Intel’s Chief Product Officer, Dadi Perlmutter, says that the new Atom architecture offers up to three times more computing power than current chips, and gobbles up five times less power than traditional mobile chips. Intel is up against strong competition, though, as many chip makers are partnered up with ARM, a direct rival with Intel in the mobile business.

Intel’s Atom processors have never been widely adopted in smartphones, and while a handful of them are out there in the wild (including the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900), Qualcomm still reigns supreme as one of the largest smartphone chip makers around. Ever since introducing the Atom line of chips in 2008, Intel has failed to bring the mobile chips to products other than netbooks.

Silvermont will be the model for Intel’s 22-nanometer Bay Trail tablet chips that are expected to arrive later this year, which are claimed to be twice as fast as their current generation of tablet offerings. Silvermont will also be used in the company’s Merrifield chips and Avoton chips that will be released later this year for microservers. This news comes after Intel’s detail on its “Haswell” chips, as well as the appointment of a new CEO for the company.

[via Reuters]

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]

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]

Speaking on how they created the idea of a single energy-saving core – seen first in the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor – with 4-PLUS-1 technology, sleeping with this one sleeper core for low-powered tasks. Huang spoke also of the first software-defined radio – Deep Execution Processor – and the Computational Camera using both the CPU and the GPU with the sensors of the mobile camera – introduced on the Tegra 4.

Inside Logan we’ll be seeing CUDA 5 and Kepler. This is the first time we’ve seen a mobile processor incorporating CUDA, and also the first time a Kepler GPU will be coming to the mobile universe. This processor will also be bringing on full CUDA 5 as well as OpenGL 4.3.

Interestingly enough, Huang mentioned that Logan – this next generation – will be coming out at the beginning of next year. As we’ve heard from NVIDIA not too many weeks ago, Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i will not be coming to market any sooner than the second half of 2013. In other words, we’re looking at some rather rapid movement between the two generations, without a doubt.

Have a peek at the timeline below as well as the GTC 2013 tag portal for more information on Tegra and the ever-expanding GPU universe of NVIDIA in many great and rather exciting ways! We’ll be here the whole conference long!

Be sure to tune in all week in our massive Tegra hub as well!

Huang ran through massive amounts of GPU-friendly happenings and upcoming events, including bits and pieces like the following:

• A 50 Gigapixel Camera being developed at the U of Arizona.
• GPU-accelerated diamond cutting.
• CUDA utilization for dating site matching compatibility.
• Oak Ridge’s Titan Supercomputing using 40 million CUDA processors together for 10 petaflops of power.
• Swiss Supercomputing Center starting construction on Europe’s fastest GPU Supercomputing Center Piz Dant – made for weather forecasting purposes.

According to Huang, GPU supercomputing is taking hold at an undeniably quick rate.

“If we’re not at the tipping point for GPU Computing, we’re racing at it. There’s a huge spike in GPU-based computers being built for real work – about 20 percent of total Top500 horsepower is GPU. Included in this is the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan supercomputer.” – Huang

Read more about Titan in our most recent update on the machine and know this – SlashGear’s experience with the GeForce GTX home-ready GPU is coming up quick, too – stay tuned! Of course you’ll also want to stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!

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!

The point Qualcomm is trying to make here is that with mobile data – provided by their chipsets and modems, of course – the world is a much more fabulous place. Each time a smartphone is used to access the site shown to the user via the billboard, an odd event happened thusly. With each of these events, joy was brought – and brought hard!

Above you’ll see a full highlight reel. Below you’ll find a horse-drawn carriage coming to pick up a couple that’s in love. Isn’t it so kind of Qualcomm to provide them with a service like this for free?

Next you’ll find a lovely yellow pick-up vehicle followed by a bright shiny silver ride – Lamborghini to the rescue! Without a smartphone and a web connection at the bus stop, these rather random people would never have been given a free ride – Qualcomm’s point is made rather clear.

Next you’ll see a “SEEN IT ALL?” campaign bringing up a wheel-connected sled-dog ride coming up on the bus stop with free rides for those that call it. After that there’s a bit of a puppy surprise as well – Qualcomm brings the cute!

