NVIDIA has come strong to the show with not only a massively impressive first release of their chip on the Transformer Prime, but with detailed descriptions of how their processors work and why we should be jumping for joy at them. As for how excited we should be for Tegra 3 on smartphones, well, just look at the rumors! Just this morning we had another note come through on the HTC Edge, a device that will almost certainly be coming to the MWC 2012 stage with a Tegra 3 processor under the hood.

And you can bet we’ll be there at Mobile World Congress 2012 to bring you all of the NVIDIA action as it drops, including but not limited to phones, tablets, and straight up Tegra 3. You can bet there’s also going to be some LG smartphone action here as well – check the image above to get an idea of what that LG device might look like. Also watch the MWC 2012 and Tegra portals for more up to the minute updates about the whole show! Meanwhile check the power –

AMD’s first APU for tablets is codenamed “Hondo” and will be built on a 40-nm manufacturing process. APUs combine a microprocessor and graphics on the same chip and feature ultra-low power consumption. The company revealed that the first AMD-toting Windows 8 tablet will be available this year.

AMD will also be refreshing its lineup with Brazos 2.0 chips that feature faster TurboCore and universal serial bus 3.0 built on a 40-nm process. A second-gen Trinity APU will be built on a 32-nm process and feature significant improvements in performance and power consumption. Additionally, AMD will be launching a new stand-alone graphics chip called Southern Islands, which is built on a 28-nm process and should debut this year.

In 2013, AMD will launch a successor to the Hondo tablet chip called Temash, which will feature new Jaguar processing cores. Kabini chip for laptops with Jaguar cores, a third-gen Kaveri APU with Steamroller cores, and a Trinity mobile chip will also be introduced in 2013.

[via VentureBeat]

Qualcomm’s revenues are up 14% over the last quarter of 2011 and up a whopping 40% over this same period last year, sitting them in cool and pretty at $4.68 billion. This puts them up to $1.55 billion in operating income, an amount which puts them 24% and 25% higher than they were last year and last quarter, respectively. Their net income is right up around the O.I. with 1.40 billion, this up 20% from Q1 2011 and 33% from Q4 2011. Things are looking up all around!

In the estimates chart for 3G/4G device shipments you’re seeing here, growth is apparent of course, but what’s more interesting is how tiny growth has been in Japan and Korea compared to every other region. You’ll find North America to be growing at a healthy rate with China and India essentially exploding year over year, and estimates for 2012 hitting a slightly less fabulous percentage growth over 2011, but certainly looking pretty impressive compared to 2010.

In this quarterly total reported device sales chart, you’ll find that it’s been an ever-so-slightly bumpy road since December of 2008, but that December of 2011 is likely to reach nearly double what it was 3 years ago. Compared to the last four quarters, Qualcomm has been growing each quarter by a significant amount, with this first quarter always being the biggest of the year. If this chart holds true, we can expect a bit of a dip in Q2′s total reported device sales, with a continued upward swing until sometime next year.

In other words, Qualcomm is doing quite well right now as chips are up, mobile is up, and everything’s turning up Milhouse for the company that’s made a big showing at CES 2012 and is set to make another big bang at MWC 2012 – seeya there!

The range of investments will span everything from building factories to R&D, as well as mergers & acquisitions and hiring new staff. Samsung expects to take on around 26,000 new team members in 2012, potentially bringing its global total to as many as 376,000.

80-percent of the investment will go through Samsung Electronics, particularly Samsung Semiconductor and Samsung Mobile Display. Analysts predict the company will boost processor spending by 1 trillion won over 2011, and OLED spending by 2 trillion won, with LEDs, LCDs and battery technology also sharing in a windfall.

“No other IT company can beat [Samsung] in terms of investment” NH Investment & Securities analyst Lee Sun-tae said of the company’s R&D plans. Samsung has said it will unveil a Google TV set later in 2012, while the company has revealed plans to merge its bada smartphone OS with open-source Tizen, with the first handsets also expected to go on sale this year.

Speculation about the $3.6bn Texas production facility began last month, with reports indicating that it was responsible for 40,000 silicon wafers per month. Although supply to Apple began earlier in 2011, it’s believed, the line – with a footprint equal to around nine football pitches – only began working at its maximum rate in Q4 2011.

Samsung isn’t believed to be short of cash in the bank, despite looking for external sources. The company is tipped to have the equivalent of around $19bn in cash and cash-equivalents as of mid-Q3 2011, and analysts indicate its logic-chip spend could as much as double this year.

The irony is that, with the bulk of the Texas’ plant’s output going to Apple, Samsung’s production is fueling the rise of a company that hasn’t shied from dragging it into the courts across the globe – and one to which its own lawyers have proved similarly aggressive as well. Still, with Apple seemingly dependent on Samsung to furnish the scale of chipsets that it requires, it looks like that Jekyll and Hyde relationship will continue for some time.

This application has several sections: one called My Games, this being the place where your applications are stored, it working as a sort of alternate apps drawer for you for all the GameCommand games you love so well. Next there’s Featured, this section having the Snapdragon logo because here is where you find all the most fantastic games you’ll want to download through the app. What the application does is tell you all the info you need to see if you want the app, then there’s a link that leads you into the Android Market. You then download your app in the same way you would normally from the market as you always do.

The third section in GameCommand is News, this being a feed of several news sources speaking on various bits of news that’ll inform you on the mobile world, hopefully in the Qualcomm environment. You’ve got settings in the upper left, this allowing you to arrange things just a bit different, then the “i” button in the upper right lets you know how to use the app if you can’t figure it out. This is Qualcomm’s current attempt at reinforcing their chips in a way that shows developers that they’re worth working with. This weekend we’re going to have a couple of features on Qualcomm noting how their approach is superior to the competition, built from the ground up.

You can grab the Snapdragon GameCommand from the Android Market today, and it’s completely free for all.

This device runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box and totes the fabulous NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Have a peek at our full review of the Transformer Prime to see what this device packs aside from the panel, it also an IPS display meaning its so bright that it’ll bust your eyeballs out. The best example we’ve got of this happening is Shadowgun running here at native resolution, that being WUXGA Full HD 1920 x 1200 – powerful!

