Intel’s Architecture Group Vice President, Rani Borkar, said that laptops packing in Haswell chips should be able to get 50% more battery life than the current third-generation Ivy Bridge offerings. New laptops should also be able to last up to 20 times longer in standby mode without affecting performance whatsoever.

Borkar says that the new Haswell chips were designed with laptops and tablets in mind, specifically, so the main focus was on lowering power consumption across the board, while keeping the chips fast. Furthermore, Haswell is said to be double the graphics performance of Ivy Bridge on laptops, and triple the performance for desktops.

Of course, we’re staying cautious until we can get some solid benchmarks and test results in our hands proving these claims, but we really hope it’s true, as laptop battery life is one of those things that plagues each and every one of us. Intel’s claims mean that a current laptop getting six hours of battery life will be able to get nine hours using Haswell, which sounds really lovely.

However, we’ll see if Haswell can make an impact in the laptop and desktop market, or if PC sales will continue to slump until there’s nothing left but tablets. We don’t think that will happen for a long while, if ever, but the PC industry needs to do something to get back on track, and Intel is attempting to do their part at least.

SOURCE: Computerworld

As AMD sees it, Temash and Windows is a combination that means the flexibility of a desktop with the performance of a multimedia-centric chipset. The first true AMD SoC, with a choice of dual and quadcore options, Temash offers up to a 212-percent graphics boost-per-watt compared to 2012′ AMD C-70 and up to a 172-percent jump in x86 performance per watt.

However, that doesn’t come with a battery hit, AMD claims, despite offering between 2x and 5x the performance of Intel’s Atom Z2760 in AMD’s testing. A Temash-based system can manage up to 12hrs of idle battery life, or up to 45-percent longer than a Core i3-based Windows tablet.

AMD sprinkles some of its extra feature magic on the new A-series. The A400 gets GPU acceleration for apps, along with native video stabilization; the A600 adds AMD Screen Mirror, which wirelessly squirts the contents of the display to a supported TV, together with gesture controls using the webcam, and AMD Face Login, for biometric security. Both have Radeon HD 8000 series graphics.

Connectivity support includes up to two USB 3.0 ports, up to ten USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, HDMI, PCI Express, VGA, and more. There’s also support for up to 8GB of system memory and AMD’s Turbo Dock system, which boosts performance when a tablet is slotted into a keyboard base station, while prolonging battery life when it’s removed.

Perhaps most impressive, AMD says the sub-5W versions of Temash can be used in fanless systems. We had a chance to play with a Temash-based Windows 8 tablet, and the experience was impressively good: it was a Quanta reference design, the BZ1T, but the Radeon HD 8180 GPU and A4-1200 1GHz CPU were certainly strong enough to keep Full HD video playing smoothly on the 11.6-inch 1920 x 1080 touchscreen.

Inside, there was 2GB of DDR3U-1066 RAM and a 128GB mSATA SSD drive, loaded up with HD content that we could then push over wirelessly to a nearby HDTV with a Screen Mirror-compatible adapter. The whole thing was lag-free.

AMD’s second Temash demo machine was a compact Acer ultraportable, the Angel. That ran Windows 8 on a lightweight touchscreen notebook with a Temash A6-1450 processor and Radeon HD 8280 graphics. Unlike the tablet, the Angel had a traditional 500GB hard-drive inside, but doubled up RAM to 4GB. It was certainly a fast-moving machine, multitasking between office apps and multimedia quickly, though we’d need to spend more time with it to see whether it really does offer a significant step up from the Intel equivalent.

AMD expects the Temash series of APUs to begin showing up in tablets, notebooks, and other form-factors over the coming months.

AMD Kabini

Kabini is AMD’s mainstream platform for portables in 2013, targeting small touchscreen notebooks as well as entry-level laptops. The company is making a big push for battery life, with machines running the new APUs apparently capable of up to 10hrs of resting runtime, or over 9hrs of web browsing. Even playing Full HD 1080p video, they should be good for more than 6hrs of use.

The single-chip SoCs use Jaguar cores with 2MB of shared L2 cache, and come in 9W to 25W TDP variants. Each supports two simultaneous displays of up to 4096 x 2160 resolution, with DisplayPort 1.2, DVI, and HDMI 1.4a output capabilities. Other connectivity includes provision for up to eight USB 2.0, up to two USB 3.0, two SATA Gen2/Gen3, and an SD card reader.

There’s also AMD’s Steady Video technology, for smoothing out jerky camera footage, and AMD Perfect Picture HD, which does real-time processing of on-screen graphics to bring out the best contrast and colors. Compared to last year’s chips, the new Kabini E1, E2, A4, and A6 APUs offer up to an 88-percent boost in performance.

AMD Kabini Mainstream APUs

AMD Richland

As for the performance end, AMD is taking on Intel’s Core i3 and Core it with the new Richland series of APUs, replacing Trinity in the process. They offer up to 71-percent better graphics abilities than the Core i5, AMD claims, while still being capable of over 10hrs resting battery life or 7.5hrs of web browsing.

Compared to Trinity, overall performance is up by up to 19-percent, the company claims, while graphics performance is improved by as much as 40-percent. The A8 gets gesture control and face login, for chip-level biometric security, as well as AMD Screen Mirror for wirelessly pushing graphics to a nearby TV. The A10 throws in game bundles, a strategy AMD has tried with success before, including a number of games with each qualifying PC purchase to show off the abilities of the APUs.

There’s also provision for AMD Dual Graphics, with the onboard GPU in the Richland chips capable of working simultaneously with a discrete GPU from the company’s Radeon HD 7000 or 8000 series. That should make for ultraportables that can still put in some solid gaming, AMD claims.

The first notebooks running AMD Kabini and Richland APUs will show up in the coming months.

AMD Richland Elite APUs

Ultrabooks, where minimal power draw is still king, will get a range of 15W U-Series processors for prolonging runtimes. The onboard HD, HD 4600, and HD 5000 GPUs won’t be labeled Iris, but they will offer a bump over the HD 4000 graphics of the 3rd-gen range, with Intel claiming improvements across the board in the usual 3D graphics testing. Power consumption will also drop, thanks to 15W TDP chips where previously 17W was pretty much the lower limit.

It’s when you get to Iris and Iris Pro that things get really interesting, however. They’ll need at least 28W TDP to shine, but given that can up to double 3D graphics performance with the Iris GPU onboard.

