FXI Demos Two New Flavors of Cotton Candy Any Screen Connected USB Device – Ubuntu and Android 4.0
I gotta get me one of these.. in the Android flavor of course!
–FXI Technologies, innovator of the world’s first any screen, connected computing USB device, demonstrated today Ubuntu/Linux and Android Ice Cream Sandwich for the first time at the Showstoppers Media Event at CES 2012. Codenamed “Cotton Candy™”, this sweet little device will serve as a technology bridge between any display, the Cloud, and any input peripheral.
“By demonstrating two new operating systems on a variety of screens from PCs, to Macs to TVs, we further show the flexibility of the world’s smallest computer.”
“One of the major benefits of the Cotton Candy device is its versatility,” said Borgar Ljosland, Founder and CEO of FXI Technologies. “By demonstrating two new operating systems on a variety of screens from PCs, to Macs to TVs, we further show the flexibility of the world’s smallest computer.”
Cotton Candy will allow users a single, secure point of access to all personal Cloud services and apps through their favorite operating system, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen through its USB and HDMI connections. The device will serve as a companion to smartphones, tablets, notebook PC and Macs, as well as add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and game consoles.
Ubuntu on Cotton Candy
Ubuntu is a popular Linux operating system used for a variety of desktop applications, media and enterprise applications and is widely adopted by global hobbyists and software developers. In fact, FXI recently chose to move to Ubuntu as its main development environment and is transitioning to using Cotton Candy as its main desktop computing platform. In order to do this, FXI leveraged the Linaro for ARM open software and tools and leveraged its access to the ARM Mali Graphics software development ecosystem.
“FXI engineers used the pre-integrated and tested Android ICS and Ubuntu images from the Linaro platform team as a base in developing support for two new operating systems on Cotton Candy. They also got support from the platform team on the #linaro and #linaro-android IRC channels on Freenode,” said Alexander Sack, Platform Technical Director at Linaro. “FXI has demonstrated how Linaro’s work can be leveraged effectively to develop real products rapidly and reliably.”
Android Ice Cream Sandwich on Cotton Candy
Operating system software can be a moving target, and the Cotton Candy product will serve as a host to many popular technologies. One of the popular OS developers are looking at today is Android 4.0 (AKA Ice Cream Sandwich).
About Cotton Candy
Cotton Candy is a prototype USB stick equipped with an ARM® Cortex™-A9 (1GHz) CPU from Samsung, an ARM Mali™-400 MP (Quad-core, 1.2GHz) GPU, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, HDMI output and the Android operating system. It decodes MPEG-4, H.264 and other video formats and display HD graphics on any HDMI equipped screen. Content can be controlled via smartphones, keyboards, mice and other USB peripherals.