We’ll be seeing Qualcomm at Mobile World Congress this year – starting in a little less than a week! You’ll want to jump in on all the action through our Mobile World Congress 2013 portal and see the Qualcomm action from start to finish!

Intel had said that it would be moving to a more advanced process for constructing the next generation Itanium processor. That next-generation processor is code-named Kittson. Intel recently posted a notice that Kittson would be produced using the same 32 nanometer manufacturing process that Intel uses on current versions of Itanium processors.

Intel had previously promised that Kittson would use a more advanced manufacturing process. Typically, each new generation of processors uses a smaller nanometer manufacturing process allowing more transistors, faster operation, and less power consumption. Intel also changed its plans to make Kittson socket compatible with Xeon server chips, a move that would have reduced costs for Intel and HP.

Kittson will reportedly use the same socket is existing Itanium 9300 and 9500 processors. Analyst Nathan Brookwood from Insight64 believes this could be Intel’s way of cutting back in giving itself an exit strategy from the line. He also said that Itanium’s time may have come and gone.

[via PC World]

Misek also noted that Jeffries believes that iOS 6 will include better methods of interoperation with iCloud, gesture controls, and advertising will be “substantially upgraded” before a new full-upgrade to an iPhone comes around. This set of updates may very well be coming with the iPhone 5S – or whatever new iPhone model is inevitably revealed before 2013 is through. The A-series processor that’s delivered with the iPhone 5S is not expected by Jeffries to be significantly different from the A6 chip inside the iPhone 5 today.

The big change will come with the iPhone 6, whatever specifications that may hold, with 20nm chips and quad-core innards or better. That’s four to eight CPU cores, mind you, and the possibility of more processing power than the current best-of on the market. Also included in this prediction is the possibility of Apple moving part (or all) of its processor production from Samsung to TSMC.

Misek notes that “some” think that Apple will be ending its processor manufacturing relationship with Samsung on the last day of 2013. He also suggests that any manufacturing that isn’t moved over to TSMC after then will be subject to a substantial price increase from Samsung. The Jeffries report also includes mention of Intel fearing that if Apple uses their advanced processing nodes, Apple’s move from X86 PCs to ARM-based computers would be accelerated.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see more tips and suggestions about the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6, however unofficial they may be!

[via Apple Insider]

Uplinq is as Qualcomm claims it, “the wireless industry’s only cross-platform developer’s conference”, and it’s now been expanded to three full days. This set of events will be featuring here in 2013 a series of professionals from all angles – developers, manufacturers, operators, and technology providers alike. This set of events will show a cross-platform look at the wireless industry from not just a series of perspectives, but the specific perspectives you’ll find valuable to your business.

Qualcomm’s Uplinq series of events is made for “all members of the value chain”, as senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Qualcomm Anand Chandrasekher makes clear, and “Feedback from last year’s attendees has us adding more technical sessions and further enhancing the business development programs we will be offering at Uplinq 2013.” It’s basically going to be one big technology high-five for everyone who’s responsible for creating, delivering, or supporting the industry from top to bottom!

Have a peek at our Uplinq collection to see what we’ve seen in the past from Qualcomm’s premiere developer conference. This event has shown us everything from the tiniest in-device speaker amplifications to the largest previews of Qualcomm technologies for the future. Camera demonstrations with sword fighters, device previews from top manufacturers, and up close and personal action in the Snapdragon environment – hot stuff!

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]

Samsung is a company that has the ability to create each of the most vital bits, (like their Exynos processor for mobile devices), for each smartphone and tablet it puts on the market. They are the company that went through the most semiconductors in the market in the world in 2012, and they’re making these components themselves. While companies like LG and Lenovo create devices and need billions of dollars worth of semiconductors too, they need groups like Qualcomm and NVIDIA to manufacture those pieces of hardware for them.

So while Samsung is indeed made up of several different businesses, one that makes displays, another that makes processors, another that designs smartphones, it’s still the brand Samsung that profits from one part consuming products from another. So when you see Samsung at the top of the global semiconductor customers list in 2012, a big chunk of that change is being kept in the family. Meanwhile even the third place company HP must rely on groups like Intel in a large way for the architecture in their machines.