Iris Pro sees the biggest leap, however. Intel has multiple ranges of Haswell processors in mind – to suit desktops, mainstream laptops, and various other iterations – but roughly the 65W TDP 4th-gen chips are good for up to twice the performance of their 77W TDP 3rd-gen counterparts. The difference gets even more pronounced when you slot in Intel’s 4th-gen 84W TDP processors, which deliver up to a 3x performance improvement over the last generation.

The GPUs each support OpenGL 4, DirectX 11.1, and OpenCL 1.2, along with enhanced 4K video support and the Display Port 1.2 standard for double the bandwidth. There’s also “Collage Display” for easier multi-screen setups, spreading the desktop across up to three panels. Haswell 4th-gen chips are expected to arrive in PCs later this year.

[via AnandTech]

The AMD FX-4350 CPU is a quad-core CPU that is clocked at 4.2GHz Base Turbo and 4.3GHz Max Turbo. It has 12MB of L2 and L3 cache and it offers 10% better performance compared to its predecessor, the AMD FX-4300. The AMD FX-6350 is a 6-core CPU clocked at 3.9GHz Base Turbo and 4.2GHz Max Turbo with 14MB of L2 and L3 cache. It’s designed to appeal to users who need a good CPU for HD video editing and 3D modeling.

Both CPUs are compatible with socket AM3+ motherboards. The AMD FX family is easily overclocked using AMD’s Overdrive and Catalyst Control Center software. However, AMD wants users to note that they’re overclocking their CPUs at their own risk, and that any damage caused by overclocking isn’t covered by AMD’s warranty, even if the users use AMD’s software to do it.

AMD’s high-end FX line-up was released two years ago, debuting with the first world’s first 8-core CPUs, the FX-8000 series. The FX-8000 helped win AMD the Guinness World Record for “Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor.” While not belonging to the FX-8000 series, the AMD FX-4350 and FX-6350 are no slouches. They are designed to work with the most intense programs and deliver good performance while also being easy on power usage. You are are able to purchase the FX-4350 for $122 and the FX-6350 for $132.

[via AMD]

That’s important, since currently the CPU and GPU on an APU have to wait for time-consuming memory block management to take place in order for both parts to access it. If the GPU wants to see the same data that the CPU is seeing, that data has to be replicated in two places.

hUMA, however, would do away with that copying process, since it would make the memory visible to both CPU and GPU simultaneously. Called bi-directional coherent memory, it will mean less time involved for both halves of the APU to track data changes, as well as introduce efficiencies in memory management, since they’ll have a better understanding and control over what free memory there is, and what they can use at any one time.

The upshot is systems that take less time for processing, as well as software that’s easier to code since developers won’t need to consider memory block management when they’re trying to integrate GPU acceleration. Instead, that will all be handled dynamically by the hUMA system.

The first evidence of hUMA in the wild will be AMD’s upcoming APU refresh, codenamed Kaveri. Revealed back at CES, full details on Kaveri are unknown, but the APU will be a 28nm chip and is tipped to include up to four of AMD’s Steamroller cores, Radeon HD 7000 graphics, and a 128-bit memory controller with support for both DDR3 and GDDR5 memory.

AMD expects to have its Kaveri APUs on the market in the second half of 2013.

[via Notebook Review; via HotHardware]

Noting that they’ve got their eyes on intelligent machines from smart TVs to interactive digital signage, “informational kiosks”, and set-top boxes, AMD has also made it clear that they’re interested in jumping in on what’s called “Surround Computing”. This term is identified by AMD’s Mark Papermaster as an era where computers become a seamless part of the daily lives of human beings.

Though AMD does mention through Papermaster that this Surround Computing era includes mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, the G-Series being presented this season is being shown as extremely versatile, working even with deeply embedded and/or “headless” systems. These headless systems work without any input devices or displays, this requiring no graphics solution onboard – CPU power at the heart, that is.

With this first AMD Embedded G-Series SOC, the company supports both Windows Embedded 8 and Linux while working with a range of applications: electronic gaming systems, SMB storage, industrial control and automation, IP-TV, set-top boxes, digital signage, medical and network appliances. AMD has sent word that they’ll have general availability for manufacturers of the AMD G-Series SOC in the second quarter of this year while market-ready products will be appearing soon after.

Have a peek at the AMD tag portal for more information on this series as it appears and watch closely as the company continues to advance beyond the standard PC market. This is an significant time for AMD as they continue to make interesting business moves and announce products at a rate not often seen by the company – stay tuned!

[via AMD]

It’s not often that we see a major company like Apple losing employees in the first place, much less to a company where they’d hired them from in the first place. But there it is: Raja Koduri has re-joined AMD as Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing. This title also lets us know that AMD is entering a new era: this is the first time they’ve combined GPU hardware and software under a single title.

Last year AMD also re-hired (read: snatched back) a former employee of theirs from Apple in CPU man Jim Keller. If you have a peek back at SlashGear’s original report on Jim Keller, you’ll see that such a switch is always a news bit in and of itself. Both Keller and Koduri working for AMD once again doesn’t necessarily spell anything really negative for Apple, but for AMD things are certainly looking up.

Speaking with Anand Lal Shimpi this week on his return, Koduri made it clear that he sees AMD as having challenges in the near future, but not challenges that will be insurmountable. It’s likely that some real System-on-chip results will be coming out of this new appointment.

Have a peek at our AMD tag portal to see how AMD is rolling in to 2013 with some real power in both the GPU and CPU universes, and expect some strong moves from the company in the next few years as well!

According to the Korea Times, Apple will launch its A7 processor during “the first half of next year,” and the new chips will boast 20-nanometer processing technology. The discontinuation of Samsung’s services by Apple is said to most likely put the Korean-based company into a tough situation financially, and they may have to shut down several manufacturing lines because of the ended production.

Of course, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It’s been rumored and speculated for awhile now, almost to the point where we would be surprised if Apple didn’t shutter business with Samsung. The two companies have been involved in a series of legal cat fights with one another over the past several years, so cutting all ties seems like the best solution to get away from each other.

Furthermore, the Korea Times reports that this year’s iPhone upgrades won’t be running a next-generation A7 processor, but rather just an improved version of the current A6X chip, with most likely a slightly faster processor and updated components, which means the next iPhone that we see may not be a huge change over the iPhone 5.

