcom's software to approximate a user's indoor location. Other companies are also developing a hybrid approach to indoor positioning, including Vancouver, Canada based Rx Networks. Adrian Stimpson, Senior VP of Sales & Marketing at RX Networks, says that his company has also developed such a database. While information in the database is updated every few seconds, Stimpson says that WiFi locations are still imprecise, since the exact location inside a building must often be estimated.

At the recent GPS-Wireless Conference in Burlingame, CA,speakers on the panel "New Platforms and Technology that Empower Location Markets", questioned how indoor LBS will be monetized. Kanwar Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer at CSR, said that revenue would come indirectly, to companies such as Google that can direct more context and location aware advertising to mobile devices. Ankit Agarwal, founder and CEO of  Micello, which has developed indoor maps, said that indoor navigation will be an enabler for other applications, such as in-store product search, or for social applications which allow users to personalize navigation based on parameters such as their social network, or personal interests.

Indoor navigation will be the subject of a meeting of the Northern California WCA (Wireless Communications Alliance) Mobile and Future SIGs: "Semiconductor Sensors innovating Mobile Devices & User Experiences", on April 18 - at Qualcomm in Santa Clara.

Speakers at the WCA event will include:

• Len Sheynblat, VP of Technology, Qualcomm, Inc. (Event Sponsor)
• Wen Lin, Marketing Manager - iNEMO and Sensor Hub solutions, STMicroelectronics
• John Carey, Director of Marketing - TrueTouch, Cypress Semiconductor
• Seckin Ozdamar, Business Manager - Optical Sensors, Human Interface BU, Maxim Integrated Products
• Michael Karst, General Manager, Sensirion (Temperature/Humidity Sensors)

You can register for the event through the Eventbrite link on the WCA website.

Beware HTC's univeral inbox. It may just make your phone unusable.

Many users of Android smartphones are familiar with the "Manage Applications" function display, such as the one shown here on an HTC Thunderbolt. It is useful to know how to stop, and clear stored data, from the numerous bloatware apps that wireless operators and handset manufacturers insist on pre-installing in your phone.

These applications can consume memory and processor resources, even if you never use them. This can also happen with apps that you have installed yourself, which their developers have designed to start up and run in the background as soon as you turn on your phone.

Just go to Settings >> Applications >> Manage Applications, and select the app that you would like to stop or clear. Unfortunately, you may discover that some applications have those critical functions disabled. This is depicted here with the gray-shadowed "Clear data" button on HTC's mail application. To make matters worse, HTC doesn't allow users to move the app to to the higher capacity SD card either.

 Most smartphone manufacturers provide a universal inbox feature like this, so that you can easily access email from multiple accounts and services in the same place. Disabling the clear data function was an especially bad design decision by HTC, since the accumulation of messages and attachments can easily overflow the internal capacity of your phone. 

If that happens, you may see a symbol with a warning message similar to the one above, though for the internal storage in this case. As it turns out, fixing that problem can be much more difficult that simply deleting email. At least on the Thunderbolt.

When our Thunderbolt exhibited this problem, we completely deleted email accounts one-by-one, only to discover that the stored data in HTC's email app stayed the same. We finally had deleted all email accounts, and rebooted the phone, but the problem remained.

We spoke with four different advisers on HTC's toll free customer support (866-449-8358 in North America) while troubleshooting this problem. On the first call, after we described the problem, the adviser asked if we used Facebook a lot. Puzzled by that irrelevant question as a starting point, we decided to terminate the call and try again.

On each of the next three calls, the first recommendation was to go to the (disabled) Clear Data function. Apparently, even HTC support staff were surprised that this does not work. One of the advisers told us to clear data from the Gmail app. HTC does enable that function, but it was useless since we were using Yahoo and POP mail for some of our accounts.

Connecting the phone to a PC through the USB port also did not help, since mounting the device as a Disk Drive only exposes the SD card. The only means of clearing the internal memory from HTC's email app is to do a complete Factory Reset.

