Amazons Kindle 2: A book with 4 brains
Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-book has been a pretty big success. What many do not know is the amount of processing power in it. The main processor is a Freescale MCIMX31LVKN5C Applications processor, which is based on a 532MHz ARM11 core (yes it is faster then an iPhone). The Wireless connectivity is provided by a Qualcomm MSM6801A baseband processor, which at its heart is a 200MHz ARM9 core. Also included in it is 2GB of Samsung moviNAND which is flash memory, with the controller (itself a processor) built in. The electrophoretic bistable display uses a controller made by E-ink and Epson, which of course contains a microcontroller.
In modern electronics the question is not “Does it have a processor?”, but rather “How many processor cores does it have?”