[via Korea Times]

New details are pretty slim, but the new chip’s architecture is based on the Cortex-A15 chip, and the Exynos 5 features a mixture between the Cortex-A15 and the A7 to offer the best of both worlds: four Cortex-A15 cores for intensive tasks, along with four more Cortex-A7 cores that handle the lighter stuff.

Samsung claims that this setup offers up to 70% more efficiency compared to using only Cortex-A15 cores. Samsung says that the new Exynos processor will be manufactured using the company’s latest 28-nanometer design, which increases power efficiency and produces less heat — two things that are crucial for a good chip.

The GALAXY S 4 is obviously the first device to sport the new processor, and we’re positive that more devices will make their way to the forefront sporting the new chip. If you’re not familiar with Octa-core processors, don’t worry, as we’ll be posting an in-depth “SlashGear 101″ primer later today. Stay tuned!

Santa Clara University researcher Ed Karrels ended up breaking the world record for computing digits of Pi to eight quadrillion places to the right of the decimal point. Karrels used graphics cards to do the work rather than CPUs, and he spread the work across three different computers: one with four NVIDIA GTX 690 cards, one with two NVIDIA GTX 680 cards, and 24 computers at the Santa Clara University Design Center with one NVIDIA GTX 570 card each.

The calculation took 35 days to complete, from December 19 to January 22, beating out the previous held by a team at Yahoo, who used 1,000 CPU-only computers, which took 23 days to compute Pi to two-quadrillion places, just a quarter of what Karrels’s setup achieved. After the 35-day run, Karrels conducted a second run to double-check the math, which took just 26 days using newer versions of his programming tools.

Karrels will speak at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California next Tuesday, where he’ll be explaining the math behind the Pi calculation achievement, as well as the programming tricks he used, as well as the logistics of conducting supercomputing tasks on a budget.

The new plant will take approximately two years to build, and it will create 3,500 construction jobs, as well as 800 full-time jobs inside the plant once its complete. Intel CEO Paul Otellini confirmed in May of last year that Intel’s Ireland plant is one of three plants that has been chosen to produce the company’s next-generation 14nm chips. The other two plants will be Intel’s Oregon and Arizona facilities.

Intel taking the success from its 22nm process and will launch 14nm chips in just a couple of years. The company also aims to create 10nm, 7nm, and even 5nm chips beyond 2015. The new Ireland plant will have a total floor area of 2,635,200 square feet, and will operate alongside existing Intel infrastructure and buildings.

The new facility will include a three-story main fabrication plant with a floor area of 1,085,000 square feet. Other buildings include a facility that will house liquid chemicals and collect waste water, as well as a facility support building, a two-story boiler/chiller facility, a water treatment building, and emergency generation and electrical buildings housed with diesel generators.

[via Silicon Republic]

In total, there are three Celeron CPUs, four Pentiums, and a new Core i3-3210, which all range from $42 to $117. All of the Celeron chips have 2MB of L3 cache, HD integrated graphics, and range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz. The Pentiums have 3MB of L3 cache, HD integrated graphics, and clock in from 2.5GHz to 3.2GHz. The Core i3-3210 is the flagship CPU out of the bunch, and it comes with HD 2500 graphics and clocks in at 3.2GHz.

All of these new processors are compatible with Intel’s existing Socket 1155, so there’s no need to upgrade motherboards if you’re looking to downgrade to one of these budget CPUs. However, the Celeron and Pentium chips don’t include hyper-threading, so if you’re looking to get the most performance, the $117 Core i3 might fit the bill.

The best part is, these new chips will be available starting today. We’re not seeing them on retailers’ websites just yet, but it should only be a matter of time. And while the Ivy Bridge architecture won’t last for much longer, we can’t say that it’ll be a huge deal for budget builders looking for a decent CPU at a really great price.

[via CPU World]

NVIDIA Tegra 4

The NVIDIA Tegra 4 System-on-Chip with five ARM Cortex A15 cores – four of them with 1.9GHz max clock speed, a fifth synthesized to work at lower power. The technology working around this fifth Companion core is similar to the Tegra 3, and for the lay person, it may as well be presented as the same due to how similar it really is. The fifth core is not visible to the operating system you’re using (be it Android, Windows, or something else), acting as more of a “Shadow Core” or a “Ninja” as we’ve been apt to call it, just as it was with Tegra 3.

Above you’re going to see a rundown of what Tegra 4 is, how it compares to Tegra 3, and what the future holds for mobile processing. The talk you’re seeing above is with NVIDIA Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam who presented us more of a detailed look at the Tegra 4 and what it means for mobile devices in 2013 (and beyond.)

For those of you that want to get rather technical with it all, you’ll be interested in knowing that the die size here in this new model is 80mm^2, ever so slightly larger than Tegra 3, but a whole lot denser as well. The cores you’re seeing here work on 28nm HPL, that being 28nm low power with high-k plus metal gates. What that basically means here is that you’re going to get one extremely optimized experience, made for high performance and low power consumption – as every great processor should.

The Tegra 4 processor will be working with “Always-On” HDR camera technology as well. You’ll find a rather interesting set of details in our initial reveal post, and we’ll be seeing this technology in-person sooner than later. It’s then that we’ll be seeing what it really means to be able to instantly take a shot with multiple exposures at once!

NVIDIA Icera i500 Soft Modem with 4G LTE

The NVIDIA Icera i500 Soft Modem is what the company describes as 40% smaller than a conventional die – this referring to other modems they’ve worked with from companies other than themselves, of course. The Icera i500 will work with Soft Modem technology, starting with UE Category 3 LTE (100 Mbps downlink on 20 MHz FDD-LTE) and moving forward to UE Category 4 LTE in the very near future. VoLTE is supported with other voice mode technologies, and the modem will be paired with a new never before seen transceiver built on 65nm LP CMOS.

The NVIDIA Icera i500 Soft Modem is built on TSMC’s 28nm high performance High-K Metal Gate process, and the company is able to power gate each of its cores individually. Depending on the needs of each device’s software package, each of the NVIDIA Icera i500′s 8 cores can be used or not used, gating based on changing load conditions.

Following Tegra 4

Those of you getting pumped up about Tegra 4 and NVIDIA’s full 2013 experience, you’ll have a fabulous time hitting up our massive Tegra Hub. There you’ll find not just your everyday NVIDIA Tegra mobile processor news, but featured hands-on articles, must-read up-to-the-minute updates, and reviews of Tegra-toting devices of all kinds.