Groups like Qualcomm and NVIDIA rely on the companies that do not manufacture their own device innards, on the other hand, so it’s not as if there’s only one perfect model here created by these top companies with their own supplies. Qualcomm creates mobile modems that sit in a large cross-section of the smartphones you see on the market today, while NVIDIA’s Tegra line of processors all but dominated the first wave of Android tablets and Super Phones that came out across 2011.

You’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon line of processors coming out in some of the most popular smartphones over the past year, too, including none other than Samsung’s Galaxy S III. What we’re going to be seeing here through 2013 – and what we’ve begun to see already – is Samsung sticking with their own Exynos processor lineup as much as they can muster. Meanwhile groups like ViewSonic, Toshiba, and ASUS will continue to work with NVIDIA and HTC, LG, and Nokia will opt for Qualcomm. Of course those partnerships aren’t definitive by any means, and several of the companies have gone between Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments (now out of the mobile processor business), and others in the past.

There’s also a cross-over happening on the part of NVIDIA with their first production device by the name of Project SHIELD. This is a mobile gaming handheld that’s branded by NVIDIA and includes both the Tegra 4 processor and their own Icera modem. we’ll just have to wait and see who they worked with to create the rest of the components in the final build, but for now, the point is clear: it seems clear that creating your own device, top to bottom, is becoming more and more preferable by companies with the ability to work with such a process.

Both Samsung and Apple spent $45.3 billion combined on semiconductors in 2012, which is up $7.9 billion from a year ago. Plus, both companies account for 15.2% of the total chip market. Samsung maintains 8% of the chip market, while Apple has a hold of 7.2% of the market. Rounding out the top five are HP (4.7%), Dell (2.9%), and Sony (2.7%), with Lenovo, Toshiba, LG, and Nokia straggling behind.

The top 10 largest customers of semiconductors combined for 36% of the worldwide chip market, which totals at $297.6 billion for the entire semiconductor market globally. Samsung’s semiconductor spending rose 29% from a year ago to $23.9 billion, while Apple also spent more, with a 14% increase to $21.4 billion.

Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner, says that the PC market “represented the largest sector for chip demand.” However, he notes that desktops and laptops have not been selling well, citing that “consumers’ interest shifted to new mobile computing devices like smartphones and media tablets.” Yamaji says that the shift to mobile devices have caused a “substantial decrease in semiconductor demand in 2012.” Six out of the top 10 chip customers saw a decrease in demand last year.

Over at Intel you’ll find a new batch of budget-friendly Ivy Bridge processors from all angles. The group known as Kantar World Panel has made it clear that the 2012 Q4 smartphone champion is the iPhone by a giant margin as Android appears to gain a lot of deserters – strange way to put it! AT&T has made an announcement that they’ll be bringing on a full purchase of Alltel for a cool $780 million USD.

Those of you in love with HTC’s user interface for smartphones will be glad to see Sense 5 leaking in full with a lovely aesthetic that’s utterly pared-back compared to past iterations. Verizon has announced a hearty Q4 2012 loss and blamed it on Hurricane Sandy as well as pension costs. It’s time for Firefox OS to hit the smartphone universe with a couple of developer smartphones you’re going to Orange. I mean love!

MySpace’s relaunch is in a bit of trouble – maybe – as they’ve been accused of using music that may not be theirs – dear, oh dear. Paypal has announced that they’re making a full overhaul a reality in the coming months. The folks at MSI have announced a budget tablet with the name Enjoy 71 for the masses, and SteelSeries has unveiled their newest gaming keyboard with aspirations for colorful game-on action.

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]

As such, don’t expect to see the Exynos 5 Octa present in anything but high-end smartphones and tablets. The upshot to this is, obviously, a better experience when doing things like watching video or using multiple tabs in your mobile browser. In fact, Samsung CEO Stephen Woo says that there won’t be any stutter during HD video playback, which, as many of you likely know, can be something of an issue on slower processors.

