Texas Instruments (TI) and AllGo Embedded Systems (AES), a TI design network member, introduced the new all-in-one Electronic Tablet (eTAB) Reference Design, allowing developers to get to market with a complete, customized enterprise tablet in as little as three months. The highly-integrated eTAB reference design extends TI's commitment of innovation to fast-growing industries such as industrial, healthcare, education, retail, home, building automation, and more.
Texas Instruments (TI) and AllGo Embedded Systems (AES), a TI design network member, introduced the new all-in-one Electronic Tablet (eTAB) Reference Design, allowing developers to get to market with a complete, customized enterprise tablet in as little as three months. The highly-integrated eTAB reference design extends TI's commitment of innovation to fast-growing industries such as industrial, healthcare, education, retail, home, building automation, and more. Based on the Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor, the eTAB has a total BOM of less than $70 and leverages the Android 4.0 operating system.
Designed for custom, application-specific tablets
No longer are customers limited to “off-the-shelf” tablet solutions. With the eTAB, customers can customize software and hardware to easily integrate market-specific features like barcode scanners, contact or contactless card readers and biometric sensors, among others. Additional customization with multiple audio, connectivity and power management options are also available from TI, allowing developers to differentiate their final products. Given its many configuration options, the eTAB offers a developer more flexibility to support cost-sensitive enterprise applications. For example, the design can be customized to build standalone tablets or integrated as a control panel in appliances or industrial machinery.
“In today's highly competitive environment, getting to market quickly is essential,” said K. Srinivasan, CEO of AllGo Systems. “The eTAB reference design allows developers in industrial markets to quickly customize and differentiate their tablets with minimal risk. The eTAB complements our deep expertise in turnkey electronic product design and enables us to provide a one-stop shop to our customers' product development needs.”
“This eTAB provides developers with a compelling platform to customize their industry-specific applications at a much lower cost than commercial tablets available in the market today,” said Ram Sathappan, Electronic Point-of-Sale Business Manager, TI. “We continue to see tablets being used across multiple industries and because of AES's support, our customers will be able to take advantage of this out-of-box experience and get to market quickly.”
TI's broad ARM processor portfolio offers scalable solutions
TI's broad, scalable ARM processor portfolio addresses a wide range of customer needs across specialized tablet markets. Starting at just $5, Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processors provide performance levels of up to 800 MHz, integration, low power, and peripherals such as rich 3D graphics, USB and display controller for easy-to-use, cost optimized solutions.
With more than 500 products that boast offerings from $1 in price and up to 5 GHz in performance, ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R and Cortex-M foundations, TI's broad ARM processor portfolio include similar, scalable hardware and software foundations. This allows developers to leverage TI's various ARM offerings to maximize investment, accelerate time to market and enable differentiated products across tablet segments based on customer needs.
eTAB Reference Design key features include:
- Total BOM cost less than $70
- 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor
- 7” dual touch screen capacitive LCD panel
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies
- Production ready hardware and software
- TPS65910: Highly integrated and efficient Power Management Unit (PMU) with 4 DC/DC converters and 8 LDO