There was an interesting announcement in one of the slides presented at the 10th-mbed-fest-summer-2014. The mbed overview and update presentation mentions a new mbed enabled platform by Renesas. It is based on the Renesas RZ/A1 and features the Cortex A9 core clocked at 400 MHz, 10MB internal memory, video input, audio and graphics output, USB etc. Compared to the Cortex-M it should have about 4x the performance and 40x the memory size.

Release seems to be scheduled for end 2014. See here or here for links. Google translate is your friend..

Wow, thats something on a whole different level. Although it makes you wonder if it isn't something where some real OS should run on. And you would think you would want a bit more pins than the standard Arduino pinout, but hey, it has a pink PCB :P.

There is a row of unpopulated holes on the right side of the PCB. That will probably provide access to more pins. There are also some sockets (SWD) and a tiny connector for video I/O and some PCB holes that look like interface to a daughterboard like zigbee or something. The press release says it will run RTOS.

Here is another picture.

now that's good news from an Industry-respected manufacturer!

There's more in this embedded.com article "Renesas' ARM mbed IoT Device Platform features 1000 DMIPS" http://www.embedded.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/prototyping-and-development/4437479/Renesas--ARM-mbed-IoT-Device-Platform-features-1000-DMIPS