In addition to trying to knock multitasking out of the park, the Exynos 5 Octa is also sporting 3D capabilities. That, of course, means better 3D gaming, so expect to see mobile games take a step up after the Octa starts showing up in devices. This processor also has the distinction of being the first mobile CPU to implement the ARM big.LITTLE technology, something we’ve described at length in the past.

Of course, all the power in the world isn’t worth anything if your battery can’t last long enough to take full advantage of it, which is why Samsung is also focusing on efficiency with this release. By packing together four Cortex A15 processors to do the heavy lifting and four A7 cores for lighter work, users should have the power they need while also saving on battery power when they can.

It’ll probably be a little while before we see the latest in the Exynos line begin making an appearance in a significant number of devices, but it should be making a splash in the mobile world before long. It’s been an incredibly exciting CES for mobile computing, so be sure to have a look at our CES portal for news you may have missed. As always, keep it here at SlashGear for even more from the show.

The thing about the IdeaPhone K900 right this minute is that it’s still in its prototype phase, not actually coming out until somewhere around April of this year – and the initial plan is to release it in China alone. The Samsung Galaxy Note II is already out in quite a few countries around the world, including the USA and Europe. The prospect of the IdeaPhone K900 is great though, regardless of its release range, simply because it’s working with the relatively rare Intel Atom Z2580 Clover Trail SoC.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II works with the Samsung Exynos quad-core processor we know works to great effect even across its massive face. The IdeaPhone K900 has a display that’s 5.5-inches and 1080p resolution with IPS technology while the Galaxy Note II’s face is a 5.5-inch 720p display working with Super AMOLED – bright as can be.

Some of the items we’re really not able to compare at the moment are the Android OS versions, as though the Note is up to Android 4.2 in some places, the Lenovo offering has not yet been shown with a full working version of Android as of yet. We’ll be sure to see a whole lot more in the very near future from the company as the device hits the market. Have a peek at our hands-on comparison images above and below and let us know which one you’d choose if given the chance!

Also be sure to check out our giant CES portal to see all the CES 2013 content your heart can handle, and check our ShowStoppers 2013 tag to see everything we’ve seen today!

As far as the other two go, Richland is an APU that’s currently shipping to OEMs and it promises to deliver a performance boost of 20 to 40% over the previous generation of the company’s A-series chips, and the Kaveri is a new 28nm chip that features heterogeneous system architecture (HSA), and it should ship to customers sometime during the second half of this year.

Richland will also be bundling some new software with the chip, specifically a handful of gesture- and facial-recognition tools. These new chips will be used in various HP, ASUS, and Vizio ultrathin laptops, as well as Vizio’s 24-inch AIO desktop. The company announced these earlier in the day.

Senior vice president and general manager Lisa Su made an appearance at AMD’s press event and mentioned that the company is dedicated “to bring true surround computing and immersive experiences to our everyday lives.” She also mentioned that the new APU’s are “the industry’s first x86 quad-core SoC,” proving the company’s leadership in the gaming industry.

It’s said that this mysterious “Azalea” chip maker is actually the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is contemplating between building a new factory in either New York or Oregon. It was revealed that New York officials have been pitched plans for a 3.2-million-square-foot chip manufacturing factory believed to be for producing components for Apple’s mobile products.

Samsung currently builds all of the custom A-series processors that Apple uses in its iOS devices, and they’re built out of a plant in Texas, including the newest 32nm A6 chip used in the iPhone 5, and the A6X chip used in the fourth-generation iPad. However, rumors are suggesting that Apple is looking to move away from Samsung and make a deal with TSMC.

Essentially, the theory is that by getting rid of Samsung as Apple’s main chip maker, it would free Apple up to create their own chipset dynasty of sorts. Project Azalea would be their attempt to move away from Samsung and possibly make a deal with another chip maker as their exclusive provider of future A-series chips.

[via Apple Insider]

In a statement today, the company reiterated plans to “focus its OMAP processors and wireless connectivity solutions on a broader set of embedded applications with long life cycles, instead of its historical focus on the mobile market where large customers are increasingly developing their own custom chips.” This is all in an attempt to save money moving forward, and Texas Instruments expects this move to result in annualized savings for $450 million by the end of 2013.

