Displaying items by tag: Intel

According to reports on Bloomberg, Apple is working the possibility of a switch of all of their Mac PCs to ARM processors. If they do make this change it will be the third processor architecture they have gone through. Apple started with Motorola 68xxx series processors, to be switched to the PowerPC in 1994, and for the past seven years they have been running on the Intel x86 architecture. Most interesting of all is that Apple managed to successfully, usually with minimal shock to their customers, make such a fundamental transition every time by which they are unparalleled in the industry.

Sharp's business woes could find help in Apple and Intel, according to Japanese sources. The two companies are reportedly just some of many interested to invest in the ailing Sharp. Even though Sharp is a world known brand they have had very poor financial results in the last few years It has even come to the point where they are having doubts that the company can continue to operate.

The recently introduced AMD FX processors codenamed Vishera could remain on the market throughout the next year. Unofficial sources have said in part of the presentation that showed AMD's processor roadmap for the coming year, apparently FX chips for desktop computers will stagnate on Vishera solutions with the Piledriver core.

Intel's Extreme Edition version of Ivy Bridge for LGA2011 socket could be very similar to the existing Sandy Bridge-E. Although the latter has up to eight physical cores (according to some CPUS in the Xeon E5 line) and up to 20 MB of L3 cache, the commercial version of the Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 inside the line has six active cores and up to 15 MB of cache.

While today's high-end smartphones feature dual-core and quad-core processors, one day in smartphones and tablets Intel would like to see their future 48-core processors. It is no surprise considering that Intel at this point is largely ignored  from mobile platforms in the market, which is dominated by the ARM architecture.

Yesterday AMD made an announcement that has been in the works for some time and one that we predicted would happen. Late last year as AMD began to change their direction we noticed that AMD was solidifying their partnerships with Texas Instrument, Samsung and a few others who they have always maintained close ties with. AMD had also publicly stated that they were no longer going to compete with Intel head to head in the high-end market but that they were going to work on more power efficient solutions while improving their current offerings for the data center (trying to get more CPU cycles with less power). At the time we felt that AMD was preparing to build their own SoC (System on Chip) offerings we also felt that it was likely that AMD would build both x86 and ARM versions. The last piece of the puzzle was AMD licensing ARM technology (originally AMD claimed this was for use inside their CPUs to handle security).

The tablet wars are going to get very interesting now that Microsoft has pushed out Windows 8 and their “design point” device the Surface RT. Already this morning there are multiple articles about this new OS and hardware from both sides of the argument.  It is interesting to see the comments that range across Facebook and other social networking sites about the new OS, and more importantly about Microsoft’s Surface RT. This last product has created its own subset of fans and haters outside the general argument about Windows 8. So the big question is, where does Windows 8 and Surface RT stand in the market on the day of the launch, and where do they really fit in?

AMD has recently released its new line of “Piledriver” CPU's, and they perform pretty darn well. No longer in its infancy stage, AMD's multi-threaded core approach has improved significantly from the “Bulldozer” line of chips. The FX-8350 is the best of these CPU's currently on the market, and retails for approximately $220.

It seems like every other amateur computer builder has joined the fan club of either Intel or AMD for their processor needs. It is no secret that Intel builds over-all more capable processors; if you are willing to cough up the extra cash for diminishing returns in the area of performance. AMD has typically been seen as the more cost effective solution for gaming (though, this is highly debatable currently), and sells over all less expensive processors.

Irony is one of those things that you really have to savor. We are sure that both Intel and AMD are savoring the irony of AMD launching a new line of servers running Intel Xeon E3-1260L CPUs. The new server will be sold by AMD’s wholly owned subsidiary Seamicro, but we all know that AMD is the name behind it all. AMD bought Seamicro last year primarily for their interconnect technology, but we are also sure their rising server business was a bonus.