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Posts Tagged ‘processors’

AMD call Intel’s bluff on x86 license threat

By Chris Davies on Monday, May 18th 2009 1 Comment

intel amd logo Back in March, Intel accused AMD of breaching their x86 chip licensing agreement, and threatened to pull their license to produce processors if the issue wasn’t addressed in sixty days. The disagreement stemmed from AMD’s spinning out of chip manufacturing as part of the Global Foundries deal; now, with those sixty days past, it turns out that AMD did precisely nothing to sate Intel’s demands.

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Intel Medfield smartphones tipped for 2011

By Chris Davies on Monday, May 18th 2009 No Comments

A recent Intel presentation has tipped the company’s upcoming Medfield processor as destined for smartphones, rather than merely as the Atom replacement for netbooks and MIDs that the CPU has so far been assumed. Intel expect “mainstream smartphones” using the 32nm Medfield in 2011, with the processor’s smaller board size and reduced standby power both making it suitable for compact devices.

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Intel “harmed millions of consumers”: fined $1.45bn

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, May 13th 2009 No Comments

intel logo 181x168 custom Intel has been fined a record 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) by the European Commission, who deemed that the company had illegally used “hidden rebates” to push AMD and other rivals out of the CPU market. Far surpassing Microsoft’s 2004 antitrust fine of €497, Intel now have three months to pay up; the fine amounts to 4.15-percent of Intel’s total 2008 sales.

Updated with Intel’s statement after the cut

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Intel netbook & notebook plans revealed: N280 facing the axe

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, May 12th 2009 No Comments

Leaks from manufacturers have revealed Intel’s notebook and netbook plans for the remainder of 2009, and there are a few surprises in store. Low interest in the Atom N280 CPU and GN40 graphics chipset has led them to consider retiring the combination, with the N270 and 945GSE pairing holding the netbook torch until September. Meanwhile the next-gen Capella notebook platform will arrive in Q3, targeted at the high-end $1,200+ market for 14- to 18.4-inch machines.

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Intel Core i7 940 & 965 Extreme being phased out?

By Chris Davies on Friday, May 8th 2009 No Comments

intel core i7 logo Intel are reportedly preparing to phase-out two of their three Core i7 processors, despite having only launched the CPUs around six months ago. Hardware partners have been notified that the Intel 2.93GHz Core i7-940 and Core i7-965 Extreme will only accept orders for the two chips up until September 4th 2009, with the final batch shipping on May 7th 2010. The move has led some to suggest that Intel launched the three consumer Nehalem processors so as to keep to their much-publicized timetable, and never intended them to be long-term products.

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Intel CPU Virtualization confusion undermining Windows 7 XP Mode

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, May 6th 2009 No Comments

The widespread Windows 7 RC release has meant many users attention turned to the OS’ recently-announced Windows XP Mode, only to discover what Microsoft had warned from the start: many processors won’t support it. XP Mode requires hardware-assisted virtualization, which means the CPU must support either Intel VT or AMD-V technology, and the motherboard BIOS must have it enabled. What many Intel users are discovering now is that their CPUs – even high-speed processors still on sale now – don’t support Intel VT, and as such XP Mode can’t be used.

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Renesas chip allows mobile phone HD video playback and recording

By Brenda Stokes on Tuesday, May 5th 2009 No Comments

renesassh mobilehd1 Well here it is, folks! Renesas announced this morning that their latest media processor is optimized to allow for full HD video on mobile devices and phones. It’s called the SH7370 and as a part of the SH-MobileHD1 series, it will be able to decode 1080p at 30 frames per second.

But that’s not all. It can also encode H.264-based video at 30 frames per second. This means that your smartphone could both play and create video akin to Blu-ray format. It could also be outputted with full quality via HDMI with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.

Other features include support for MPEG-4, MPEG2-TS, SD cards and Wi-Fi. It also has 64MB of RAM, making it a rather self-contained device. We don’t know when the the SH7370 will hit mass production, but for now, some unspecified companies are getting samples for testing.

Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet gets new CPUs in Canada

By Chris Davies on Monday, May 4th 2009 No Comments

Lenovo Canada are offering ThinkPad X200 Tablet PC buyers a newly-expanded range of processor options, more than twice as many as US buyers can configure their touchscreen ultraportables with. The Canadian X200 gets not only a choice of the original SU9300 1.20GHz and SL9400 1.86GHz CPUs as the US model, but up to a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo SL9600 low-voltage chip.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X200 to get CULV

By Brenda Stokes on Thursday, Apr 30th 2009 1 Comment

lenovothinkpadx200 2 According to a leak, Lenovo is apparently working on a new ThinkPad X200 that features a CULV processor. While this rumor is not confirmed, it would make sense since Lenovo has themselves admitted they are thinking about creating a CULV ThinkPad in the future, though they did not commit to a timeframe.

The ThinkPad X200 models currently feature a SL-series Core 2 Duo processor. This has made the price go up considerably, but with a 1.2GHz Celeron M chip, the cost would decrease, as would the voltage use. The new system would also have a 160GB hard drive and 2GB of memory.

Pricing is not known, nor is a release date. It may not even come to pass. We’ll just have to wait and see. But it would make sense in this economy for Lenovo to be looking to drop their price point a bit.

AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition announced

By Brenda Stokes on Wednesday, Apr 29th 2009 No Comments

AMD has just announced another processor option. It’s called the Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition and this 2.8GHz processor packs in some power for its relatively small size, including 65nm dual-core chips.

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