Partners of Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday began to introduce their first GeForce GTX 960 graphics cards with 4GB memory onboard. The new adapters will likely demonstrate higher performance compared to 2GB add-in-cards in new games as well as in high resolutions. So far only EVGA and InnoVision Multimedia (Inno3D) have …
Read More »Micron begins to build new $4 billion NAND flash fab in Singapore
Micron Technology on Monday began the expansion of its Singapore NAND flash memory fabrication facility. The company started to build a new fab that will cost $4 billion and will start production in fiscal 2017. The new fab is expected to produce innovative 3D NAND flash (co-developed with Intel) as …
Read More »AMD advices developers to focus on DirectX 12 and glNext, not Mantle 1.0
AMD’s Mantle application programming interface was the first low-overhead/high-throughput graphics API to reach the market. The emergence of Mantle has made Microsoft and many other companies in the industry to redesign their APIs, including DirectX and OpenGL. While Mantle will continue to be AMD’s graphics innovation platform, the company now advices …
Read More »Sony: We will not sell smartphone division
Just several weeks after chief executive of Sony said that the company could sell off its money losing smartphone business unit, the head of the division denied such plan. According to him, the handset unit is very important for the company. “At the beginning of February there was speculation about …
Read More »Intel ‘Skylake’ processors for PCs will not support AVX-512 instructions
Intel Corp.’s forthcoming central processing units code-named “Skylake” for personal computers will not support any AVX-512 instructions, according to a media report. Only Xeon processors for servers and, possibly, workstations will support 512-bit instructions. Support of 512-bit SIMD instructions – known as AVX3 – was expected to be a key …
Read More »MSI: We will not block overclocking capabilities of our notebooks
MicroStar International does not plan to block overclocking of Nvidia GeForce GTX 900M-series graphics processing units inside its laptops for gamers. The company, which produces one of the finest high-end notebooks, however, warns overclockers about possible overheating and warranty issues because of overclocking. “MSI is not planning any changes to …
Read More »Nvidia now limits overclocking of GeForce GTX 900M with vBIOS
Although Nvidia Corp. recently said that its future drivers for GeForce GTX 900M-series graphics adapters for mobile computers will re-enable overclocking support for the notebook GPUs, there are reports that the company continues to block overclocking, but this time using a vBIOS setting. A BIOS mod enthusiast from TechInferno.com forum …
Read More »Apple seeking hardware and software engineers to build VR gear
Virtual reality has been a part of sci-fi movies and books for decades, but in the recent years the technology started moving towards commercial market and this year we are going to see actual VR gear in stores. Initially, virtual reality technology will be used solely for gaming, but Facebook …
Read More »Samsung unveils ‘SSD’ for smartphones with up to 600MB/s bandwidth
Samsung Electronics this week said that it had started to mass produce a family of NAND flash memory devices for mobile applications that are compliant with the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard. The new chips will be used for smartphones and tablets and will enable SSD-class performance on mobile …
Read More »AMD not interested in Chromebooks – Mark Papermaster
Chromebooks, personal computers powered by Google Chrome operating system, have become relatively popular among students in the U.S. because of their low price. At least in theory, such PCs should make a perfect match with inexpensive microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices. Unfortunately, AMD is not interested in Chromebooks. And there …
Read More »27% of SSD owners experienced malfunction of SSDs – study
Kroll Ontrack, a leading provider of data recovery services, revealed this week that while there are a lot of people who already take advantage of solid-state drives, many of them also have experienced failures of such drives and data loss. Apparently, the amount of people, who suffered an SSD malfunction …
Read More »EVGA GeForce GTX 980 hits 2.30GHz, sets new records
Nvidia Corp.’s code-named GM204 graphics processing unit has once again managed to set a new frequency record for graphics processing units. A well-known overclocker has succeeded in pushing the frequency of the GPU to 2.30GHz clock-rate, but could not eventually replicate the record because of high humidity. Steponz, a leading …
Read More »Apple to host Apple Watch-related event in early March
Apple has started to send out invitations to its event allegedly related to Apple Watch. The conference with the press and various market analysts will take place in early March, several weeks ahead of commercial release of the product. It is expected that Apple will finally unveil all technical details …
Read More »Intel to reclassify Atom processors to better reflect their positioning
Intel Corp. not only plans to unveil its new Atom processors code-named “Braswell” later this year, but also to introduce a new classification for its chips aimed at ultra-portable devices. The new naming scheme will help the world’s largest chipmaker to better position its Atom processors and will likely help …
Read More »Nvidia to unveil ‘revolutionary new gaming platform’ next week
Nvidia Corp. recently unveiled a web-site that invites everyone to a special event where its chief executive officer plans to make an important announcement about the future of gaming. The company revealed no details about the upcoming project, but it now turns out that it is a brand new gaming …
Read More »Microsoft offers free Office 365 to students and teachers worldwide