Texas Instruments elected to go this route because making these changes will be less expensive than other options, but the company will still be paying a hefty sum to implement this shift in focus. TI expects the changes to cost a total of $325 million, most of which will be covered in the current quarter’s financials. Even though Texas Instruments will have to plop down a lot of cash to make the shift it needs to, it sounds like the company will still come out on top.

It’s just a shame to hear that nearly 2,000 employees will have to lose their jobs in order for Texas Instruments to save some money. Hopefully the company’s plan works out, because if it doesn’t, even more people may be out of a job in the future. Stay tuned.

In Europe, Apple was forced to run apology ads in major publications after courts ruled that Samsung hadn’t infringed on Apple design patents having to do with tablets. Despite all the legal battles raging between Apple and Samsung, Samsung Electronics continues to be the provider to Apple for processors used in the iPhone and the iPad.

Reports indicate that Samsung has hit Apple with a price increase on mobile processors of 20% recently. The tip comes from a person claiming to be familiar with the negotiations between the two companies. The source claims that originally Apple declined to pay the price increase.

However, the source says that after Apple failed to find another supplier of processors for the products, it accepted the 20% price increase. Apple is said to have purchased 130 million processor from Samsung last year and over 200 million units this year. Samsung has a long-term contract with Apple for processors that is good through 2014. No official comment has been made by Samsung or Apple on the dealings.

[via MarketWatch]

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

According to the press release, the increase in mobile devices and new business models has put a particular strain on data centers’ server infrastructure. The market, says AMD, is actively seeking ways to increase efficiency while reducing ownership costs. ARM-based processors are ideal for parallelization, making them a better choice over large-core CPUs.

Said ARM CEO Warren East, “The industry needs to continuously innovate across markets to meet customers’ ever-increasing demands, and ARM and our partners are enabling increasingly energy-efficient computing solutions to address these needs. By collaborating with ARM, AMD is able to leverage its extraordinary portfolio of IP, including its AMD Freedom supercompute fabric, with ARM 64-bit processor cores to build solutions that deliver on this demand and transform the industry.” AMD’s president and CEO Rory Read also offered a statement, saying that AMD will lead the industry in widespread adoption of more energy-efficient 64-bit processors.

This comes after AMD’s acquisition of SeaMicro, which was announced back in March. Says the press release, AMD will be integrating the SeaMicro fabric with the upcoming processors to enable more energy-efficient processor clusters. AMD made the announcement earlier today at a hosted event in San Francisco. No details were released on the processors.

[via AMD]

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.

Calxeda is developing a chip codenamed Lagos, which will be based on ARM’s 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. ARM announced their 64-bit architecture almost one year ago to the day, and has said themselves that servers with their chips based on its 64-bit architecture would be available around 2014 or later.

Calxeda recently received $55 million in capital funding last week, and the company is planning to use this funding to focus on their chip development. Calxeda currently offers a 32-bit prototype server chip called EnergyCore, which is based on ARM’s Cortex-A9 processor design. It’s used in prototype servers from companies like Dell and HP.

The reason why ARM processors are becoming more and more popular for server use is that they’re way more power-efficient than chips from Intel. And in order to keep up with the growing demands of computing, Calxeda is looking to transition to these energy-efficient 64-bit chips in just a couple of years.

However, this shift in manufacturing partners may not necessarily be because of the bad blood between Apple and Samsung. Apple is interested in TSMC’s 20 nanometer processes – currently, Samsung develops the A-series chips inside the iPhone and the iPad with a 32 nanometer process, and moving to TSMC’s 20 nanometer process would promise chips that are more powerful and efficient. Unfortunately for Samsung, TSMC would become the sole provider of Apple’s chips, which means that Samsung would lose a pretty big customer once Apple begins looking elsewhere.

Analysts confirmed the change in partners to CNET. “Apple is working with TSMC at 20 nanometers,” said Piper Jaffray chip analyst Gus Richard. Another unnamed source did blame the shift on Apple’s soured relationship with Samsung, saying that the iPhone manufacturer is merely looking to fulfill contractual obligations with Samsung before looking elsewhere. Because of that, we’re likely to see some Apple products using Samsung-made chips, while others begin using TSMC chips as Apple slowly switches from one to the other.

