APU

Although Intel Corp. has significantly improved yields of chips made using 14nm process technology, the company is still not completely satisfied with the result. Lower-than-expected yields have already caused Intel to postpone mass production of its code-named “Broadwell” microprocessors and will likely affect the company for several more months. “Overall …

Due to multiple reasons the majority of developers of various system-on-chip devices will skip 20nm process technology of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and will use 14nm and 16nm FinFET fabrication processors of TSMC, GlobalFoundries and Samsung Electronics. Traditionally TSMC and other foundries develop multiple different process technologies for different kinds …

Intel Corp. plans to release a rather broad range of microprocessors based on the Skylake micro-architecture for mobile computers next year, according to a new media report. The upcoming central processing units (CPUs) will address all kinds of mobile devices, including tablets, 2-in-1s, mainstream notebooks as well as high-performance laptops. As expected, …

Market analysts responded positively to the appointment of Lisa Su to the position of AMD’s chief executive officer. The observers believe that it was wise for the board of the company’s directors to choose someone with a chip design experience, however, many analysts question the timing when the decision was made …

In a rather unexpected move, Rory Read late on Wednesday stepped down as the chief executive officer and president of Advanced Micro Devices. AMD has already appointed Lisa Su as the new CEO and president. The move possibly reflects AMD’s decision to replace a business executive with a highly-experienced technology …

Advanced Micro Devices will introduce the first chips that belong to the Skybridge family of accelerated processing units (APUs) and system-on-chips (SoCs) in the third quarter of next year, according to unofficial information. Initially the project Skybridge offerings will target ultra-low-power applications, such as tablets. AMD’s Skybridge family of APUs …

Advanced Micro Devices reportedly plans to release its next-generation code-named Carrizo-L accelerated processing units (APUs) already in December, according to a media report. If the information is correct, AMD’s competitive positions against Intel Corp. will get significantly better early in 2015. Traditionally AMD unveils new APUs early in calendar year …

ARM Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on Thursday outlined some details regarding transition of chip production to 10nm FinFET manufacturing technology. The company’s reaffirmed that risk production of chips made using 10nm FF fabrication process will start in late 2015. The two companies agreed to work together on 10nm FinFET …

Samsung Electronics has lost exclusive chip manufacturing contract with Apple, but a new report claims that that the company has managed to land orders from Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm. ZDNet reports that Samsung is projected to begin producing application processors (APs) for clients such as Apple, AMD and Qualcomm …

Intel Corp. has already started to ship its Core M microprocessors based on the Broadwell micro-architecture for ultra-low-power notebooks, 2-in-1s and tablets. According to a new media report, the company will introduce its Core i3/i5-i7 central processing units made using 14nm process technology for mainstream mobile PCs at the Consumer …

Advanced Micro Devices and Synopsys, a company that helps to implement complex semiconductor devices like APUs, CPUs and GPUs, this week signed a multi-year agreement that gives AMD access to a range of Synopsys DesignWare intellectual property on advanced 16nm/14nm and 10nm FinFET process technologies. In exchange, AMD transfers certain …

A Spanish enthusiast has managed to overclock his Intel Core i7-4790K “Devil’s Canyon” microprocessor from 4.0GHz to 6.0GHz with all cores and the Hyper-Threading technology active, which seems to be a new world’s record. The vast majority of contemporary microprocessor overclocking records are broken using chips with deactivated cores since …

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday confirmed that it is developing an all-new high-performance x86 micro-architecture code-named “Zen”. Rory Read, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, admitted that the current-generation “Bulldozer” micro-architectures could not improve AMD’s positions on the market of central processing units, so, at present AMD pins hopes on …

Advanced Micro Devices has significantly reinvented itself in the recent years. The company changed its strategy and improved its execution. Still, in order to be successful and profitable the company needs new competitive products since currently AMD cannot compete against Intel on the market of high-performance microprocessors. Unfortunately, brand new …