NOTE here that the device is likely simply going to be marketed as the Transformer 700 Series instead of the TF700 or TF700T you’ve heard of in the past.

Additional features that we dont go too far into in the hands-on video are SuperNote app – this allowing you to take screenshots and insert photos, videos, and audio recordings along with maps and more to take all the inclusive notes you could ever want. The camera on the back is still that powerful 8 megapixel shooter with LED flash, back-illuminated CMOS sensor, and F/2.4 aperture. Audio is provided by ASUS SonicMaster technology too – it’s no less than deliciously soundtastic.

Once you snap a photo with your HTC Jetstream, they show, any characters you’ve got in the display will come to life! Vuforia has made this all possible, the team at Qualcomm pumping up this program as one that doesn’t only work with game developers on Android – not just racing games, etc, but such oddities as a child’s toy, as well.

This expands Qualcomm’s offering today which essentially encapsulated their current and future work with developers. As Qualcomm supports the developer base, the devices they create apps for become much more powerful and amazing, and Qualcomm knows it. Check out there rest of our coverage from this event in the timeline below!

One of the groups working with Qualcomm on the initiative to bring business expansion through mobile is Gramin Foundation, whose CEO spoke to the audience at the event through a video in which he assures the public that business will be good and that mobile will drive it. Qualcomm appears very much to be setting itself into the mobile world solidly here, certainly in the business world, but also in the student and the personal use arenas.

Stick with us here for the rest of the event by following our [CES LIVE] portal all week long.

We’ll be seeing Dr Paul Jacobs presenting in a set of talks about Qualcomm and their partnering OeM partners over the next hour or so. Stick with us via our several CES portals: [CES 2012] for all news related to CES 2012 and [CES LIVE] for all of our in-person news including but not limited to hands-on photos and videos, event announcements, and the like!

The company’s MDDi deinterlace tech is also baked in, combining the MPEG decoder, format converter and video enhancement unit. It’s capable of 120Hz pictures, as the name suggests, as well as crunching both 2D and 3D graphics.

Interestingly, MediaTek isn’t just focusing on Google TV with the new chip; instead, it’s positioning it as a platform agnostic solution, ideal for those companies who might want to follow their own smart TV strategy. Still, the cross-platform support would mean Google TV would be a minor step later, should those manufacturers change their mind.

That’s something that will have to happen if Eric Schmidt’s vision of most new TVs supporting Google’s smart TV platform by summer this year is to come true. We’ll see the first fruits of the new SoC at CES 2012 next week.

The big deal with the first announcement with Sling, as reported by Light Reading Cable, is that while most streaming television solutions on the market currently require you to stay within the confines of your very own wi-fi network, this new deal with Broadcom will allow Slingbox to break the confines. At the moment, Dish Network is the only other place you can get this “place shifting” (a fancy term for moving around wherever you want) in a Slingbox set-top for your TV. Broadcom’s new chip will allow new cable, telecom, and satellite TV operators to bring a paradigm shift to streaming video in the third quarter of 2012.

As for Myriad Alien Vue, we got a glimpse of what this could mean for us in the very near future last last month. What Broadcom is announcing today with Myriad is that the former will be supporting the latter in their efforts to bring Android apps to the TV. What this will mean in practice is that set-top boxes using Broadcom chips (the same BCM7425 SoC mentioned above) will be able to run and will be encouraged to run Myriad Alien Vue. Myriad Alien Vue not only allows you to run Android apps on your TV, it supports plug-ins such as “Myriad Connect & Share” for multi-screen functionality.

Exciting stuff! In a nutshell this set of deals means we’ll potentially have boxes in the near future that can stream live TV, hook up to any display, and run Android apps as well! Sounds like a neato 2012 coming up!

We’ll be there to tell you what’s going on right as it happens at CES 2012 starting on January 9th, straight from the Las Vegas Convention Center. It’s there that all the sweet news will originate from, and its there that we’ll certainly get confirmation or denial in its grandest form, right there on the show floor. That said, this isn’t the first time the duo have tried to bring such a product to the market, the last time being CES 2011 with a smartphone that didn’t quite reach customers hands. What’s happening now is that some reported sources in both LG and Intel have confirmed a new device, while others have denied.

This year it’s looking much more likely, one way or another, as we’ve already seen reference devices in both smartphone and tablet form running Intel’s Medfield chip. Last year Intel had Moorestown and as Jen-Hsun Huang mentioned, NVIDIA basically stole the show away from them in 2011. Will we see more like these reference devices in real market-ready form at CES, made by LG? Sources say yes, indeed.

[via TechCrunch]

This tablet, again, represents the next generation of chips as made by Intel to provide the world with futuristic computing prowess in the mobile environment. This tablet runs Android and is out-clocking every dual-core processor on the market today from what we understand. That said, the hardware is what we’re looking at today, the hardware in the tablet appearing above and below — here’s what our source has to say about the device:

“The build of the tablet is actually really great! It doesn’t feel cheap at all – it’s thin but it has a nice weight to it which doesn’t make it feel cheap. It has the power button on the left top of the tablet, with the volume rockers to the right of the power button, and the headphone jack is on the left side of the tablet. To the right of the table is the slot for microSD card and at the bottom of the tablet are three connections – one for the weird power, Micro-USB and a Mini-HDMI connection. The screen retains all the fingerprints so I’m guessing the glass doesn’t have its final finish, thats why it gets dirty so easily.” – ANON

We’ll be getting a bit more information about the innards of the tablet as well as the software running, and perhaps even some more benchmarks before the day is through. Stick with us here on SlashGear to see more as this story unfolds!

In this leak comes a 10.1 inch 1280×800 pixel resolution reference tablet which looks rather plain but runs an x86 processing core at 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM as well as Bluetooth, Wi-fi, and FM radio. This tablet is put through some benchmark tests including Caffeinemark 3. The Tegra 2 scored 7,500, the Snapdragon pulled an 8,000, and the Atom scored a 10,500. Surely the higher clocking had more than a little bit to do with it, but still we’re looking at an interesting machine to be sure. Power consumption, on the other hand, appears to be quite high at this early point, using 2.6 W up to 3.6 W with a heavy load.

