Taiwan is the home of gadget megabrands Asus and Acer, who after getting tired of watching the likes of Dell and Gateway snag the lion’s share of profits, decided to create their own line of PC’s and notebooks.
Taiwan is not only the home of Asus and Acer, but also MediaTek. There was a time not long ago when most believed that MediaTek processors only belonged in China brand phones, and that it would be unlikely they’d move beyond this bottom of the barrel position.
As early as 2012, I predicted this wouldn’t be the case and it wouldn’t be too long before we saw MTK SoC in major brand phones. Shortly after this prediction, we had the likes of Sony, HTC and Asus all looking at producing devices with MTK processors (opens in new tab).
Now warp speed to 2014/2015 and we not only have a slew of brands jumping on the MTK bandwagon, but the models the major brands are putting out are models that are internationally sold and considered mainstream devices. Even Google has jumped on the train and as of September 14th, 2014 there was an official announcement made by both MTK and Google which solidified their partnership in the Android One initiative.
“Google is pleased to partner with MediaTek on the Android One initiative. MediaTek has the expertise to provide what is needed for Android One devices and insights into the needs of consumers in emerging markets,” said Caesar Sengupta, VP of Product Management at Google
It’s also a little known fact that MediaTek was partnered with Google to create the world’s first Ultra-HD TV powered by Android. This system was powered by the MT5595, which is a big.LITTLE Cortex-A17/Cortex-A7 SoC and supports streaming of 4k2k@60fps.
Google Cast Ready
As of the beginning of the year, MediaTek and Google also began collaborating on the Google Cast for audio using MT8507. Google Cast Ready speakers will be used to stream music from iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Macbooks, and Windows PCs via Google Cast Ready apps.
Quite a few streaming services are already supported, including Google Play Music, YouTube, Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Rdio and NPROne.
“Based on the success of Chromecast, we’re excited to expand the Google Cast ecosystem by working with a leading semiconductor company such as MediaTek to power audio devices,” said Suveer Kothari, Google Cast Director of Business Development.
https://youtu.be/8q0yZomXuSw
MT8507 details:
- ARM® Cortex®-A7 CPU core with L2 cache and Floating Point Unit (FPU)
- High-resolution audio format support for up to 192kHz for PCM, FLAC, DSD and APE
- Dolby® TrueHD and DTS Digital Surround™ decode capability
- 16-bit single-channel DDR3 up to 512MB
- Embedded SPDIF IN/OUT & 7.1ch I2S Output
- HDMI Repeater (Tx/Rx) built-in with Audio Return Channel (ARC) support
- USB 2.0, SD card, MHL support
- 10/100 Ethernet-MAC/PHY built-in with WoLAN capability
You know when giants such as Google join the MTK fray you’ve hit the big time and it seems that MTK’s chugalong choo-choo has quickly accelerated into a silver bullet.