Right this minute you’ll find several stories on the first device to have been revealed working with the Tegra 4 processor: NIVIDA’s own Project SHIELD. You’ll find plenty of awesome Project SHIELD action in the immediate future and up with its final name some time in Q2 of this year. Also have a peek in the timeline below to see the first important detail articles to have come down the line here in the first week since Tegra 4 was first revealed – Project SHIELD included!

The specific type of cores themselves that NVIDIA plans to use in Wayne aren’t specified, though previous Tegra 4 leaks indicated that it would be a quartet of ARM A15 cores doing the heavy lifting. They’ll be joined by a fifth “battery saver core” that can be used for low-power duties rather than waking up the main CPU.

It’s the graphics jump that might be most impressive, however, with the Tegra 4 having 20x the number of GPU cores as the Tegra 2 and 6x as many as the Tegra 3, according to the slide. That’s good for 1440p encoding and decoding (2560 x 1440), while Wayne can also drive a 2560 x 1600 24b or 4K display on whatever device it slots inside.

Hardware-accelerated security features apparently include Secure Boot, h/w DRM, and HDCP, and there’s support for USB 3.0 and a high-performance imaging chip. Dual-channel DDR3L memory support rounds things out.

NVIDIA confirmed the “Wayne” codename back in February 2011, when it first publicly discussed Kal-El, the chipset that later went on to be known as Tegra 3. The nomenclature borrows the names of famous superhero characters, Wayne being a nod to Batman’s Bruce Wayne. It will be followed by “Logan” and “Stark.”

It’s not clear whether the slide is authentic, but the specifications do fit in with whispers of what NVIDIA has planned for the new Tegra in 2013. Going by previous leaks, the first new chips could arrive as early as Q1, though other variants won’t follow until Q3. We’re likely to see more at CES 2013 next month.

[via MobileGeeks]

While Intel already has 22nm fabs producing processors, crafting SoCs at the same sort of level introduces another stage of difficulty. An SoC fits not only the processor but other components – potentially including memory, radios, DACs, and other technologies – onto the same, compact die.

To help it achieve this, Intel plans to use the same sort of 3D Tri-Gate processes as it has implemented to good result in its Ivy Bridge processors. Using special stacked architecture, Tri-Gate adds conducting channels on three sides of a “vertical fin structure”; the end result is a cut down in heat, longer battery life for mobile devices, and better performance, thanks to the combination of high-k gate insulators and strained silicon.

In fact, the switch to Tri-gate could see 22nm Atom SoCs outperforming Intel’s current 32nm parts by anything from 20- to 65-percent, according to Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr, Bit-tech reports. That would mean a choice for OEMs and users between longer battery life with no dip in performance, more performance with the same battery longevity as existing devices, or a mixture of the two.

[Image via ExtremeTech]

According to DigiTimes, that has some worried that TSMC may not be able to handle the demand coming from Apple without making its other customers upset. With Apple said to begin relying on TSMC for parts next year, one of the company’s biggest challenges of the year will be making sure it allocates its resources properly so it keeps everyone happy. Other TSMC customers include the likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA, so TSMC can’t exactly put its other customers on the back burner in favor of Apple.

With Apple’s devices requiring 200 million mobile processors a year, TSMC certainly has its work cut out for it. It’s worth pointing out that TSMC can handle the massive orders Apple is bound to place, but the question is whether or not TSMC can do this while successfully filling orders from other customers at the same time. Having recently started in on the sixth-phase construction of its Fab 14 plant, TSMC will soon be able to begin mass producing 20nm SoCs, which should help with the demand a bit.

Ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see what happens when Apple begins buying its CPUs from TSMC. If it can balance the demand from Apple with the demand from other companies, then TSMC stands to make a healthy profit, which is something else market observers will be keeping an eye on. Stay tuned for more information.

Beynon says that the Wii U, indeed, “isn’t as fast as some of the other consoles out there”, and Metro: Last Light is “a very CPU intensive game.” However, Beynon says that “lots of developers are finding ways to get around that because of other interesting parts of the platform.” He thinks that Shishkovtsov’s opinion of the Wii U’s CPU had to do with the way that the game’s engine was built, making it more difficult to develop the game on the Wii U.

Beynon then says the game could have been ported to iPad if 4A Games had wanted it to be, but he says that every console version stretches the developer’s resources ever so much, and it turns out 4A’s resources are stretched pretty far as it is with the three versions of Metro: Last Light that are planned.

However, Gustav Halling, a game developer at DICE — makers of the Battlefield series, says that he’s been hearing the same things from his industry contacts about the Wii U’s slow CPU, saying that while the GPU and RAM can handle shaders/textures, things like physics and gameplay run on the CPU, and that can create a potential problem in the future. However, Halling notes that Wii U owners shouldn’t have anything to worry about, since the new console will still have plenty of great games released for it.

[via Eurogamer]

4A Games’ own Oles Shishkovtsov explains the reason why Metro: Last Light isn’t coming to the Wii U by simply stating that the “Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU.” Another 4A Games developer Huw Beynon was a little more helpful with answering the question, and he says that the team “had an early look” at the Wii U and initially thought that they could bring the game to the new console, but Beynon says that they would have to lower the quality of the game because of the console’s CPU, which wasn’t worth it to the developers.

From the iFixit teardown a couple days ago, we know that the Wii U has an IBM PowerPC processor and AMD Radeon HD graphics, as well as 2GB of RAM. We’re not sure what all of this is clocked at, but if the Wii U can play Assassin’s Creed III, you’d think a shooter title from 4A Games wouldn’t be too much to ask for.

However, it’s certainly possible that the game studio may bring the latest Metro title to the Wii U at some point, but they said that they “couldn’t make any promises.” Could this be bad news for the Wii U? If game studios are already crossing off the Wii U from their lists, what will the selection of games be like for the new console in the future?

[via NowGamer]

Although not spelled out exactly, the new chipset is expected to be the first example of what ARM describes as big.LITTLE computing. That premise, described publicly back in October 2011, takes on the challenge of users wanting devices capable of running high-performance apps and games, but also of lasting a full day or more on a single charge, by combining different types of CPU core selected for their varying expertise.