This of course all works on Android 3.0 Honeycomb while the first final product will be working with Ice Cream Sandwich, and all of the hardware is still at a relatively early stage. You’ll find that whatever Intel’s chip ends up landing in for its first showing will be more than impressive for the launch. Meanwhile we’ll be sitting pretty with our current most powerful chip, the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core SoC on the Transformer Prime. Details are sure to flow on this upcoming Intel masterpiece at CES 2012.

[via Netbook News]

SuVolta calls this new technology DDC for Deeply Depleted Channel. The technology could be making its way very soon to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets where systems-on-a-chip (SoC) technologies are aggressively competing to keep down power consumption, while providing greater performance.

The current mobile landscape is dominated by ARM chips with Intel pushing its way in, but SuVolta argues that its DDC technology has several advantages over Intel’s in the areas of cost and efficiency. The DDC technology is part of SuVolta’s PowerShrink platform and devices utilizing the SuVolta technology are expected to reach the market by the second half of 2012.

[via eWeek]

Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s next Snapdragon S4 chips will also be built using 28nm processes, on silicon produced by TSMC’s factories. In face, the company says it has more than 80 customer tape-outs at present, over twice as many as for TSMC’s 40nm production. As for the chips themselves, TSMC reckons there’s up to a 45-percent speed improvement over the 40nm versions.

“TSMC’s 28nm process offering includes 28nm High Performance (28HP), 28nm High Performance Low Power (28HPL), 28nm Low Power (28LP), and 28nm High Performance Mobile Computing (28HPM). Among these technology offerings, 28HP, 28HPL and 28LP are all in volume production and 28HPM will be ready for production by the end of this year. The production-version design collateral of 28HPM has been distributed to most mobile computing customers for their product-design use” TSMC

What’s still unclear is how involved with Apple TSMC is. The Cupertino company was tipped to be in negotiations with the silicon specialists over potentially replacing some or all of its dependence on Samsung for future Apple Ax processors, tensions between Apple and Samsung escalating amid the ongoing legal battles over patents and design. However, most recently Apple is believed to have decided to hedge its bets more conservatively, sticking with Samsung for the majority of its A6 and A7 chip needs, and placing a minority order with TSMC. In fact, Samsung’s parts cooperation with Apple is tipped to extend beyond 2012.

For those of you that don’t know, the world’s first mobile super chip, that being the first dual-core processor sitting on a smartphone, was the NVIDIA Tegra 2. Internationally, this chip first sat on the LG Optimus 2X which eventually became the T-Mobile G2x here in the states, and the first smartphone here in the states with a dual core, the Motorola ATRIX, also had the NVIDIA Tegra 2. And the first tablet with a dual-core processor, the Motorola XOOM, also had an NVIDIA Tegra 2. You know what that means? I means NVIDIA basically beat everyone else to the punch. They also swarmed the world of Android in 2011, hitting a gigantic amount of devices, stomping all competitors of theirs in the dual-core market.

Read our post about Variable SMP for all the information you could possibly want about how the Tegra 3 works, that is four cores – or what’s that, five? Yes, five cores. The Tegra 3 will undoubtedly be called a quad-core processor, but you’ll be glad you read about how it’s actually got five CPU cores when it comes down to it. The video you see in this post should show you the lighter side of all this information – power here essentially means great performance and superior graphics – that’s all you need to know!

The Cortex A7 may appear to be a stepped up Cortex A8, which is a rather old design, but the A7 is much improved in several areas. On its own, the A7 could power sub-$100 entry level smartphones for 2013-2014 with the same processing performance as today’s $500 high-end smartphones.

And as a companion core, it can be used in next-gen high-end smartphones with quad-core and A15-based SoCs. Next-gen SoCs like NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 Kal-El quadcore processor currently use A9 companion cores. Replacing with A7 companion cores could in theory reduce power consumption by as much as 70%.

[via AnandTech]

“Apple has been in talks with Samsung over shipment of its A6 quad-core mobile processor (AP) chips to be used in the next iPhone. It appears that Apple clearly has concluded that Samsung remains a critical business partner” the unnamed Samsung executive told the Korean newspaper. The reasons behind that conclusion aren’t specified, but a separate – and also anonymous – supplier claims that TSMC’s production naivety is the root cause. “The manufacturing process at TSMC hasn’t been stabilized” the insider suggests. “Considering Apple’s previous patterns of adopting qualified technologies, Apple isn’t taking risks. Samsung offers better pricing and capacity commitment for the A6 mobile APs.”

According to the Samsung Electronics’ CEO Choi Gee-sung, the company’s COO Lee Jae-yong – son of chairman Lee Kun-hee and himself tipped to eventually head the group – attended the memorial service for Steve Jobs this past weekend after a personal invitation from Apple CEO Tim Cook. While there, Lee will apparently sit down with Cook in a meeting this week to discuss unspecified supply issues.

Apple announced earlier today that it had sold more than 4m iPhone 4S handsets in the smartphone’s first weekend of availability. The phone uses the same Apple A5 chipset as the iPad 2, based on a custom design by Apple and produced by Samsung.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

“This is a business decision where we’re taking those resources and applying them to corporate priorities” Intel spokesperson Claudine Mangano explained of the shift in focus. The company is yet to detail exactly what will be lost as the Digital Home Group folds, but no job losses are expected, only staff being shifted between divisions.

Intel’s CE4100 SoC had found a place in the Boxee Box, while the company had already revealed its CE4200 successor. The SoC was also found in Logitech’s Google TV implementation, as well as in smart TVs from Sony. However, Google TV OEMs were apparently pushing for cheaper, lower-power ARM chipsets of the sort that have proliferated in smartphones in the next-gen version of the platform.