 Back it up first

Having exhausted all other options, short of rooting the Thunderbolt, we prepared to reset the phone. But first, a backup of apps and data was called for. We chose the free version of MyBackup, from RerWare. MyBackup allows users to create a backup of all apps to the SD card, or you can backup online by purchasing the Pro version for $4.99. You can backup data, such as your contacts, bookmarks, and system settings, to either location at no charge.

Just to be safe, we also copied the backup of apps on the SD card to our PC, even though HTC says the reset won't affect the external storage. After resetting the phone, we went to the RerWare website through the Android browser to reinstall MyBackup.

With that completed, we logged into our account on the site and ran the restore functions. We found that the process was very straightforward, but restoring each of your apps still requires manually going through the individual setup procedures one-by-one. Unfortunately, the backup did not save app data, so we did suffer some loss, such as from our Notepad application.

We also encountered some inconsistent behavior, where MyBackup's restore function did not complete the installation of all apps. Placeholders were left on the HTC Thunderbolt's screens, but we had to repeat the restore or go back to Google Play several times to get all the apps we had before the reset.

Inconvenient though it is, we recommend not using the HTC Universal inbox because of this problem. Google and Yahoo both provide apps that let you access more than one email account on their services, but you will need a separate app for IMAP or POP email on other domains.

ARM partners with Freescale in upgrade of their smallest processor core: Cortex-M0+

ARM partnered with Freescale to develop the Cortex-M0+ core, which increases
performance while lowering power compared to the previous generation M0.

Thomas Ensergueix, CPU product manager at ARM, says that his company is targeting low power connected devices, or the "internet of things", with its new 32-bit Cortex-M0+ architecture, the smallest core in the ARM processor family. In its minimal configuration, when fabricated in a TSMC90LP process, Ensergueix says that the M0+ consumes only 9uA/MHz of clock speed. With a 1.2 volt supply, this is equivalent to ~11uW/Hz. ARM rated the previous generation M0 at 16uW/Hz, in the same 90LP process.

In rethinking the M0 architecture, ARM 's designers decided to reduce the instruction pipeline from three stages to only two. The reduction in number of gates lowers power, and also resulted in a 10% increase in performance through faster (2-cycle) branch execution, according to Ensergueix. Also, as a result of the 2-stage design, fewer power-consuming accesses of Flash memory are required.

Other performance modifications in the M0+ include single-cycle access to peripherals through the I/O interface, and a new micro-trace buffer for faster debug. ARM designed the new Memory Protection Unit to enable the M0+ to be used in secure, safety-related embedded applications, such as automotive and medical devices. The M0+ is 100% code-compatible with M0 software, using the same Thumb instruction set.

Geoff Lees, Vice President of Freescale's Industrial and Multi-Market MCU Business, says that his company collaborated with ARM on the design of the new 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ core. Freescale sees the 32-bit core as an ideal long term replacement for 8-bit and 16-bit cores.  "It doesn't make much sense to continue using 8-bit and 16-bit cores", says Lees, because today's design flows and  Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) reuse methodologies are predominantly based on 32-bit ARM bus interconnect fabrics. Freescale will employ the M0+ in their Kinetis L series of MCUs.

Lees also says that MCU applications, such as appliances, smart lighting,and motor control, are all driving forward the development of a standard 32-bit ecosystem. He is seeing increasing requirements for networking connectivity in end devices, with the use of sub-GHz radios to connect to local sub-networks, which eventually connect to home and business WiFi gateways.Ultra low-power WiFi will eventually enable direct, energy-efficient wireless connectivity to be built into the end devices, says Lees. 

Freescale is currently in the validation phase for their first Kinetis L silicon, which they received earlier this year. The company plans to demonstrate the new devices at the Design West Conference in two weeks. Freescale's lead customers will be able to get samples starting in April, with general sampling in Q2, followed by full production quantities in Q3.

According to Lees, Freescale's plans for use of the M0+ core extend up to heterogeneous multi-core application processors, where the M0+ will be used to offload the main processor cores to manage peripherals, wireless connectivity , or analog/mixed-signal interfaces.