Intel Corp. has revealed detailed specifications of the first Core M microprocessors based on the “Broadwell” architecture. While the new processors will clearly not be performance champions, they will consume significantly lower amount of energy compared to existing chips and will enable extremely thin tablets, 2-in-1s and laptops. “We've been …

Although Intel Corp. imagines its future many years down the road and has a solid vision, it admits that going forward it will be much harder to achieve certain goals as manufacturing technologies get much more complex. Like other huge companies, Intel Corp. has big plans for the future. Recently …

Intel Corp. officially confirmed on Wednesday that it will not use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for its 10nm process technology allegedly due to come online in 2016. Apparently, not only the EUV scanners are not ready, but backbones of certain fabs may not support the new equipment due to its …

Intel Corp.’s Core M “Broadwell” central processing units are already late to market and will be available widely only in 2015. Moreover, the first Core M chips from the “Broadwell” family will be made in very limited quantities since the chipmaker has already issued a document about a plan to …

ARM Holding this week said it has signed its 50th licensing agreement for its ARMv8-A technology, which includes support for 64-bit computing. The milestone indicates growing popularity of ARM’s 64-bit technology among developers of various system-on-chips. It is likely that going forward the adoption of the ARMv8-A will accelerate. ARM …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is on-track to start volume production of chips in the first quarter of 2015, according to a media report. The first client to order 16nm chips from TSMC is expected to be Apple, which is a little bit surprising. TSMC has been making test chips using …

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced a new way to sell its microprocessors to local PC makers. The company plans to ship its chips in packs containing six CPUs/APUs with a discount. The deal will start with the AMD A8-6600K and the Athlon X4 760K processors. AMD claims that the chips were …

Intel Corp.’s code-named “Braswell” microprocessors promise to offer increased performance and improved feature-set to entry-level desktop PCs next year. Unfortunately, actual configurations or performance estimates for the “Braswell” chips have never been released. A good news is that thanks to an unofficial report we now know what to expect from …

Unity Technologies this week said it will add native support for Intel Corp.’s x86 microprocessors and system on chips to its Unity game engine for the Android operating system, which is used by loads of video games. The move will improve performance of games on devices based on Intel’s x86 …

One of the features of Intel Corp.’s Haswell micro-architecture (and Broadwell micro-architecture) were transactional synchronization extensions (TSX), which could significantly boost performance in multi-threaded applications that take advantage of them. As it appears, usage of the technology leads to unpredictable PC behaviour due to an erratum. As a result, Intel …

Advanced Micro Devices yet has to commercially ship its first ARMv8-based system-on-chip for servers code-named Seattle. Nonetheless, the company already says that it is ready to develop semi-custom server-class SoCs for servers based on the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. The company already offers customized Opteron chips powered by its x86 cores. …

Intel Corp. on Monday reaffirmed plans to start shipments of its next-generation code-named “Broadwell” microprocessors in late 2014 and to make them available in mass quantities in 2015. The announcement is made to persuade investors and partners that there will be no further delays with Intel’s new products as well …

As reported, the deal between International Business Machines Corp. and GlobalFoundries over chip manufacturing assets of the former has failed to materialize because the latter did not want to pay enough to the former. However, according to a new report, it was IBM, who was offering money to GlobalFoundries to take …

Today we look at the latest Kaveri from AMD – the AMD A10 7800. This new APU has a reduced TDP and is clocked slower than the unlocked A10 7850K – down from 3.7ghz to 3.5ghz. It is available in the UK today for £115.66 or around £9 less than …

It looks like the price war on the market of mobile system-on-chips is in full swing. Just a day after Allwinner announced a quad-core application processor that will be sold for $4, it transpired that Intel Corp. already sells its quad-core Atom products for $5. Without making any announcements, Intel has …

Advanced Micro Devices has reportedly chosen to take a rather conservative approach to development of its desktop platforms. Instead of adding support of the DDR4 memory to its next-generation code-named “Carrizo” accelerated processing unit, the company decided to stick to the DDR3 and therefore the FM2+ socket. While this is …