As you may or may not know, all AMD FX CPUs come with completely unlocked processor clock multipliers for you overclocking enthusiasts out there. Don’t burn down the house with all that power though, you’ll want to use your Guinness World Record holder CPU to keep on giving you what you need at least through the rest of this description. All of these processors also use AMD Turbo Core Technology that “dynamically optimizes performance” across the whole set of CPU cores, this offering you the full benefit of the cores you so gratefully payed for in the first place.

Starting TODAY, AMD FX CPUs will be available around the globe. In this first launch, there are four options from the line, with many more on the way soon. Have a look at this list and see what you might be wanting to get:

• FX-8150: Eight cores, 3.6 GHz CPU base (3.9 GHz Turbo Core, 4.2 GHz Max Turbo)
$245 suggested retail price (U.S.)

• FX-8120: Eight cores, 3.1 GHz CPU base (3.4 GHz Turbo Core, 4.0 GHz Max Turbo)
$205 suggested retail price (U.S.)

• FX-6100: Six cores, 3.3 GHz CPU base (3.6 GHz Turbo Core, 3.9 GHz Max Turbo)
$165 suggested retail price (U.S.)

• FX-4100: Four cores, 3.6 GHz CPU base (3.7 GHz Turbo Core, 3.8 GHz Max Turbo)
$115 suggested retail price (U.S.)

Of course the fine folks at AMD also want you to know about how you can combine these new CPUs with a brand new shiny AMD 9-series chipset motherboard and AMD Radeon HD 6000 series graphics card as well, these two combining to create what AMD calls the “AMD Scorpius platform” for an “astounding gaming and HD entertainment experience.” Of course this combo does offer more than simply an optimized experience as they hold hands together so well. With the Scorpius platform you get support for AMD CrossFireX technology, this allowing the combination of multiple graphics cards in a single PC, and AMD Eyefinity technology that’ll support super resolution on up to SIX monitors!

Power for the power hungry and gaming elite! Grab it all now at your local retailer or at shop.AMD.com, what are you waiting for!?

What’s that, you want to see the Guinness World Records video for this system? Have a look right here:

What 28nm means is that the same amount of work will be able to be done with a much smaller piece of hardware – the last smallest process was 45nm – as Qualcomm here seeks to massively impress the world with nearly halving the size AND boosting the power, we must dig out fingernails into out kneecaps in anticipation. No way around it. This size also means lower power consumption, this meaning a much longer up-time on the same size battery.

The Krait CPU will bring a new pipeline architecture and promises a whole 60% boost over the current Qualcomm Scorpion line. Clock speeds rang from 1.5 to 2.5GHz — this being notable since the highest rated processor speed on a CPU for ANY mobile device thus far has been 1.5GHz out of the box. Hackers have seen to it that devices have gone beyond this behind the scenes, but not on the mass market. These new speeds come aside asynchronous multiprocessing and dual-channel memory.

The GPU, that being the Adreno name we all know and love, now in a 225 flavor, will have a massive 50% increase in performance over the current 220 line. In addition, the 225 will provide support for DirectX 9.3 for Windows 8 as well as OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0. I told you there’d be some specs thrown around, right? All this means for the lay person is that it’s going to be really awesome for high-powered GAMES. Look forward to it!

Then there’s the S4 MSM8960, which will allow multi-mode World capabilities along with support for frequencies ranging between 700 and 2600MHz – so versatile! Qualcomm claims support for Cat. 3 LTE (up to 100Mpbs!) and Cat. 24 HSPA+ (up to 42Mbps). Then there’s a bunch more, why not, right? There’s EV-DO Rev. B 1x Advanced, EV-DO Rev. B TD-SCDMA, GSM, GPRS, and EDGE. AND there’s support for simultaneous GLONASS and GPS and of course, Bluetooth, Wi-fi, NFC, and FM radio. Gotta catch em all!

We’re ready, Qualcomm, blow em all away! More competition for better products, faster advancement, and of course, more speedily developed games for ME in the end.

[via Qualcomm]

UPDATE: the final release version of this game is out now, check out our follow-up post and hands-on video once you get down reading about it here, then pick the game up in the market!

A third-person shooter is, for those of you that don’t know, a game in which you’re looking over the shoulder of the character that you control, using your controls to then fire all manner of projectile weapons (or in some cases, cutting weapons or even your fists,) at your enemy. Here we’re using our fists to jam on computer consoles to pass through doors and open locks while our trigger finger blasts enemies with nothing less than an Alien caliber pulse rifle-esque supergun. Our enemies are a set of mutated humanoids and their robot counterparts – without getting too much into the story, basically they’re all freakish and you wont have any trouble with your conscience for blasting them into pieces.

There IS a storyline, and you can read it in the hands-on video here if you please, and there IS a reason you’re on this planet with its industrial used-future look and hallways full of nasty customers, but heck, you know why you’re here. Your controls are simple and well-placed, this especially so since you can control where they sit. You’ve got your joystick, gun trigger, view and aim, reload gun button, gun switcher, and settings. Everything else you see there on the gray line below is a result of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 pushing its TouchWiz UX up in our face – forget it’s there for now.

You can move all of your controls around and indeed even the wherever-you-need-it joystick for moving your character can be set in one place if you want it. The game is single player, contains what Madfinger says is 5 hours of play, and contains multiple outcomes at the end depending on how you’ve played your cards. The game ISNT easy for a beginner, and there are three difficulty settings for even the most hardened of shooter-game experts.

You’ll be able to find this game in the Tegra Zone as well as on the Android Market immediately if not soon, just search for that unique word: SHADOWGUN. It’s the only one in there, I assure you. This version is optimized, again, for the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core chipset, and there WILL be an updated version for the quad-core Kal-El NVIDIA chipset come this winter. Exciting!

The previous Exynos found fame as the heart of the Samsung Galaxy S II, the company’s best-selling Android smartphone. There running at 1.2GHz as standard, the chip was found to be overclock friendly by the legions of Android modders, making the Galaxy S II something of a mainstay for those looking to squeeze the very greatest performance out of their device.