Broadcom: new chip eases HDTV transition for cable operators, 45 million analog TVs still in use.

At the cable TV industry consortium's CableLabs winter conference in Philadelphia today, Broadcom introduced a new 40nm Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) System on a Chip (SoC) for cable systems, the BCM7574. Brett Tischler, marketing director for Broadcom’s set-top box (STB) product line, says that the DTA frees up spectrum for cable operators to deliver more High-Definition (HD) and Video on Demand (VOD) services.

Cable operators must currently support ~45M analog TVs that are connected to cable systems in North America, says Tischler. A typical cable system has 860MHz-1GHz of bandwidth, and supporting analog channels can consume up 400MHz of that bandwidth. Operators could deliver four HD digital channels in the space of a single analog channel. By employing DTAs in their STBs, the digital-to-analog conversion takes place in the subscriber's home, freeing up cable capacity for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS 3.0) services. 

The BCM7574 addresses the issue of slower channel switching times that consumers may experience when they switch from analog to digital STBs, with Broadcom’s FastRTV technology. The device also supports the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commercial Advertisement Level Mitigation (CALM) requirements, to maintain consistent audio volume during commercials, program and channel changes. Tischler says that Broadcom is integrating new ultra-low power features into all of their STB SOCs, and the BCM7574 

lowers system stand-by power to less than 100 milliwatts (mW), reducing average power consumption by up to 65% percent in a 24 hour period (assuming 8 hours of TV watching per day).

New hybrid gateway SoC

Broadcom is also introducing a new 40nm hybrid gateway System on a Chip (SoC) for set top boxes (STBs) at the CableLabs conference, to enable cable operators to securely deliver premium broadcast content converged with web-based content and services. The BCM7435 is a dual-core/quad-thread application processor, which can simultaneously transcode four digital media streams, with performance of 7000 Dhrystone Million Instructions Per Second (DMIPS).

Joe Del Rio, a marketing director for Broadcom’s set-top box line, says that the company's chip architects customized the BCM7435 based on MIPS processor cores. By getting down to the Register-Transfer Level (RTL),  Broadcom's designers were able to extend security to the lowest level of cache and core processor operations, says Del Rio. The BCM7435 has the capacity to support multi-screen connected homes, with up to 22 concurrent video streams.  The new security hardware in the device provides cable operators with the ability to support internet services, while ensuring that web apps do not introduce malware or circumvent content protection in premium pay-TV services. According to Del Rio, most cable operators will install Linux on STBs, but the BCM7435 can also run Android Ice Cream Sandwich.  Broadcom showed such a STB reference design at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show, based on the previous generation MIPS-based BCM7425, enabled by Myriad's Alien Vue Android technology.

The BCM7435 has the same footprint as the BCM7425, with more than 200% higher applications CPU performance, according to Broadcom's press release. The hardware hypervisor in the BCM7435 supports multi-processor and multi-Operating System software platforms. Broadcom also says that the BCM7435 delivers a 300% increase in 3D graphics performance, and a 200% increase in Audio Processing compared to the previous generation BCM7425. Both devices provide Multimedia Over Coax (MoCA) 2.0 connectivity.

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Slow going for mobile commerce in the U.S., but Ericcson gears up for major growth worldwide

You may have noticed one of these signs near the cash register of your local Peet's coffee shop, or at other merchants, such as Radio Shack, or 7-Eleven. Google has been promoting the use of smartphones for mobile payments (M-commerce) with Google Wallet, which they have installed in handsets such as the Samsung Nexus S 4G on Sprint. Smartphones with Near-Field Communications (NFC) technology for mobile payments, such as the Nexus S, are still relatively few, but a new Harris survey indicates that it may as well stay that way. A large majority of smartphone users in the U.S. show no interest in the use of such features for making financial transactions.

In their online survey of 2,056 adults, Harris found that 63% of respondents are either "not at all comfortable", or simply "not comfortable",  with using their smartphone as an admission ticket to movies, concerts or live performances. Only 24% of those surveyed said they would be comfortable with using a mobile app to store credit card information for making retail purchases. When asked to predict when mobile payments would supersede cash, 30% in Harris' survey said never, while 15% it would take 10 or more years.