While netting Apple as a customer would be a big win for TSMC, this isn’t good news for TSMC’s other customers. Apple, obviously, buys an incredible amount of processors due to the absurd popularity of its devices, so putting that kind of demand on TSMC means that less attention will be paid to the company’s other clients. Apple could look to test out TSMC later this year or early 2013, with production of these new chips ramping up late next year for use in products that will be releasing in 2014. Stay tuned, because we’ll undoubtedly hear more about this change soon.

This plant in particular is widely assumed to build processors for Apple devices, so even though Samsung and Apple are currently locked in a courtroom tussle, this move by Samsung is one that Apple will eventually benefit from too. The process of removing the old equipment and replacing it is expected to take around six months, with employees going through training before that section of the plant becomes operational sometime in the latter half of next year.

Some more good news: Samsung won’t be laying off any employees while this section of the plant is shut down. The last time Samsung upgraded one of its plants, it laid off workers during the construction process. That won’t happen this time around, as Samsung will be putting those employees through training while the new equipment is installed. Samsung says this won’t add a large number of permanent jobs at the company, but it will put around 2,000 people to work temporarily as the current equipment is upgraded.

When everything is said and done, the entire facility will be producing SoC chipsets for mobile devices and tablets. The old equipment is being removed from the facility ask you read this, with installation of the new equipment scheduled to begin sometime in September. Be sure to have a look at our story timeline below for more news on Samsung’s recent happenings!

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.”

One of the other reasons for the delay may be high-inventory levels of Llano that AMD still needs to clear out, although AMD reportedly didn’t comment on that particular theory. AMD is said to have adjusted its processor roadmap as a result, with AM3-based processors being phased out in the second quarter of 2013. AM3 and AM3+ processors will continue to make up the majority of AMD’s lineup for the rest of the year as a result.

Finally, AMD is planning to launch three new AM3+ processors this year, which include the FX-8350, the FX-6300, and FX-4320. TDPs are expected to remain close to 125W, but performance is said to have improved by 10 to 15%. Currently the processors are on track for a release sometime in the third quarter.

What NVIDIA and Industrial Light & Magic had to offer this week on stage at GTC was more than just a couple of videos. Cofer broke down his situation like so: “all of my data is localized at ILM, a lot of my work is presentation, and I need to go to LA and show some film. Now, I need to break everything down, but I don’t have access to how it was made.” He continued that because he needed more often to not to simply show work, not necessarily to work with the video itself, he needed a next-generation solution.

Popping out a MacBook Air, Cofer clicked to get to his simple workstation desktop. From there, he noted, he could “show you a live scene running Maya from ILM’s offices in the Presidio.” Cofer noted that “over the course of the year we [ILM] had five weeks and 500 shots left – a hundred shots a week.” Working with a virtual desktop on the MacBook and NVIDIA Kepler architecture, sculpting these scenes from anywhere on the planet virtually.

Pulling up an application called Nuke next, Cofer showed a running scene from Battleship with “shredders” flying through the air towards a ship in the sea. Cofer demonstrates that he’s able to remotely access the data which allows him to adjust the film that can move the shredder devices through the air in near real time, “accessing terabytes of information remotely.”

Finally, Cofer shows of a display of 100 screens showing streaming video at once, one one workstation. This power of virtualization is made possible with NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture and is made real with technology that is live today. Check out the rest of our NVIDIA coverage from this week through the timeline below and let us know what you’re looking forward to in the world of graphics processing now!

Also take a look at NVIDIA’s live stream of this event where we’ve picked up a couple of images that you see here in this post – thanks NVIDIA!

This new technology deployed on Kepler, noted Huang, was super energy efficient, this allowing for deployment on a massive scale. This architecture allows for every command buffer to be virtualized, NVIDIA now able to have one GPU shared with “countless users” as each virtual machine can be discerned from the next, each of them sending graphics commands individually. Machines can now have streams sent to them completely virtually with Kepler architecture, this allowing for a BYOD environment.