Samsung hasn’t explicitly said which devices the Exynos 4212 is likely to appear in first, but it’s worth noting that the Galaxy S II HD LTE and Galaxy S II LTE announced last week for the South Korean market both run a 1.5GHz dual-core, and are probably candidates. Meanwhile, the company has also announced a 16-megapixel CMOS camera sensor for smartphones, using a back-illuminated sensor for improved low-light performance, which is expected to ship from November. A second sensor, running at 1.2-megapixels and intended for use as a front-facing camera, adds 720p HD 30fps video support.

Opinions differ, however, as to the component’s authenticity, particularly because of the somewhat smudgy nature of the A5 processor labeling itself. The board is believed to be from an iPhone prototype, and uses a different battery to what’s inside the current iPhone 4; the existing smartphone has a 1,420 mAh pack, but what can be seen of the battery next to the A5 chipset suggests it has 10mAh more.

It’s unclear whether what looks to be a white iPhone fascia to the left of the board is attached, and if so whether this could in fact be the iPhone 4S. The 4S is tipped to have the same design as the iPhone 4, but upgrade the processor and come in at a cheaper price-point, and some recent rumors have suggested Apple may be forced to announce it ahead of the true iPhone 5 because of production issues. More details on that in our full iPhone 5 rumor roundup.

[via PhoneArena]

The new S4 class chipset based off the Krait architecture is built on a 28nm process. It will be available in single-core, dual-core, and quad-core versions with speeds up to 2.5GHz and will come with Adreno Graphics, 3D, full 1080p HD, as well as 3G and LTE connectivity as standard features.

The S4 class will be the high-end line whereas Qualcomm will also be offering less powerful chips for budget and mass market devices with its S1, S2, and S3 classes. The chips will be available to manufacturers by year-end and can be expected to ship in consumer devices at the start of 2012. This means that we can expect to see the first 2.5GHz handsets launching at Mobile World Congress in February of next year.

[via Android Community]

“Broadcom is now better positioned to meet growing customer demand for integrated, end-to-end communications and processing platforms for network infrastructure” company president and CEO Scott McGregor says of the deal. Although Broadcom has previously attempted to break into the smartphone segment, with reference platforms like the BCM2157, so far it is better known for its combination wireless chipsets that can squeeze Bluetooth, 3G/4G and other connectivity types into a single package.

However, heavyweights like NVIDIA and Qualcomm still dominate that segment, and Broadcom is obviously hoping that by adding some extra processor know-how it can compete more aggressively. The deal is expected to close sometime in the first half of 2012, though there’s no word on when we can expect to see the first fruits of the partnership.

“Hollywood Quality Video is a well-recognized, award-winning technology that provides Qualcomm with a leadership position in the video processing space,” Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president and group president of Qualcomm claims. “Media consumption continues to cross device boundaries and create growing expectations for high-quality viewing experiences.”

The exact nature of Qualcomm’s intended implementation of the IDT tech is unknown at this stage. Given, however, that smartphones and tablets are increasingly being positioned as multimedia hubs for streaming, HD video and powering multiple displays, boosting the abilities of future Snapdragon SoCs could help them claw back some of the Android ground NVIDIA took with the Tegra 2.

Exact terms of the all-cash deal have not been revealed, though Qualcomm says it has already been approved and is expected to be completed in the next few weeks. IDT and Qualcomm will also work together in the future on smart device technologies.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard that TSMC is involved in production trials with Apple. Back in July, the company was said to be testing its 28nm processes on the A6, with Apple basing its eventual order decisions on what yield the manufacturer could achieve. Acting is motivation for Apple is a reported – and understandable – desire to shift reliance away from Samsung, whose semiconductor arm currently is primarily responsible for the A4 and A5 chips inside the iPhone 4 and iPad 2.

According to these latest leaks, TSMC has seen its production lines freed up as orders from NVIDIA and Qualcomm are effected by an industry-wide depression, with stockpiled chips meaning production demands have shrunk. TSMC has declined to comment on the Apple speculation, though has said that it expects its order book to look healthier in Q4 as customer inventory dwindles.

Exact specifications of the Apple A6 are unclear, though 28nm chips from the manufacturer are being billed as providing 30-percent more power while cutting power consumption by around 50-percent. They’re also expected to be cooler in operation.

What publishers at Fudzilla are calling their “Far East sources” are saying is that NIVIDA’s original statement that August would be the time for quad-core tablets and the holiday season of 2011 would be the time for quad-core super phones is premature, saying that “this won’t happen and that it will launch at later date, probably when it gets colder in the northern hemisphere.” Further sources are noting that Kal-El definitely will be coming inside Q3, again Fudzilla saying this means September 30th, this of course meaning we’ll see a quad-core chipset coming out from NVIDIA before the holiday season of this year.

The latest word direct from NVIDIA is thus:

“Project Kal-El-powered tablets are coming this Fall, and phones around the CES 2012 timeframe.”

In the demo we were presented with this year at Mobile World Congress 2011, we got to see an early version of the quad-core chip decoding a video stream with 1440p resolution; roughly double the resolution of 1080p and outputting video at 2560×1440 to a computer monitor set at a monstrous 2560×1600. This demo continued with a game that has yet to be named running at 20 FPS on a Tegra 2 and 50-55 FPS on the Kal-El. Videos were allowed during the demo of Great Battles: Medieval, a game now available through War Drum Studios. Have a look at the demo here:

Any way you look at it, we’re more than likely going to see this awesome piece of hardware running some next-level devices by the end of the year. Can’t wait!

[via Fudzilla]

The Compulab Trim Slice ultra-compact PC – which uses a Tegra 2 chipset – is apparently to thank for the release of the new NVIDIA drivers. Developer vgrade worked with NVIDIA Compulab on a set of hardfp video drivers for MeeGo that allow for accelerated graphics with the SoC, and then released them via the official trimslice forum.

Although MeeGo’s most prominent supporter, Nokia, has all but abandoned the platform in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, recent reports have suggested that the OS could well benefit from the increasingly litigious environment around Android. The growing number of patent infringement suits targeting Android OEMs has apparently left many wary of the Google-led platform, and considering rivals perceived as more stable, such as MeeGo.