A couple of weeks after Apple started to offer its iWork productivity web applications for free to everyone, Microsoft Corp. decided to propose an even better deal and provide its Office 365 suite free worldwide, but even to students and teachers. Starting today, millions of students and teachers around the …
Read More »HP: mission-critical servers business improves as Itanium fades away
A little more than a year after Hewlett-Packard started to offer its business-critical systems (BCS) with Intel Xeon E7 microprocessors inside, the company reports that it sees some recovery in sales of such machines. While BCS revenues continue to decline, shipments of x86 servers for mission-critical workloads are beginning their …
Read More »DRAM will remain in short supply this year – analyst
Even though Samsung Electronics plans to increase its manufacturing capacities for dynamic random access memory later this year, analysts believe that this will not create an oversupply on the DRAM market. The reasons for that are transitions to bigger memory dies as well as growing demand for higher memory capacities …
Read More »Nvidia increases lead over AMD share as shipments of GPUs drop – JPR
As expected, Nvidia Corp. managed to increase its desktop GPU market share lead over Advanced Micro Devices in the fourth quarter of 2014 as a result of successful launch of its GeForce GTX 970/980 “Maxwell” products as well as because of AMD’s continued troubles in the channel. Declines of AMD …
Read More »Asrock shows off LGA1151 mainboard for Intel ‘Skylake’ processors
At the Embedded World 2015 trade-show this week Asrock demonstrated its first mainboard for LGA1151 central processing units code-named Skylake. DFI, a well-known maker of mainboards that no longer produces products for consumers, is also showcasing its embedded/industrial LGA1151 roadmap at the show. Although makers of desktop mainboards are not …
Read More »TSMC: We will close the gap with Intel at 10nm!
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. believes that its 10nm fabrication process will not only be available around the same time when Intel Corp. starts to use its 10nm technology, but will also offer similar performance and density as Intel’s. In a bid to speed up time-to-market of their manufacturing processes featuring FinFET …
Read More »Samsung: 10nm technology in development, 7nm will require new transistors
Kinam Kim, the president of Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business, presented his view on the development of chip manufacturing technologies at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2015 this week. Samsung is already developing its next-generation 10nm FinFET fabrication process, but in order to continue scaling down structures of chips, new materials …
Read More »Nvidia CEO addresses GeForce GTX 970 scandal in a letter to customers
Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday wrote an open letter to the company’s customers covering the recent GeForce GTX 970 controversy. The head of the GPU developer admitted that the company failed to communicate how memory sub-system works on the GeForce GTX 970, but said that …
Read More »AMD details ‘Carrizo’: High-density design, lowered power consumption
At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2015 Advanced Micro Devices unveiled the first official details regarding its code-named “Carrizo” accelerated processing units. As reported, the new chips are aimed specifically at notebooks and therefore were designed from the ground up to be extremely power efficient and integrate all functionality possible. …
Read More »Usage of USB 3.1 type-C connectors will not take off before 2016 – Foxlink
Although USB 3.1 type-C connector has loads of benefits for end-users compared to regular USB implementation, its usage will remain insignificant till 2016, according to Foxlink, a leading maker of various ports and connectors. Reversible form-factor and improved durability of the new USB 3.1 type-C connectors bring loads of benefits …
Read More »Origin unveils Omega high-performance HTPCs
Origin PC, a leading maker of high-performance personal computers for gamers, has announced its new line of its high-end systems. The new Omega home theater PC systems are designed for the living rooms and are projected to wed extreme performance with compact sizes and AV equipment design. Origin Omega personal …
Read More »Intel: 7nm process technology will require new materials
The semiconductor industry has realized the benefits of Moore’s Law for 50 years, making chips that have grown from tens to billions of transistors and performing an increased range of functions from memory to logic to signal processing. Next year or in 2017, the world’s largest maker of microprocessors will …
Read More »AMD seeking CPU performance engineer to optimize GPU drivers
Advanced Micro Devices is hiring a microprocessor performance engineer to optimize its Catalyst drivers for graphics cards. The programmer will help to optimize AMD drivers to boost performance of Radeon graphics adapters in cases where CPU is a major performance-limiting factor. The CPU performance engineer will have to analyze CPU bound …
Read More »AMD’s ‘Zen’ could sport Intel’s ‘Skylake’ features, new 512-bit FPU – rumours
Although microprocessors based on AMD’s next-generation high-performance micro-architecture code-named “Zen” are more than a year away, some details regarding the forthcoming chips and “Zen” in general are beginning to surface. The most recent rumours about the new architecture add some technical details and point to release schedule of the new …
Read More »Japan Display may build plant exclusively for Apple iPhone screens
Japan Display Inc., a leading supplier of screens for various mobile devices including Apple iPhone, is considering possibilities of building a plant that will be exclusively used to make displays for Apple iPhone smartphones, a media report claims. JDI wants to be the main supplier of screens for Apple’s handsets. …
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