Even the lower-powered A7 core should have some legs on it, however. ARM has claimed it is akin to the performance seen from the iPhone 4S or the Galaxy Nexus, despite being significantly cheaper than the SoCs both smartphones use; ARM also confirmed it had licensed the big.LITTLE architecture to fourteen chip manufacturers.

It’s worth noting that, while an 8-core chip, the big.LITTLE design doesn’t intend for all to be running simultaneously. In fact, the processor would switch between the A15 and A7 quadcores, based on the current system load.

Exactly when the Samsung big.LITTLE chip might show up in the first products – and what those products could be – is unclear at this stage. Samsung is tipped to be using a quadcore A15 chipset in the rumored Galaxy S 4, tipped for release early in the new year, though the 8-core processor is more likely to be headed first to a tablet, potentially a successor to the Nexus 10.

[via Engadget; via GSM Arena; via EETimes]

Although Intel is still dominant in desktop and laptop CPU sales, the company has been largely absent in tablets and smartphones. There, despite its tardy efforts with Atom, the company has seen ARM-based chips from rivals such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and Samsung all grab market share.

“After almost four decades with the company and eight years as CEO, it’s time to move on and transfer Intel’s helm to a new generation of leadership” Otellini said in a statement today. “I look forward to working with Andy, the board and the management team during the six-month transition period, and to being available as an advisor to management after retiring as CEO.”

Intel’s board will “consider internal and external candidates” for the role of CEO, it has said today. Meanwhile, there has been some shuffling in the executive team, with software business chief Renee James, COO and head of worldwide manufacturing Brian Krzanich, and CFO and director of corporate strategy Stacy Smith all promoted to executive vice president.

Apple has arguably pushed tablet processors as far as they need to go, at least for today’s market. There’s a sense that the Apple A6X chipset in the latest, fourth-generation iPad with Retina display was a near-meaningless improvement on the A6 its predecessor sported; far more important was the change from old-style Dock Connector to new Lightning port. Sure, the newest iPad is faster in benchmarks, but in day to day use there’s hardly a noticeable difference.

Those benchmarks give some hints, however, as to where ARM chips might make sense on the desktop. The iPad 4 did particularly well in SunSpider, a browser-based test of JavaScript performance that gives a good indication of how fast the web experience will be. Considering most of us live online when we’re using our computers, that’s an increasingly important metric.

The iPad 4 scored under 880ms in our SunSpider testing (the lower the number, the better), making it one of the fastest tablets around in that particular benchmark. Now, admittedly, a current-gen MacBook Pro is capable of scores a quarter of that. But, more importantly, the iPad 4 can run for more than ten hours of active use delivering its level of performance, on a 43 Whr battery. Inside the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, in contrast, Apple finds room for a 74 Whr pack.

The allure of an ARM-based MacBook, then, is the combination of that growing performance and the power frugality of the chips that deliver it. Intel may make a fast processor, but it’s behind the curve when it comes to efficiency compared to ARM; the company’s struggles with Atom in the mobile market are evidence of that. And, while there’ll always be a cadre of performance-demanding Mac users, the regular cohort with more everyday needs might be more than wiling to sacrifice a little top-end grunt for the longevity to make it through a transatlantic flight with plenty of juice to spare.

In the end, though, Apple is notoriously self-reliant. The company has bought or invested in specialists in chip components, displays, aluminum casing production, optically-laminated displays, component assembly, and more. Anything, in short, that contributes to Apple’s supply chain or its competitive advantage in the market place (or preferably both). Sometimes the fruits of those investments go relatively unused for years, at least as far as the public can see; Apple’s perpetual and exclusive license to use Liquidmetal in its range – something so far mostly limited to a SIM-removal tool – is a good example of that.

We’ve also seen how it won’t shy from distancing itself from vendors when they either won’t toe the line or let the company down. NVIDIA’s time in the doghouse after the faulty MacBook GPU saga is good evidence of that, while AMD has long been tipped as attempting to curry Apple’s favor but never quite delivering the goods in internal testing.

If Apple can rid itself of reliance on another third party – and further extend the distance between its range and Windows-based PCs, blurring the lines of direct comparison – then it will undoubtedly jump at that chance. It’s unlikely to be shy in flexing its checkbook to do so, either, betting on long-term investment over short-term gains.

Apple, if time has taught us anything, will do what’s best for Apple: that means it demands the biggest advantage from those it works with, and isn’t afraid of taking a hit if it needs to change in order to achieve greater returns. In the past, Intel has given it early access to new processors, as well as the collaborative spoils of Thunderbolt ahead of PC rivals. If Intel can’t meet the grade on the sort of processors Apple sees as pivotal to its vision of future computing, however, all that shared history will be for naught. As far as Apple goes, it’s the Cupertino way or the highway.

The Opteron 6300 Series line-up maxes out at 3.5GHz base frequency, though there’s up to 3.8GHz on offer in AMD Turbo CORE mode. 4-, 6-, 8-, 12-, and 16-core versions are offered, with TDPs ranging from 85W in the 6366 HE low-power model, through to 140W for the 16-core, 2.8GHz 6386 S top of the line chip.

Up to four 1866MHz memory channels are supported, and AMD claims the 6300 Series is the only x86 processor to work with ultralow voltage 1.25v memory. Each CPU can handle up to 384GB of memory – spread over up to 12 DIMMs – and up to four x16 HyperTransport links (each up to 6.4GT/s).

However, AMD isn’t solely relying on x86 for its future server chip strategy. The company recently confirmed that it was developing 64-bit ARM-based server processors, borrowing architecture more commonly associated with tablets and smartphones, and repurposing it for frugal use in enterprise server rooms.

The first servers to use the Opteron 6300 Series chips are on sale today, with Dell and HP both signed up to produce systems using AMD’s new CPU by the end of the year.

First up is the Cortex-A53 processor, which is “the most efficient ARM application processor ever.” Says the press release, the A53 can run a high-end smartphone using only a quarter of what is used by current offerings. The processor is optimized for throughput processing, and is only 25% the size of “mainstream superphone CPUs,” making it positively tiny.

The Cortex-A57 processor is “optimized for high performance,” offering three times the performance of current offerings. This CPU is ARM’s most advanced and highest single-thread performance processor. According to the press release, the A57 offers “performance comparable to a legacy PC” whilst only sipping power, providing a combination of energy-efficiency and cost effectiveness to meet the needs of both consumer and enterprise users.