This may not come as good news to proponents in the U.S., but it has not deterred wireless infrastructure provider Ericsson from promoting its technology for M-commerce in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa. In a presentation at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg spoke of the potential opportunities for M-commerce services to leverage the 1.6B cell phone users connected to mobile services through his company's networks. At MWC, Ericsson announced an alliance with Western Union to bring mobile payment capability to 2B people in the world that (the company says) lack access to financial services.

Ericsson aims to merge mobile services with financial services to drive adoption of mobile wallets

In a analyst briefing today, Tomas Korseman, Head of Business Development and Strategy for M-Commerce at Ericsson Support Solutions, said that his company sees M-commerce set for major growth, predicting that U.S.$800B of mobile transactions would be processed globally by 2016. He did not say how many of those transactions, perhaps ironically denominated in U.S. dollars, would actually originate in this country. Korseman's statements did concur with Harris on the low penetration of mobile payments today, corresponding to 5% globally, the same as the 5% U.S. adoption in the Harris survey. 

Ericsson is targeting to grow the M-commerce market to 20% global adoption in the next 3 years. A key part of their strategy is to merge financial services with the services which carriers employ to facilitate purchase of airtime by their users, in order to transform cell phones into mobile wallets. By working with companies such as Western Union, Ericsson sees the opportunity for carriers and financial services companies to cross-promote their products, incentivizing users by offering free SMS messages or airtime minutes, for example, in return for completing a mobile transaction. 

There are a number of groups vying for what they see as a profitable M-commerce market. The ISIS mobile wallet is a system launched through a joint venture of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, that competes with Google Wallet. The VISA credit card company has their own mobile wallet, and at MWC they announced a collaboration with Intel to have it installed on that company's new smartphone reference platform. Ericsson is looking to profit by bridging the disparate M-commerce systems from wireless operators to service providers, with their M-commerce interconnect system, to provide a hub for the mobile payment ecosystem.

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Google deletes Android Market app. But where is the Google Play replacement?

Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play. On your Android phone or tablet, we’ll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps. The music, movies, books and apps you’ve purchased will continue to be available to you through Google Play—simply log in with your Google account like always.

Well.. maybe not so simple!

Google did introduce "Google Play" today, through the announcement above on the Google Mobile blog. (Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog).  Prior to the announcement, Google had already integrated Google Music, which the company announced as a Music Beta in November - 2011, into the Android Market. 

Since Google announced that the changeover from Android Market to Google Play was to begin today, the EE Daily News proceeded to conduct a test, starting with an HTC Thunderbolt  running Android Gingerbread, on Verizon's LTE Network.  When we selected the Android Market on the Thunderbolt, a message was immediately displayed - "Application not connected to device."  Then the familiar Android Market shopping bag icon instantly went "poof", obliterated from our home screen.

One might logically assume that we just happened to check the Thunderbolt at the same moment as the familiar Android Market shopping bag was being replaced with a Google Play icon through an automatic update. No such luck!  We were left wondering... how was a user to install apps now?

A reboot of the phone resulted in the same empty spot on our home screen, where the Android Market used to be, so our next step was to go to Google Play through the Android web browser.

When we selected "GO TO GOOGLE PLAY" through the web on play.google.com, we were presented with the option of completing the action through the Internet, or through the Play Store... a puzzling chicken-or-the egg conundrum.

 
We chose "Play Store", and were informed that "Android Market is upgrading to Google play". No kidding!

Selecting "Continue" led us to a list of Google's Terms of Service (TOS) for Google Play, Google Music, Google Books, and YouTube Rentals. Apparently, at Google, you can merge your apps but you just can't merge your lawyers. So much for simplification.

After doing all that, we still had a hole in our home screen. What happened to the replacement for the Android Market that we just installed?

We eventually found it, by going to "All Apps". Now we could fill the vacancy on our Thunderbolt's home screen.