A relative shortage of processors that supported the platform, however, had left MeeGo still somewhat in shadow, something these new drivers may well address. Acer has already committed to producing an at least limited range of hardware running the OS, including the Iconia M500 tablet, while ASUS has the Eee PC X501 netbook.

It should be Q1 2013 when things get really interesting, with the quadcore Krait chips arrival. The MSM8974 will run at between 2.0GHz and 2.5GHz, with 2MB of L2 cache, 800MHz DDR3 dual-channel memory support and Adreno 320 graphics. It’ll also pack LTE Cat-4, HSPA+ and various other connectivity support, and be capable of 1080p 60fps HD video together with processing images from up to 30-megapixel sensors.

Those chips should be propping up the flagships in tablets, smartphones and even ultraportable notebooks to rival Intel’s Ultrabook drive. SlashGear spoke to Raj Talluri, VP of product management for Qualcomm’s chipset division, about what makes the company’s chips special, particularly given that NVIDIA expects to have its quadcore Kal-El platform on the market sometime this quarter. The Qualcomm advantage, Talluri says, is that the company designs its own cores rather than, as with NVIDIA, TI and others, using off-the-shelf ARM designs.

“[Firms like NVIDIA and TI] don’t have the ability to make their own [cores], they haven’t mastered that yet” Talluri pointed out, suggesting that NVIDIA’s quadruple Cortex-A9 chip will sacrifice battery life in its pursuit of performance, while arguing that Texas Instruments was limited to just a pair of Cortex-A15 cores in its OMAP5 because any more of the toasty chips “would burn through the package.”

Instead, the VP claimed, Krait offers significantly more DMIPS per MHz (i.e. performance) than an A9 core, and is roughly on a par with an A15 core. However, when it comes to DMIPS per milliwatt (i.e. power frugality), Krait uses significantly less than either an A9 or A15 core. Rivals, he suggested, are merely targeting “multicore” rather than “the right core”; Qualcomm has already insisted that its existing dualcore is faster than Kal-El.

Update: Qualcomm has requested that we remove the roadmap information.

[via Netbook News]

Although rumors of Apple negotiating with TSMC are not new, until now it had been assumed that the company would be joining Samsung as a supplier, rather than replacing them altogether. That would certainly have fit in with Apple’s ramping up of production supplies as it increased its sales ambitions; some analysts have suggested that the company will launch not just one but two fifth-gen iPhones later this year.

Instead, however, it looks like Apple is attempting sever ties with Samsung and reduce its reliance on the company. It was revealed recently that Apple is Samsung’s second-largest component buyer – the first being Sony – with the Cupertino company’s business being worth $5.7bn in sales each year. A considerable chunk of that is in semiconductors, though Samsung also supplies NAND flash memory and other parts.

As the legal tussle gets more serious, however, and Samsung’s share of the smartphone market grows, Apple is apparently hoping to pull the plug – at least in part – of some of its rivals income. Samsung currently produces both the Apple A4 and the dual-core A5 as found in the iPad 2.

[via This is my next]

Silvermont will be a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design, like all Atom processors going forward, and like the processors found in smartphones and tablets. Intel has put Atom on a fast track, and will accelerate the Atom processor roadmap at a pace faster than Moore’s Law. That law generally states that the number of transistors on a chip will roughly double every two years. But Atom SoCs are now at 45nm, and are moving to 32nm later this year. The Silvermont SoCs combined with the new architecture will be shipping in two years, so this adds up to three process generations and one new architecture in under 3 years.

According to CNET, “The Silvermont architecture will be designed specifically to take advantage the 22-nanometer technology and 3D transistors, according to sources.” Intel is facing competition from many directions these days, not just from AMD, but also from NVIDIA, especially with that company’s acquisition of Icera. Also, Apple has talked about dumping Intel for ARM in its Macbooks.

We will likely hear more about plans for the Atom Soc at Intel’s analyst meeting next week.

[via CNET]

“Marvell was having some serious problems getting the software to work with the hardware” the source at the company claims. “The team was just taking too long and there were issues that weren’t being resolved quickly enough.” The exact processor Marvell and RIM were considering has not been specified, but it’s likely one of the 6xx series; early rumors prior to the PlayBook’s official debut had suggested Marvell was supplying the silicon for the slate.

Texas Instruments, meanwhile, was forced to admit earlier in the year that NVIDIA had beaten them to the punch with the dual-core Tegra 2, with “a couple of months, maybe a quarter lead on our OMAP 4 product” according to investor relations VP Ron Slaymaker. Had TI been involved with RIM from the start, it’s possible that the PlayBook could have beat the XOOM and other Tegra 2 based tablets to market.

[via BerryReview]

It’s not the first time the two companies have worked together, though the new agreement could see more high-power chipsets from Fujitsu Semiconductor. It’s likely that the company will supply its own Fujitsu smartphone arm, though the processors could also end up in tablets and other hardware.

Press Release:

Fujitsu Semiconductor and ARM Sign Comprehensive License Agreement

A strategic partnership using cutting-edge IP such as Cortex™-A15 and Mali graphics to expand global business

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom & YOKOHAMA, Japan–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited and ARM today announced that they have signed a comprehensive license agreement for ARM IP products. Through this strategic agreement, Fujitsu Semiconductor will offer platforms featuring the latest ARM technology including the Cortex™-A15 processor, Mali™ graphics and CoreLink™ systems IP, in order to help accelerate its customers’ product development.

“The combination of ARM’s advanced processor, system and graphics technology and Fujitsu’s leadership in advanced SoC development forms a solid foundation for the development of pioneering semiconductor products.”
The two companies have been collaborating for more than a decade. More recently, Fujitsu Semiconductor launched sales of its FM3 family of general-purpose microcomputers equipped with the Cortex-M3 processor last November.

The agreement will enhance and deepen the companies’ partnership, and Fujitsu Semiconductor will provide its customers with cutting-edge ARM technology at an early stage as it develops new products in order to accelerate its customers’ product development.