According to ARM, this series will provide the market with a means to push the base level of power for mobile devices upwards, with today’s high-end smartphones becoming tomorrow’s entry-level devices. Currently, we can expect to see the Cortex-A50 Series pop up in 2014. Check out the video above for more info.

It’s said that the point in time when technology will reach a plateau as far as getting smaller and faster will come at some point, meaning that Moore’s Law won’t last forever. Even though Moore’s Law has lasted almost a half-century so far, it’s said to only be around until around 2020, give or take a few years.

If you’re not familiar with Moore’s Law, it’s basically an observation of sorts where the number of transistors that can fit onto an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and was coined by computer scientist and former Caltech professor Carver Mead.

IBM’s carbon nanotube discovery is huge, especially considering that chip makers have not yet found ways to improve chips beyond the next two or three generations. Not only will carbon nanotubes allow chip makers to build smaller transistors, but they’ll be able to increase the speed at which those transistors can be turned on and off. However, it’s not said when the new technology will be ready, but it most likely won’t be for a few more years at least, since it’s still in its early development stages.

[via New York Times]

Image via Flickr

That research will include simulating physical systems, such as weather patterns, or progressions in energy, climate change, efficient engines, materials, and other fields. However, unlike most supercomputers, where access is jealously guarded, Titan takes a more open approach to access.

Researchers from schools and universities, government labs, and private industry can access Titan – by arrangement, of course – to crunch their own data. Final testing is still underway by the laboratory and Cray, and the supercomputer’s first year will be dominated by work on the Department of Energy’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.

“The improvements in simulation fidelity will accelerate progress in a wide range of research areas such as alternative energy and energy efficiency, the identification and development of novel and useful materials and the opportunity for more advanced climate projections” James Hack, director of ORNL’s National Center for Computational Sciences, said of the new machine.

In total, there are 299,008 CPU cores, sixteen to each of 18,688 nodes; each node also has an NVIDIA Tesla K20 graphics accelerator. The cores are used to guide the simulations, while the GPUs are relied upon to do the actual data crunching; altogether, it’s more than 10x faster and 5x more power efficient than the Jaguar supercomputer Titan replaces.

In fact, Titan can simulate 1-5 years per day of computing time, whereas Jaguar took a day to work through around three months worth of data. ORNL says it’s the equivalent of “the world’s 7 billion people being able to carry out 3 million calculations per second.”

Apple hasn’t detailed exactly what’s going on inside the SoC, and we’ll probably have to wait for the first teardowns and assessments to see which ARM cores exactly have been used. We do know that it gets new, next-generation ISP, however, for better multimedia performance.

What’s particularly interesting is how the A6X could fit into Apple’s rumored ambitions to do away with traditional Intel processors in its desktop line-up, and instead adopt ARM-based chips of its own design. That could prolong battery life as well as leave Apple in control of its own silicon.

That probably isn’t in the pipeline for some time, though, and we’ll likely see a couple of iterations of A-series chips before they appear in notebook form factors. More on the new iPad 4th-gen in our Apple Hub.

The new line is composed of four processors: the 4.2GHz FX-8350 (8-core, $195), the 4.0GHz FX-8320 (8-core, $169), the 4.1GHz FX-6300 (6-core, $132), and the 4.0GHz FX-4300 (4-core, $122). The FX-4300 has 4MB of L3 cache, while the FX-6300 has 1MB of L2 cache per core with a total of 8MB of L3 cache. The two higher-end processors, the FX-8320 and FX-8350, both have 8MB of L3 cache. This series uses the Piledriver architecture, which is an improved version of the previously released Bulldozer.

The Piledriver cores were first introduced back in May in the A Series Trinity chips. Improvements include improved scheduling, larger L1 TLB, larger load queue, page translation reload optimization, and more. Said Adam Kozak, “We’re seeing anywhere from seven, all the way up to 15% [in improvement improvement]. Half of that comes from [instructions per cycle] improvements, and the other half or so comes from frequency improvements.” According to AMD, you need a 9-series motherboard to run the FX Vishera chips.

During a pre-release presentation, these four AMD processors were compared to Intel’s Core i5-3570K, i5-3450, i5-2300, and i3-2120 processors. In each case, the AMD processor was priced lower and offered better specs, according to AMD’s presentation of the ecosystem. All FX Series processors are unlocked and can be overclocked.

“Samsung’s agreement with Apple is limited to manufacturing the A6 processors” the ‘senior Samsung official’ said at a technology event. “Apple did all the design and we are just producing the chips on a foundry basis.”

That reduced involvement leaves the field more open to Samsung’s foundry rivals, with TSMC cited as most likely to benefit from Samsung’s loss. TSMC has already inked a deal with Apple to produce future 20nm quadcore chips, and Barclays analysts have supposedly predicted the foundry will be responsible for manufacturing Apple A7 S0Cs from Q1 2014.

“There are three kinds of chip clients” the source within Samsung told the Korean paper. “Some want us to handle everything from chip design, architecture and manufacturing. Some want us to just design and manufacture. Some want us to just make the chips. Apple is now the third type.” Previously, Samsung and Apple had worked together on A-series chip design.

According to the analysts, TSMC has “hundreds” of researchers working on future Apple chips that don’t infringe on any Samsung patents, as the foundry and Apple prepare to oust Samsung from its privileged position. Apple also poached a Samsung chip expert in recent weeks, another move believed to be intended to shore up the Cupertino firm’s in-house expertise as Samsung is factored out.

Nonetheless, Samsung execs don’t appear to be too concerned by the growing distance between the companies. “Although Apple has excluded Samsung from key projects, we’re not too worried as Samsung is selling more custom chips to other major companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia” one source said, pointing out that Samsung’s near-unique position to mass produce components to the scale that Apple demands means cutting ties completely is incredibly difficult.

Apple is apparently already requesting more flash storage from Samsung, as demand for the chips in the iPhone 5, iPod, and other ranges increases. “[Apple] can’t completely wipe Samsung from its business partner list” the exec insisted.

[via CNET]

That’s because B&N’s NOOK Color and newer NOOK Tablet HD/HD+ tablets all use Texas Instruments’ OMAP processors, potentially leaving them sourcing chips from a company owned by their direct rival. Should the deal go through, B&N would likely turn to a alternative source for its silicon, though the cost of switching architecture could prove problematic.

