Displaying items by tag: SoC

tegradimeOne of the things that has always bothered us is the continual lack of improvement in the smartphone market in the US. Although we get to read about new technologies for “world” phones and drool over the latest products from companies like Samsung and HTC which sport quad core SoCs (System on Chip) under their screens when they finally reach the US market they are shadows of what people are getting in other markets.

Published in Editorials

6_-GALAXY-S-III_S-Beam_Music-sharing_W-300x199We have heard through numerous sources that the when the Samsung S III Galaxy hits the US it will be hobbled. This move by Samsung to offer a smart phone to the US with a reduced set of specification is something that will hurt them in the long run. Although many claim that there is no need for a quad core SoC inside the product and that it can get along perfectly well with the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon that will eventually reside in the US based version of the phone it will set a tone with consumers.

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nV_LogonVidia has taken one step closer to being a major player in the smart phone market. This step is the culmination of their purchase of Icera specifically for their LTE technology. Back when nVidia first announced the purchase it was in direct competition to Qualcomm who is seen as one of nVidia’s major opponents. nVidia new they needed to either license or acquire the technology so that they could integrate a high speed cellular modem into their Tegra SoC for future products.

Published in News
Thursday, 03 May 2012 11:45

Asus Blames Qualcomm for Delay on Padfone

P_500-introFour days ago we talked about Asus and their awesome ability to design hardware that people really do want, but the issues they seem to have with getting those products to market (and maintaining supply). We specifically called out the Padfone that was shown off as a concept in 2009, actually domed in 2010, and officially launched mid-2011. This product that many are asking for has yet to see a paying customer’s hands and now we are hearing that there are supply issues with the Qualcomm SoC that is under the hood.

Published in News
Tuesday, 14 February 2012 18:45

Graphics CTO Eric Demers leaves AMD

AMD_logoAMD has lost another high-level employee today. This time in the form of Eric Demers CTO of the AMD graphics division; although I have never met Eric I have heard of him from others and it seems there are mixed feelings about the impact this will have on AMD. Some are saying that there will be no immediate impact. This is probably true as AMD’s GPU business is mapped out until at least the end of 2012.

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73One of the all-time largest patent trolls RAMBUS (yes even bigger than apple) has finally settled a long running battle with nVidia and signed a licensing agreement with the GPU and SoC manufacturer. RAMBUS is famous for its underhanded dealings in the mid-90s when the company filed patents on technology that was being openly discussed at JDEC conferences.  RAMBUS then turned around and sued other members of the organization for violating their patent rights. The resulting legal battle made the Samsung Vs. Apple dispute look like a fight over the TV remote.

Published in News
Thursday, 15 December 2011 07:33

Mobile, it’s the new Black

motorola_droid_x1It looks like mobile is the way to go these days; well really it has been for some time. Back in 2009 or so nVidia saw that and turned their attention toward the mobile world by developing the Tegra SoC (System on Chip) at the time many people slammed them for dropping out of the chipset business and fans of their GPUs became annoyed that this new product was taking priority over development of faster and better products for their games. Now, after a rocky start and three generations into it (plus a design win that could put Tegra on the moon), no one is laughing at the tiny little chip any longer.

Published in Editorials
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 22:42

Is an x86 SoC AMD's next move?

Rory-01It looks like AMD might be taking a leaf out of HP’s book. According to a report from ZDNet Asia AMD will begin to shift its focus away from the desktop to the server side where the margins are much higher per unit. This latest news plays into some additional rumblings that AMD is getting out of the x86 market (which is not true at all). We have already told you that AMD is planning to shift its consumer line up toward the mobile market where AMD feels they have an advantage over Intel and the Atom.

Published in Leaks and Rumors
Wednesday, 09 November 2011 18:24

Tegra 3 prospects looking up

tegradimeToday is a good day for nVidia and their Tegra 3 SoC. Although we previously told you about the Asus Transformer Prime earlier it still bears repeating that today is the official launch. We can expect the new quad core Android Tablet to hit the stores in the US in December (let’s hope they make it before Black Friday). Unfortunately the rest of the world will have to wait a little bit.

For those of you checking your bank accounts we will update you with some more information on the new device. The Transformer Prime will be shipping with a Tegra 3 “Kal-el” SoC which packs four processing cores that runs between 500MHz and 1.4GHz. This dynamic allocation of performance is responsible for the great battery life that has been talked about on the web (by nVidia and Asus). If you are running HD video you will get a very nice 12 hours out of your battery.

Other specs include 1GB of RAM, a 1280x800 Super IPS Display protected by Gorilla glass, mini HDMI, an 8MP f/2 camera, and a MicoSD slot. It will ship with Honeycomb (3.2) but Asus has already promised an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich as soon as it is ready.

The Prime will come in two main flavors a 32GB model at $499 and a 64GB model at $599. Both will still bring you in under the cost for the same sized iPad 2.

The other exciting news from the Tegra 3 world is the confirmation that HTC is indeed making a smart phone with this quad core monster in it. So far the details are light but it looks like this new phone will have a 4.7-inch screen that will be capable of 720p HD resolutions. This will be the first phone from HTC that has not had a Qualcomm SoC under the hood so it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.  

It looks like the Tegra 3 will enjoy a very good end of 2011 and a great 2012. We will try to get you more information on both of these products in the next few days.

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armchip_displayv2We have been following the path of Windows 8 pretty closely including trying out the Developer’s preview on some existing tablet hardware (which lasted all of 4 days). So far we have a good feel for the OS and what is nice and what is not. We have talked at length about the mistake that we feel the MetroUI is both for the tablet market and the desktop.  But it is the tablet market that we are most interested in. We know that there will be more x86 (64) based tablets in the future especially with the popularity (relatively) of the ones that are currently out (and that use a full Intel Core CPU and not an Atom). But how will ARM fare even a quad core ARM SoC when Windows 8 and all of its anticipated bloat hits it?

This is that thing that has us wondering. Well we think we have an answer as ARM has just announced 64-bit capable processors. The ARMv8 is a going to be a new specification for ARM processors that is capable of executing both 32 and 64-bit instructions. This means an extended memory profile (not to mention performance) for applications that can handle the 64-bit memory block addressing. But more than that these smaller and lighter CPUs will be heading to the enterprise for some specific tasks (which means the rumors about a future ARM based version of Windows Server are true). Imagine being able to utilize these low power lost cost CPUs to run Domain Controllers, Web Server and other system that do not require the heavy lifting of a full x86-64 CPU. It will save companies quite a bit of money, and what is more… what starts in the enterprise ends up on the consumer’s plate.  We have a sneaking suspicion that these new CPUs will end up in the consumer market faster than usual though as the press release about this mentioned Microsoft and nVidia directly. nVidia has made no secret that they want their Tegra SoCs to represent 50% of their revenue which means the consumer market for sure (with some enterprise products just for fun).  

As of right now, the first devices will not be announced until 2012 with the first prototypes hitting in 2014. This means that while we have a good wait ahead of us it will give Microsoft time to fix what is buggy in Windows 8 just in time for the new 64-bit ARM CPUs to launch.

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