Bring Your Own Device is the new key here with NVIDIA, with one limitation currently being that in the past we’ve needed to integrate into one network which has tended thus far to be working with Windows. NVIDIA’s solution to this limitation problem has your GPU virtualized entirely, adding Kepler and newly developed GPU-aware hypervisor software (aka a virtual machine manager), with each machine then having a GPU to itself. NVIDIA is teaming up with Citrix to make this a reality.

Huang invited Sumit Dhawan, Group VP & General Manager at Citrix Systems to the stage to discuss the future of virtualization. Together Dhawan and Huang headed to stage left where an iPad was connected with Citrix Receiver, an app which here allows a massive 1,000 CUDA cores to be shown on the tablet at once – all of them virtualized.

UPDATE: Video provided by NVIDIA!

The cores aren’t actually running on the iPad, instead running on a remote server powered by NVIDIA VGX technology. Stay tuned for the rest of the big bang NVIDIA is releasing today at GTC and check out the timeline below to see what we’ve seen thus far – NVIDIA GPUs blowing up all week!

Thanks to NVIDIA for the awesome photographs snapped right up front at the GPU conference live! You can check out their in-house live stream at NVIDIA Blogs now!

Intel CEO Paul Otellini boasted that the company is able to push out new chip fabrication processes faster than any of its competitors thanks to its $2 billion a year investment in research and development and its employment of 1,900 PhD graduates. Intel has already begun building sites for its next-gen 14nm process in three locations and expects the new chips to arrive on time for next year.

Otellini also revealed that Intel plans to really focus on mobile chips, where the market is dominated by ARM. Intel is currently shipping 32nm mobile chips and expects to shrink down to 22nm by next year and then 14nm thereafter. The goal is to not only play catchup with its mobile chips, but to make them the company’s leading edge in processes within three years.

[via PC Pro]

The P8Z77-V Deluxe is also “easily exceeding” 3 GHz memory frequencies with all four DIMMS populated, according to Asus. “The milestone also establishes that channel boards from ASUS are capable of very impressive overclocking feats thanks to their class leading Digi+ VRM power and control design,” the company bragged. As for the world records, they are as follows:

- AquaMark 3: 536638 marks using a Radeon™ HD 7970 graphics card clocked at 1600MHz core and 1900MHz GDDR5
- PiFast: 10.3 seconds with Intel® Core™ i7-3770K set to 6930MHz
- 3DMark®2001 SE: 164589 marks using a GeForce® GTX 580 clocked at 1553MHz core and 1250MHz GDDR5
- SuperPi: 5 seconds 187ms with Intel® Core™ i7-3770K set to 6961MHz
- SuperPi 32M: 4 minutes 52 seconds and 953ms with Intel® Core™ i7 set to 6735MHz

There is some good news, though, in that the mobile processors will be released at the same time as their desktop counterparts. It had been believed that the mobile side of things wouldn’t be available until at least June. The Ivy Bridge processors will be announced within a week of that April 29 launch date. Benchmarks and reviews are expected to go live on that same day.

More specifically, the following are the ones expected to be announced in the final week of April: mobile Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme families, desktop Core i7, Core i5-3570K, i5-3570T, i5-3550, i5-3550S, i5-3450 and i5-3450S. Prices will range from $184 for the i5-3450 to $1,096 for the i7-3920XM. Future processors will then be introduced later, in June, with Core i3 units due out in the third quarter of the year.

[via CPU-World]

No specific products have been mentioned, but the companies note that that they share a vision of creating “intelligent and practical robots capable of enhancing people’s lives”. iRobot has the history of working in the field or robotics, while TI’s OMAP chip will be leveraged thanks to its multi-core processing capabilities, as well as low power requirements.

iRobot are best known for the Roomba, the circular cleaning robot that will buzz, click, and whirr its way across your floor in the hope of leaving it sparklingly clean. The Roomba isn’t the only area the company where they apply robotics, though, supplying more than 4,500 government and industrial robots designed to undertake dangerous tasks, such as bomb disposals.