The combination of compatible and scalable low-power processor IP, including the recently launched Cortex-A15 processor, graphics and fabric IP, will enable Fujitsu Semiconductor to continuously provide its customers with complete, full function SoC platforms featuring ARM technology, while significantly reducing time-to-market.

“Fujitsu Semiconductor is working to enhance its product appeal and boost its IP lineup,” said Corporate Senior Vice President Haruyoshi Yagi of Fujitsu Semiconductor. “One of the major ways in which we are doing this is with this comprehensive license agreement we have signed with ARM. This will allow our customers to select the ARM technology most suited for their application, and use a platform that combines it with other IP provided by us. These platforms will use our proven design and authentication technology, meaning we will be able to achieve high levels of quality and functionality, as well as a dramatic reduction in LSI development time.

“Fujitsu Semiconductor provides products that meet its customers’ needs in a timely manner over a wide range of applications. We are already moving ahead with the provision of IP to ASIC customers and the development of our ASSP, which are scheduled to be rolled out sequentially in the second half of 2011.

“In addition, we will share the Fujitsu Semiconductor product roadmap with ARM, and closely collaborate in the development of future ARM technologies, from the specification setting stage and up. As a strategic partner, we look forward to an even closer relationship with ARM.”

“In a constantly evolving marketplace, ARM is committed to empowering its Partners with the resources they need to not only remain competitive today, but to meet future technology challenges head-on,” said Tudor Brown, president, ARM. “The combination of ARM’s advanced processor, system and graphics technology and Fujitsu’s leadership in advanced SoC development forms a solid foundation for the development of pioneering semiconductor products.”

There’s also native support for up to a 16-megapixel camera, together with 1080p HD stereoscopic 3D video capture; alternatively, the APQ8060 can shoot 8-megapixel stereoscopic stills. HDMI support allows for easy connection to an HDTV, though the Snapdragon also works with autostereoscopic displays for glasses-free 3D.

Obviously the HP Touchpad doesn’t actually make use of all that – there’s no 3D capture or display, for instance, and the webOS slate only has a front-facing camera, not a rear camera. Still, with Qualcomm claiming 150 Snapdragon devices currently in development (though not all using this particular third-gen chipset) we imagine we’ll be seeing more of the APQ8060 relatively soon.

Press Release:

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Processor Powers Advanced 3D Gaming and Stereoscopic 3D in the Latest Tablets and Smartphones

— Single and Dual-Core Custom CPUs and Advanced GPUs Enhance Performance Levels and Enable Next-Generation Mobile Gaming—

SAN DIEGO — February 10, 2011 — Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced that its Snapdragon™ processors are enabling the latest and greatest multimedia experiences in today’s commercial mobile devices, including stereoscopic 3D (S3D) entertainment, 1080p 30fps HD video capture and playback, console-quality gaming and full web browsing with Adobe Flash 10. The newest member of the Snapdragon family, Qualcomm’s APQ8060 dual-CPU processor, powers the HP TouchPad, which HP introduced yesterday.

“Our work with industry leaders has allowed us to showcase the full spectrum of Snapdragon’s graphics and multimedia capabilities in both the tablet and smartphone space across major software platforms,” said Raj Talluri, vice president of product management for Qualcomm. “With more than 75 Snapdragon devices already announced, 150 Snapdragon devices in development and over 100 high end mobile games optimized for our GPU, Qualcomm continues to be a leader in delivering high performance devices to market.”

The first webOS tablet, the HP TouchPad, offers a 9.7-inch diagonal multitouch display, an innovative and intuitive multitasking UI and a robust platform for game development. Qualcomm and HP collaborated with Polarbit to optimize its action-packed arcade flight simulation game, Armageddon Squadron II, for the HP TouchPad. Running on the HP TouchPad, Squadron II showcases dynamic lighting and shading with enhanced motion blur visual effects to create a real-world gaming experience, which is made possible with the power of Qualcomm’s Adreno® 220 GPU.

“With the APQ 8060 and Adreno 220 GPU, the HP TouchPad delivers a high-performing and fluid multitasking user interface, as well as offers game and multimedia application developers a high-performance environment for their applications,” said Jon Oakes, director of TouchPad Product Marketing at HP.

Qualcomm’s embedded CPUs and GPUs are designed from the ground up to deliver unprecedented processing and 3D graphics performance with industry-leading efficiency to extend battery life. The 8×60 family, with the APQ8060 being the newest addition, is part of the third generation of the Snapdragon family and is the ultimate solution for the latest multi-tasking smartphones and tablets. The third-generation includes: two asynchronous processor cores; an integrated Adreno 220 GPU with twice the processing power of its predecessor; support for up to a 16 Megapixel camera; and can capture and display HD 1080P stereoscopic video or 8 Megapixel stereoscopic still images to an autostereoscopic panel or a 3DTV (via HDMI), allowing consumers to capture high resolution video or stills and watch them without the need for special glasses.

The second generation Snapdragon single-core family of CPUs is already powering numerous smartphones that are commercially available today, including the recently launched Sharp Galapagos 003SH, a 3D entertainment smartphone. The Galapagos 003SH is powered by the Snapdragon MSM8255™ processor, which provides the ability to capture and display pictures, as well as play movies, in stereoscopic 3D without the use of glasses. The Galapagos 003SH also supports the Adreno 205 GPU for 3D gaming capability in addition to a 9.6 Megapixel camera and HD 720p video for playback and recording.

“In order to provide the best mobile user experience possible for the Galapagos 003SH, we were thrilled to work with an industry leader such as Qualcomm,” said Hiroaki Tochihara, division general manager, Personal Communication Systems Division II, Communication Systems Group, Sharp Corporation. “The 003SH provides an innovative and robust user experience with its next-generation 3D entertainment capabilities, and Qualcomm has been instrumental in helping to enable these features and bring this device to market.”

For more information about Snapdragon and to see the latest devices it’s enabling, please visit us at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in the Company’s exhibit, located in Exhibit Hall 8, #8B53 or visit www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon.

