Interest in Google’s Project Ara is definitely very high among the tech loving community around the world. In the coming months, we expect to hear a lot more about the project as Google plans to launch the first device under the project by late 2015. The Mountain View based company recently shared some new information about the Project Ara that includes details on the SoCs and also the form factor of the device.
For the SoC, Google is working with NVIDIA and Marvell for two separate reference designs and form factor module prototypes. NVIDIA’s Tegra K1, the chipset used on the Google Nexus 9, and the Marvell PXA1928 are two chipsets that could be seen on the upcoming MDK v0.20 release. While most of you will be well aware of the NVIDIA Tegra K1 chipset, the Marvell PXA1928 chipset may be unfamiliar to most of you. The PXA1928 chipset is a 64-bit mobile SoC with a quad-core Cortex A53 based CPU, high perfroamnce GC5000 GPU and a 5-mode modem with support for LTE TDD/FDD, HSPA+, TD HSPA+ and EDGE connectivity.
Google also mentioned in the post that the Spiral 3 prototype was on schedule and should become available by spring. Before that, the company plans to show off its Spiral 2 prototypes at the Developers Conference in January. Also in January, Toshiba will be unveiling their second generation of UniPro switch and bridge ASICs with contactless M-PHY data transfer capability. These will be basis of Google’s Spiral 3 prototype and the final MDK release that is scheduled for next year.
Although we still have very little information on the first prototypes, Google did mention in the post that the Spiral 2 form factor prototypes look beautiful and come with custom module shells. The Project Ara Developers Conference is scheduled to be held in Mountain View, California on January 14th 2015 and in Singapore on January 21st 2015.
Source: Google ATAP