It’s unclear exactly which version of OMAP iRobot will be utilizing, although Texas Instruments have been keen to show off their OMAP 5 platform lately. It brings a new dual-core Cortex A15 processor, as well as two additional Cortex M4 cores, reportedly outstripping quad-core A9 chips in terms of performance. OMAP 5 is also able to handle four video feeds at a time, as well as having improved photo processing capabilities – the video features could be beneficial to robot applications that need realtime feeds, for example.

Tim Cook immediately went into talking about the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor in all those Android tablets when talking about their own new A5X. After confirming the processor under the hood he revealed that the X stands for quad-core graphics. Graphics that are capable of around 4x the performance of the Tegra 3.

Apple A5 was already twice as fast, this is a graphics powerhouse”

The graph above makes the Tegra 3 seem tiny in comparison. If that turns out to be completely accurate the Android tablet and gaming market will have some catching up to do. We have a feeling we’ll be testing this very soon. His comments regarding the original A5 being twice as fast might not be completely true and when we compared the iPad 2 vs the quad-core Transformer Prime we didn’t find the same results. Hit the links below for our gaming and benchmark comparisons of the previous generation iPad.

Either way the iPad 2 was already fast, smooth, and extremely capable. Adding more power to the graphics side will only open things up more and offer more games with even better performance than before. iPad has grown up as a device from media consumption to a production machine! Who wants one? Get all of the news, details, and pricing from our Apple Hub!

Featuring Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E architecture, the Xeon E5-2600 family can handle a full eight cores per processor and as much as 768GB of system memory. The additional cores along with a smaller 32nm architecture, as opposed to 45nm, will make the processor 80 percent faster and 50 percent more efficient. It will also be the first server processor family to integrate PCI Express 3.0 support and I/O controller directly into the microprocessor.

Intel aims to address the growing server needs of a more connected world, forecasting at least 3 billion connected users with 15 billion connected devices by 2015. The new server chips have already begun shipping to manufacturers, including HP, Dell, IBM, Oracle, and Cisco, which are all expected to announce Xeon-based server platforms today.

Rival AMD recently acquired startup SeaMicro for $334 million to enter this same enterprise server market aimed at cloud computing. The move was seen as a blow to Intel, which had appeared to have formed a tight relationship with SeaMicro. However, VP and general manager of Intel’s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, Diane Bryant, dismissed that notion today, saying that Intel was “not impressed” with SeaMicro and had declined to purchase the company.

[via ZDNet]

We’ve also got word that MasterImage is here at the conference with their technology on display as well, so you can fully expect we’ll be jumping in on that action soon as well. For now though, you’ve got this fabulous video from Qualcomm. Watch as the MSM8960 is shown off with full 3D action, both capturing and displaying, in what Qualcomm is calling the next generation of said technology. Can the chipmaking group convince us that glasses-free 3D is a viable technology for future generations?

We’ll be continuing to knock out information on Qualcomm with their upcoming S4 quad-core processor all this week and beyond, this week of course being Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona. Have a peek at our [MWC 2012 portal] for all the MWC action as we capture it, and see our [Snapdragon portal] for information on that processor line specifically. Of course also have a peek at the [Qualcomm portal] for the full Qualcomm line of hardware and software-related solutions. Stay tuned!

At this pace, Intel is moving faster than Moore’s Law, according to which the number of transistors that can fit into an integrated circuit doubles about every two years. At the same time, the chips will either have the same performance but half the size or have the same size but double the performance. With 14nm, Intel is getting very close to reaching the theoretical limit of silicon, which is around 9nm to 11nm. However, the company has mentioned before that it expects to eventually jump to 8nm by 2015.

Intel believes that the mobile market moves at a far faster pace than desktops and hence the company will be going be shrinking down the slicon aggressively. One major reason Intel will be able to go at such a rapid pace is its adoption of FinFETs next year, which will allow a single transistor to act as a multi-gate device. In this way, one transistor can perform much more calculations than in a traditional system and hence reduce the number of electrodes and consequently the size of chips. Furthermore, Otellini affirmed that Intel had plenty of manufacturing capacity for both PC and non-PC devices.

[via TheVerge]