About Qualcomm

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) is a world leader in 3G and next-generation mobile technologies. For 25 years, Qualcomm ideas and inventions have driven the evolution of wireless communications, connecting people more closely to information, entertainment and each other. Today, Qualcomm technologies are powering the convergence of mobile communications and consumer electronics, making wireless devices and services more personal, affordable and accessible to people everywhere. For more information, visit Qualcomm around the Web:

www.qualcomm.com

Meanwhile there’s an ongoing project to develop a Silverlight system-on-a-chip (SoC) implementation, which could potentially form the basis of a STB like Santa Fe, or indeed a Blu-ray player or HDTV. Microsoft has confirmed that “the Silverlight team is still actively working with a variety of key partners on SOCs” but will only say that it has “no new information to share at this time.”

Meanwhile, a new job advert for a Software Development Engineer on the Silverlight for Devices team calls for someone interested in taking “the great product that Silverlight has become and take it to a new space of TVs, Autos, Tablets, iPhones, Set Top Boxes, XBOX, and a host of other devices”:

“Internet TV is taking over the traditional TV steadily. One of the Microsoft mission goals is to provide a TV solution. Consumer media device (CMD) is one of the exciting products we are currently working on and we are looking for strong SDET to come in and help us deliver this product. The project vision is ‘Windows Embedded Powers TV worldwide’ and our mission is to provide both broadcast & internet content to meet future demands of consumer media devices.” Microsoft job advert

It’s unclear at this stage whether Microsoft envisages a STB running a Silverlight-powered Mediaroom, a version of the platform which runs on the SoC powering the Xbox 360, or OEM STBs and A/V devices hooked into an overall ecosystem of IPTV that can be accessed on PCs, Windows Phone devices and more.

Persona ICE also includes VideoCore IV graphics, capable of 3D games at up to 1080p resolution, and a DSP system for VoIP. Connectivity options include HDMI, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, all in a single package capable of Flash playback and HD video conferencing.

Compal reckons it will be able to speed up development time by using the Persona ICE chip for “turnkey” slates for its clients, running Android or other Linux OSes. No word on when we’ll see the first products hit the market, however.

Press Release:

Compal Selects Broadcom’s Next Generation Persona® ICE Solution to Address the Growing Tablet and Connected Home Market

New Completely Integrated Persona ICE Platform will be Showcased at this Week’s International Consumer Electronics Show

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – 2011 International CES – January 7, 2011 – Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that its next generation Persona® ICE (Information Connectivity Entertainment) applications processor family will be powering new high-performance multimedia tablets from Compal Electronics, one of the leading PC ODMs in the world. Leveraging Broadcom’s strength as a wireless connectivity leader, the Persona ICE platform converges key system and software technologies to deliver unique and intuitive applications across increasingly interconnected consumer electronics devices in the home.

Designed in a low power 40 nanometer (40nm) CMOS silicon process, the Persona ICE family, which includes the BCM11311, consists of dual-core 1GHz+ ARM® Cortex A9 processors integrated with Broadcom’s industry-leading VideoCore® IV graphics and multimedia subsystem and a rich set of peripheral interfaces. Persona ICE also integrates an additional dedicated digital signal processor enabling Broadcom’s SmartAudio® suite of audio enhancement solutions for VoIP and IP Communication applications. The multi-core architecture leaves the flexible computing power of the ARM cores free to handle user-specific software applications.

Broadcom and Compal Electronics will demonstrate the next generation Persona IP communications platform at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Highlights/Key Facts:

· Broadcom has created a unique connected home platform by integrating key industry-standards and proprietary technologies from its home, infrastructure and handheld businesses such as DLNA® and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Direct™. The connected home platform enables seamless interaction of devices enabled by Persona ICE with other devices in the connected home such as set top boxes (STBs), smart televisions, mobile phones, smart appliances and smart grid applications.

· The new Persona ICE platform includes:

o Single or dual-core ARM Cortex A9 cores at GHz+ frequencies that incorporate the ARM Neon™ 128 bit SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) engine, important for delivering flexible, powerful acceleration and low power operation for consumer multimedia applications such as Adobe Flash®.

o Broadcom’s industry-leading VideoCore IV intelligent mobile multimedia processor subsystem that delivers full HD videoconferencing capabilities and dual-camera support. This core has the ability to render 3D mobile games natively at up to 1080p resolution which in combination with an HDMI output, allows a console-quality gaming experience on large screen HDTVs.

o Tightly integrated software that is architected specifically to leverage the Persona ICE hardware architecture. The Linux®-based Broadcom MediaxChange™ software enables hardware-accelerated, high performance and low power voice, video and multimedia integration into a variety of high-level operating systems such as Google’s Android or proprietary OEM frameworks. Customers can leverage a common software code base across product portfolios, which in turn, minimizes engineering investment and time-to-market.

· Leveraging Broadcom’s position as a wireless connectivity market leader, all Broadcom® Persona ICE solutions incorporate Broadcom’s industry-leading connectivity and interoperability technologies.

o Broadcom’s industry-leading Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi®, and GPS, connectivity products are pre-integrated into the Persona ICE platform, enabling OEMs to efficiently add best-in-class wireless technologies and expanded functionality for next generation Tablets.

o Broadcom’s InConcert® co-existence technology applies interference mitigation techniques to make its leading wireless technologies work better together.

Supporting Quotes:

Ray Chen, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Compal Electronics Inc.:

“Compal Electronics is pleased to partner with Broadcom to deliver differentiated tablet platforms to market. The new Persona ICE platforms are delivered as completely integrated systems enabling Compal to optimally deploy our R&D for fast time to market. We look forward to leveraging Broadcom’s technology and unprecedented market reach to jointly address new market segments.”

Robert Rango, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Broadcom’s Wireless Connectivity Group:

“Compal is one of the premier designers and manufacturers of mobile PCs in the world. Our partnership with Compal enables the delivery of a world-class platform allowing us to address our customers’ demand for turnkey tablet solutions.”