There it is... a new, stylish (?) shopping bag with a multi-colored right-pointing arrow "Play" icon.  We will miss Mr Droid from the old shopping bag. With this new icon, Google is re-branding their services to break away from the realm of Android's mobile
ecosystem to something that is independently cloud-based, capable of running an any internet-connected device, regardless of the operating system. 

We tried the same procedure on three other devices, a Samsung Nexus S 4G, connected over WiFi to the same Google account as for the Thunderbolt, but disconnected from the Sprint Network, and a Droid Pro and a Droid-X running under different Google accounts on Verizon.

None of the other three devices presented us with the disappearing Android Market icon, when we selected the app for the old store. However, we did get the same Google TOS screen.. for Google Play.

Perhaps to make up for the inconvenience,  Google is offering discounted apps, music, books and movies for the next 7 days. Today's 25-cent music selection is "The 41st volume of Now That's What I Call Music", featuring such hits as "Sexy And I Know It" by LMFAO. And with Google Music... it's shareable!

ARM goes after game developers with new Mali GPU features in Development Studio v5.9

(Modified at 5:00PM PST, March 5, 2012 - per revised information from ARM).
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) kicks off in San Francisco today. With games occupying the top position in mobile application downloads, most importantly for paid apps, GDC will be the scene of intensified competition amongst CPU-GPU (Central Processing Unit, Graphics Processing Unit) providers seeking to attract developers to their silicon platforms. Intel gave an early peek at a port of their Graphics Performance Analyzers (GPA) for the Medfield smartphone platform at Mobile World Congress last week, and today ARM Holdings, developer of ARM Cortex CPUs and Mali GPUs, released an update to their Development Studio 5 (DS-5™ v5.9) tool chain with additional support for graphics analysis..

Anand Patel, Mali Tools Product Manager at ARM, says the the new capabilities in DS-5 v5.9 enable developers to optimize performance and power across an entire system, including both the applications processor and GPU. ARM offers DS-5 in three different versions, Professional, Basic, and a free Community version, to address the entire mobile development stack from semiconductor and handset manufacturers, to middleware providers, to Android application developers. Patel says that DS-5, which ARM introduced in March 2010, has primarily been used by silicon providers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), to debug processors or analyze soft models of CPU cores. With the new graphics features and the free version, ARM is attempting to reach out to a larger audience of game application developers.

ARM has based DS-5 on the popular Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The Streamline™ Performance Analyzer in DS-5 allows developers to separately monitor activity in their applications processor's CPU and GPU cores, and track application programming interface (API) calls . Patel says that the software (S/W) and hardware (H/W) counters in DS-5, in combination with the Filmstrip feature, enable high-level analysis of activity associated with graphics rendering on a frame-by-frame basis.The Heatmap enables monitoring of activity associated with individual operating system processes.

Android Developers can integrate the DS-5 toolchain with the Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) and the Native Developer Kit (NDK). Patel says that the addition of ARM's "Gator" interface to the operating system kernel and Mali drivers has negligible impact on system performance. Gator works with the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), to pass information from the development hardware to DS-5 over Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). 

The Streamline Performance Analyzer in DS-5 works with the new ARM Energy Probe, which the company announced last week at Embedded World 2012, to enable developers to create more energy efficient mobile games and applications. The Energy Probe is built into a USB dongle, to provide a wired interface between the PC running DS-5 and the development hardware. The integration of Energy Probe with the Streamline Performance Analyzer  allows developers to correlate power, current and voltage data with system performance counters and software profiling.

The ARM Developer Studio supports a variety of processor platforms from ARM core licensees. According to Patel, DS-5 support (with graphics) will be enabled on Mali platforms supported by Linaro. 

These will include:   

• Samsung Origen development board for the dual core Cortex-A9 Exynos 4210 processor with Mali-400 MP4 GPU.
• ST-Ericsson Nova Snowball development board for Android, Linux and Linaro embedded devices on the Nova™ A9500 platform.
• Hardkernel ODROID-A developer tablet, which is based on the Exynos 4210 applications processor. (Support expected in the near future).

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