processors

Putting all speculation to rest, NVIDIA has finally announced that it is making an official bid to acquire Arm Limited from SoftBank. While the final say will be with regulators, this would mean that NVIDIA could soon be the owner of the intellectual property that pretty much powers the world's smartphones, cars, and many embedded devices. That does raise concerns about NVIDIA's hold on such IP and the computer graphics tech giant promises it will be business as usual as far as that licensing business goes.

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The US government has hundreds of companies on its so-called Entity List and a good number of them come from China. One of the highest-profile names on that list in recent years has been, of course, Huawei. But if you thought the US was done with China's biggest phone and network manufacturer, it seems to be moving to squeeze out any remaining life from Huawei. Its rumored next move, however, could provoke China to finally retaliate and throw the global economy further into chaos.

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Qualcomm may have the lion's share of the smartphone processor market but there is still one segment that it doesn't have a firm grasp on. On the lower and budget tiers, MediaTek's processors are often the go-to solutions, often because of their affordability rather than their features. With MediaTek aggressively pushing its 5G-capable Dimensity processors on high and middle tiers, Qualcomm is now trying to hit where it hurts by promising a 5G Snapdragon 400 series chip next year.

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There seems to be a MediaTek chip for every phone tier but Qualcomm's rival is taking that idea to almost ridiculous extents. There is, at the moment, no less than five 5G-capable Dimensity chips and that's not yet counting MediaTek's surviving 4G-only Helio family. That's not stopping it, of course, from launching yet another one and, this time, it's aiming squarely for the still lucrative mobile gaming market with the Helio G95.

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It seems that things are going from bad to worse for Huawei, now including its smartphone business. Not only has its temporary general license expired last week, the US government is now also issuing more restrictions that will practically cut off Huawei's ability to produce its own silicon for its smartphones.

The US Commerce Department just added 38 Huawei affiliates to the country's Entity List, extending the new rule it announced last May that prevented sales of semiconductor materials and parts to Huawei, directly or indirectly.

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A new leak of performance power for the next major iPhone release suggests that the iPhone 12 collection will be a true upgrade. Normally, iPhone users that purchase a new iPhone every year, or even ever couple of years, know that sometimes this purchase is more of a "I just need a newer version of what I've already got" sort of situation. This year, that might all change.

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It's a bit strange to hear that Arm, whose chip designs and computer instruction set architecture or ISA has been quickly overtaking the computing world, might soon be sold off despite its growing popularity and ubiquity. That is exactly the case, however, for the England-based company who just four years ago was acquired by Japanese conglomerate Softbank. The latter has reportedly been in talks with many potential buyers, including Apple, but one name keeps rising to the top. NVIDIA, however, may be facing an uphill battle if it does make a formal bid for Arm Technologies.

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The next OnePlus smartphone was leaked in part by a benchmark test, weeks if not months before launch. The next OnePlus device was almost certainly going to be the OnePlus 8T, if history served as guide for expectations in the near future. It's not that surprise that we're looking for, here - it's the degree to which OnePlus will change they way they do business in the USA thanks to their launch of OnePlus Nord.

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In an unprecedented move by one of the largest chipmakers in the world, a report suggests Intel's ordered work done by TSMC. Last week's Intel earnings call (July 23, 2020) had CEO Bob Swan mention they'd "invested in contingency plans to hedge against further schedule uncertainty," and that this could mean working with "somebody else's foundry" to manufacture hardware.

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Intel earnings released this afternoon showed a bit of a change in the company's outlook for chip manufacturing. Intel revealed that their "7nm-based CPU product timing is shifting approximately six months relative to prior expectations." That's a very skillfully stated way of saying Intel's 7nm-based CPU product will be about a half-year later than they'd planned.

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Some might presume that AMD and even Qualcomm ARE Intel's greatest rivals but, in truth, it might be the entire ARM world that has already silently surpassed the PC chipmaker. The ARM instruction set architecture or ISA is what drives many of the world's devices, from smartphones to routers to IoT to in-vehicle infotainment to supercomputers. ALL of these pay a debt, quite literally, to Arm, formerly ARM Holdings, whose owner Softbank is now reportedly looking for buyers, a list that includes NVIDIA and even Apple.

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Phone makers and chipmakers are still in a race to get as many 5G phones out there, despite how 5G rollout could be slowed down or delayed due to medical, economic, and political factors. Last year, that race focused more on the high-end premium phones that only a limited number of people could afford. The players are now taking that 5G competition down to the lower tiers and, unsurprisingly, MediaTek is attempting to fill those markets even before Qualcomm has a chance to get a foothold.

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