According to the sources, the potential acquisition is valued in the billions of dollars. TI would be left to bring its attention to bear on embedded chips, which it has singled out as – though less instantly lucrative than mobile chipsets – more stable in the long-term than the highly competitive phone/tablet processor market.

For Amazon, it would be an opportunity to follow Apple and Samsung in developing chips tweaked specifically for its own purposes. Apple has used that freedom to create the A4, A5, and A6 that have appeared in recent iOS devices (and which have long been tipped to show up, in more advanced form, in future MacBook notebooks), carefully tailoring hardware to software so as to maximize performance and battery life.

In the case of Kindle, about which Amazon has already confirmed that it makes no profit on hardware sales, custom chips could mean cheaper tablets and ereaders, thus helping lower the cost of entry to new customers for ebooks, movies, music, and apps. TI has declined to comment specifically on the rumors, though reiterated its previous position of looking to transition its market of choice.

[via Bright Side of News]

The Z-60 includes Radeon HD 6250 graphics with 80 cores, as well as 1MB of L2 Cache and USB 3.0 support. There’s also support for AMD Start Now, the company’s fast boot/resume system, as well as an HDMI output capable of Full HD, and Microsoft’s DirectX 11.

AMD’s tablet reference design is built around a Z-60 paired with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a 30Whr battery, and running Windows 8. On that sort of setup, the company says it’s seeing up to eight hours of browsing or six hours of playing back a looped 720p H.264 video with the display brightness set to 60 nits.

That’s on the dim side, mind. AMD’s own anecdotal research from back in 2009 found that many people set their displays at more than 2.5x that brightness as a level of minimum comfort, and that 60 nits is roughly equivalent to 20- to 30-percent brightness settings on notebooks tested at the time.

At idle, AMD is supposedly seeing up to 10hrs of runtime. AMD is already shipping the Z-60 to its customers, with tablets running the chip expected later in 2012. No word on what sort of pricing we can expect.

Nonetheless, that sounds like something of a stop-gap measure as TI exits the mobile chip industry. “We believe that opportunity is less attractive as we go forward” TI senior VP for embedded processing Greg Delagi said of phone and tablet chipsets; the company will no longer invest to the same extent in its customers roadmaps for upcoming models.

Exactly what sort of timescale TI has in mind for that scaled-back involvement is unclear, and the market has already reacted pessimistically. Delagi conceded that the embedded systems market would take more time to develop than the hotly-contested wireless market, but insisted that the transition would “generate a more stable, profitable long-term business” for TI as a result.

TI’s embedded chips are finding their way into increasingly complex in-car systems, driving internet-connected navigation and entertainment, as well as other industries where the gigahertz-chasing of mobile isn’t such an issue. The rapid evolution of wireless chipsets, as well as companies like Apple and Samsung opting to make their own ARM-based processors rather than externally source them, means competition has grown significantly in recent months.

Nonetheless, it’s an unusual decision to have made, and one TI’s partners are likely looking at with no small degree of suspicion. Barnes & Noble’s new NOOK HD and HD+ tablets, for instance, are based on Texas Instrument’s OMAP4xxx series of chipsets, and RIM has used TI chips for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Many of TI’s more recent high-profile launches have shifted away from such applications, however, including a push into the so-called “internet of things.”

That software hiccup could be a headache to Intel and its manufacturer partners, with devices like the freshly announced Motorola RAZR i unable to run certain software available through Google’s Play store. Google’s own Chrome browser, for instance, currently won’t work on the RAZR i, though Motorola has confirmed it should be functional by the time the midrange smartphone actually reaches the market.

“We’re not quoting any numbers” Syal says, “but the majority of all the apps we’ve tested work just fine.” The company’s team responsible for software has been working “constantly round the clock to make sure that all these apps work” and the number of compatible titles increases every day.

As for multicore, initially that will mean dualcore Medfield, with Intel not ready to talk about quadcore Atom processors for phones as yet. Intel, though, is in no great rush Syal insists, content with its hyper threading system that milks two threads out of a single core.

“You have to take a look at how many instructions per clock can the architecture handle — our belief is that others are throwing cores at the issue in terms  of getting more performance.  We make that determination based on our architecture so we felt very comfortable coming out with a single core dual-threaded for our first product, and as we’re able to get more and more performance in the right implementation of the architecture we believe putting in dual-core would be the right thing for our next generation product” Sumeet Syal, Intel

Timelines for the dualcore Medfield versions have not been revealed yet, and nor has Intel disclosed when the first Atom-based smartphones might arrive in the US.

That underwhelming CPU is giving one Wii U launch developer some trouble. During the Tokyo Game Show, Eurogamer sat down with Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper producer Akihiro Suzuki, who says that the Wii U’s CPU tends to have some issues when there are multiple characters on screen, which is pretty much always the case when playing a Dynasty Warriors game. “One of the weaknesses of the Wii U compared to PS3 and Xbox 360 is the CPU power is a little bit less,” Suzuki said. “So for games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU.”

Suzuki followed up by saying that dealing with those performance issues can be “a challenge,” but did also point out that as far as sheer graphics power is concerned, the Wii U has the 360 and PS3 beat. Not only does the Wii U feature what is believed to be a custom AMD 7 series GPU, but it’s been confirmed to house 1GB of RAM that is dedicated to games, which is twice the amount the 360 and PS3 can boast. This means games which are more GPU-intensive will shine on Wii U, while those that require some significant CPU power risk falling flat.

It’s important to keep in mind that as time goes on, developers will figure out how to squeeze the most power out of the Wii U’s CPU. All you need to do is look at this generation to see that much is true – compare titles like The Last of Us or Uncharted 3 to games that launched at the beginning of the generation, and you’ll surely notice a sizable boost in overall quality. It seems safe to assume that we can expect a similar progression with games on Wii U, so this is just probably one of those launch hurdles that most developers have to deal with. Check our story timeline below for more on the Wii U!

Heterogeneous System Architecture is a catch-all for scalar CPU processing and parallel GPU processing, along with high-bandwidth memory access for boosting app performance while minimizing power consumption. In short, it’s what AMD has been pushing for with its APUs (and, elsewhere – though not involved with HSA – NVIDIA has with its CUDA cores), with the HSA seeing smartphones, desktops, laptops, consumer entertainment, cloud computing, and enterprise hardware all taking advantage of such a system.

While there were six new public additions to the Foundation, Samsung Electronics’ presence came as a surprise. The HSA was initially formed by AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek, and Texas Instruments, but today’s presentation saw Samsung added to the slides and referred to as a founding member.

