Kindle 3 technical specifications

[badbob001]

Has anyone compared if viewing large complex PDFs is faster on the K3 compared to the K2? The extra ram should help in that aspect. Perhaps the extra ram also contributes to its faster page turning speed? E-ink is slow enough and it's crazy to have hardware add any delay to that.

My pda from 2001 had 128MB of ram. It would be sad to still be at that level. I think ram is more precious than CPU speed. With a slow CPU, you just have to wait a little longer. With too little ram, your app either doesn't run or it crashes (I don't think the kindle has a swap). In all, this give the K3 longer life than a device with just barely enough to run its default functions.

[curstpriest]

You sure you arn't thinking of rom space?
128 seems like a lot for PDA in 2001, 128 seems like palm size flash >> those things had like 4-8mb ram, mabye like 16 on the uber versions. Ram cost a freaking arm and a leg from 1995-2000 in portable devices for the longest time.

[Tiersten]

What curstpriest said. Consumer PDAs didn't have 128MB RAM back then. Around 2003 onwards you could get certain models of Palm and WinMobile with 128MB though.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by curstpriest

You sure you arn't thinking of rom space?
128 seems like a lot for PDA in 2001, 128 seems like palm size flash >> those things had like 4-8mb ram, mabye like 16 on the uber versions. Ram cost a freaking arm and a leg from 1995-2000 in portable devices for the longest time.

Sorry, I was a little off with all the IPAQs I had over the years. My HP 5550 with 128 ram came out in 2003. I must have been thinking when I first used an IPAQ. Still using that sucker as an Internet Radio player via an ethernet cradle (many international radio stations will only support windows media streams).

[Stonecold]

I found out that Kindle 3 has two chips each containing 128 MB of DDR3 SDRAM. It also has a Freescale ARM11 processor (32-bit) clocked at 532 MHz. It's web browser is a Webkit-based Mozilla5.0 mobile browser that passes Acid1 and Acid2 but just barely fails Acid3. It's main flash memory is 4 GB of moviNAND flash memory which can withstand up to 100,000 read/write cycles. It has a graphics chip that can preform high-speed screen updates (2048x1526 at 50+ Hz). The device also has a Freescale battery management chip. I forget the exact model though.

[Albright]

Originally Posted by joblack

Never had a mac but I know that at least the PowerPc CPUs are supporting virtual memory (and as far as I know the latter 68xxx as well).

Virtual memory was supported by the first Mac I got in 1996 or thereabouts, which had a 68040 processor and Mac OS 7.5. So, yeah, it's been supported for a while. In OS 8 and beyond, it was recommend to turn virtual memory on even if you didn't need it, because it did other memory optimizations of some sort. And then, of course, in OS X, you can't turn it off (that I know of)…

Originally Posted by Stonecold

It's web browser is a Webkit-based Mozilla5.0 mobile browser

It (like pretty much all other browsers on the market) identifies itself as Mozilla for legacy reasons, but it would be more accurate to just say it's a WebKit-based browser.

[curstpriest]

I believe os 7 supported virtual memory, but you generally didn't have to turn it on unless you had only 16.. if you ran at 32 or more you were fine for running 2 apps.

OS6 was the one with 2d buttons, that you saw on mac classics



at least that's how i remember it.

[Albright]

Originally Posted by curstpriest

I believe os 7 supported virtual memory, but you generally didn't have to turn it on unless you had only 16.. if you ran at 32 or more you were fine for running 2 apps.

Pah! My first Mac had 8MB, and I was usually able to run two or three apps with no problem. I remember when I upgraded it to 12MB - then it could really fly!

And before that was my Commodore 64…

[curstpriest]

Yeah but os 7 finder raped the memory using like 4mb+ alone with like no extensions! and I think netscape used a few mb alone, and pptp dialer used meg or some nonsense too

It's been a long time!.

You're right tho, 8mb on the classic or whatever it had was more than enough to run like word processor + calculator + paint or whatever the hell it had all at once. But os 6 required like no memory.

Os 8 was a hog =(
I remember my laptop was one of the first color powerpcs that could run os7, that thing is sitting in a box of electronic components now waiting to be recycled. 3k well spent. =(

[mim2007]

According with this article:

http://www.zdnet.com/photos/amazon-k.../461473?seq=54

those are the parts:

Freescale ARM 11-based i.MX353 Part number: MCIMX353DJQ5C

Samsung K4X2G323PB-8GC3 DRAM

Samsung 4GB moviNand storage chip -- KLM4G1DEHM-B101

EPSON KCRE7000 F10203TYV E-Ink display controller

Atheros AR6102 ROCm WLAN chip (AR6102G-BM20)

Wolfson Microelectronics WM8960G stereo codec

AnyDATA DTP-600W HSPA mini PCI-E module

[enkov]

By my experience, all problems with Kindle's Web browser (I have Kindle 2) is that it is still at Experimental stage (same for MP3 player too) and they do not want to improve it anyway (except slight improvements with new kernels and new Kindle models).

By the way, I am very disappointed not by slow web browser, but with the slow indexing and search of the books. This is the main advantage of the e-readers over the regular paper books. So I want they improve this and put updates for the old Kindles too. For web browsing I do have a laptop 15.4" and a netbook 10.2", also I have smartphone with 3G with 800x480px screen, but nothing of these do not suit my needs for comfort reading with no sore eyes. (I also have a desktop with 2x24" FullHD dual monitors extended desktop - too not suitable for reading books for more than a hour)

Stop this dumb offtopic regarding Macs and VM. This is an embedded device, not a PC. Of course, you could recompile the kernel after root-hacking.