Samsung is no stranger to heterogeneous computing tech. Back in October 2011, the company created the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (along with Micron) to push a new, ultra-dense memory system that – running at 15x the speed of DDR3 and requiring 70-percent less energy per bit – would be capable of keeping up with multicore technologies. The Cubes would be formed of a 3D stack of silicon layers, formed on the logic layer and then with memory layers densely stacked on top.

As for the concept, Rogers described a system which could not only learn from a user’s routine, but react to whether they were smiling or not, whereabouts at the display they were looking, and to more mundane cues such as voice and gesture. Such a system could offer up a search result and then, if the user was seen to be smiling at it, learn from that reaction to better shape future suggestions.

Exactly when we can expect such technology to show up on our desktop (or, indeed, in laptops, phones and tablets) isn’t clear. However, Samsung has already been experimenting with devices that react to the user in basic ways; the Galaxy S III, for instance, uses eye-recognition to keep the screen active even if it’s not being touched, while its camera app includes face- and smile-recognition.

That’s definitely a budget processor, but as you’ve probably assumed already, don’t expect to be burning through the benchmarks with this guy under the hood. You’re not going to be getting a lot of processing power for that $112, but it should offer more than enough to secure a place in budget-friendly builds. If you’re planning on just doing every day tasks with your computer instead of gaming with all of the bells and whistles maxed, this processor will probably meet your needs.

Alternatively, you may want to take a look at the AMD’s A-Series if you’re trying to snag a budget-friendly processor. AMD just dropped the prices on A-Series processors across the board, bringing the price of the quad-core 2.9Ghz A8-3850 down to $91, with other quad-cores like the 2.7Ghz A6-3670K and the 3.0Ghz A8-3870K settling at $80 and $101 respectively. If you can live with giving away even more power, the dual-core 2.7Ghz A4-3400 can be had for just 48 smackers.

As stated above, these processors don’t have much hope of capturing the performance crowd’s attention, but they should be suitable for a budget, everyday computer. If you’re looking to build a computer and don’t want to break the bank in the process (or don’t need to), these CPUs might be worth a look. Check out our story timeline below for more on AMD!

[via Engadget]

There’s also USB 3.0 and SATA3 support, OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenCL support, and the ability to drive wireless displays. For the first time, Samsung has implemented a separate display subsystem, which the company says makes for a cheaper overall device and better performance.

Samsung is pretty vocal about the Exynos 5 Dual’s performance, comparing it to a desktop processor in terms of capabilities, and suggesting that it will offer twice the performance of an Exynos 4 Dual 1.4GHz. Its individual cores at between 1.5x and 2x faster than Cortex-A9 cores – as used by NVIDIA in the Tegra 3, though in NVIDIA’s chip you do get four of them not two – while memory bandwidth is similarly speedy.

Samsung claims to have planned for a “worst case” scenario in driving graphics, with the Exynos 5 Dual capable of handling a full 2560 x 1600 display overlaying a UI onto 1080p video, keeping a camera preview running, encoding video, and simultaneously using HDMI-out to an HDTV. Overall bandwidth is double that of the previous Exynos 4 Dual.

Meanwhile, power consumption is down – 30-percent lower than 45nm chips – and with specific power-saving routines for energy-hungry displays. Samsung isn’t saying what products we can expect to see the Exynos 5 Dual show up in, but we’re hoping that changes soon.

“Keller will lead AMD’s microprocessor core design efforts aligned with AMD’s ambidextrous strategy” the chip manufacturer said today, “with a focus on developing both high-performance and low-power processor cores that will be the foundation of AMD’s future products.” The engineer’s “innovative spirit, low-power design expertise, creativity and drive for success” will be integral in developing AMD’s next-gen chips, his new boss Mark Papermaster said in a statement.

Interestingly, it’s not the only AMD/Apple staff swap in recent weeks. Back in July, ex-AMD engineer John Bruno joined Apple, the man responsible for leading the development of the AMD Trinity APU which the company has staked its current range on. Bruno was originally at ATI prior to the AMD takeover, and specializes in multicore, low-power chipsets.

That area – individually low-power but collectively numerous ARM cores – has become a major threat in the processor business of late, with companies like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and NVIDIA all looking to challenge Intel and AMD in mainstream computing such as notebooks and servers. Apple in particular has been surrounded by long-standing speculation that it plans ARM-based MacBooks in future.

AMD’s interest in Keller, therefore, is likely to be tied into the chip maker’s defense against that, having already admitted that it effectively ceded the smartphone processor space to rivals in instead prioritizing PCs and tablets.

ARM is attributing the growth to the licensing of a new ARMv8 processor for networking applications, 23 processor licenses that have been signed across a bevy of mobile devices, and the 2 billion chips that have been shipped so far, a 9% increase over the same period last year. Royalties for processors have also increased by around 14% despite the fact that the industry saw an overall decline of 7%.

Finally, 3 licenses for the Mali GPU were signed in the second quarter, with 2 of those being with new customers. CEO of ARM, Warren East, seems pretty pleased with the results overall too: “ARM’s royalty revenues continued to outperform the overall semiconductor industry as our customers gained market share within existing markets and launched products which are taking ARM technology into new markets.” Going forward, ARM expects a small increase in industry revenues during the third quarter, but things aren’t looking as good in Q4 as “as macroeconomic uncertainty may impact consumer confidence.”

Bruno was at graphics card manufacturer ATI before it was acquired by AMD, but left the company after the sweeping job cuts at the chip firm back in November 2011. AMD cut 10-percent of jobs in an attempt to save money, with some significant losses in expertise; as well as Bruno, several other processor experts left to take up SoC roles with Samsung and other firms.

At Apple, Bruno is likely to be taking up similar reins as he managed at AMD. That could be part of Apple’s rumored progress working on its own processors for mobile and desktop; the company has already pushed ahead with its Apple Ax range of ARM-based chips for phones and tablets, and long-standing rumors suggest the company is also planning to shift its desktop line of MacBooks and Macs onto ARM silicon at some point too.

Even if that’s not Bruno’s initial focus, his expertise in multi-core processors such as AMD’s innovative APU should serve Apple well for future products wanting to deliver superlative graphics performance alongside solid battery life. There’s more on what APUs like Trinity can do here.

[via SemiAccurate - thanks Stefan!]