APU

A Chinese web-site has revealed the final specifications of Intel Corp.’s Core i-series “Devil’s Canyon” microprocessors that promise to offer better overclockability than existing chips based on the Haswell micro-architecture. As it appears, in addition to higher overclocking potential, the new flagship LGA1150 chip will offer very high performance out-of-the-box …

At present personal computers based on Google ChromeOS represent less than one per cent of all systems on the market. While the researchers forecast that eventually sales of such PCs will grow, they will still remain a small fraction of the global PC market. Nonetheless, it looks like Intel Corp. …

Although it has long been expected that the code-named Broadwell family of microprocessors from Intel Corp. would feature an improved graphics processing unit, it looks like the upgrade may be more significant than previously thought. Apparently, the new graphics and multimedia engine would not only feature higher performance, but also …

As previously reported, despite of the delay of the code-named Broadwell lineup of central processing units, Intel Corp.’s code-named Skylake chips are on-track to be introduced in 2015. Since preparations for introduction of the new platform are already underway in south-east Asia, the first leaks about the Skylake and systems …

Advanced Micro Devices is reportedly developing a brand-new next-generation high-performance x86 micro-architecture that it plans to unveil sometimes in late 2015. The new architecture will not be derived from the Bulldozer technology that powers AMD processing units today and may change AMD’s competitive positions on the market. Two the key …

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced details concerning its longer-term roadmap. The firm disclosed plans to develop its own ARMv8 core implementations as well as pin-compatible microprocessors and accelerated processing units based on ARM and x86 architecture. But while the company unveiled a clear and logical strategy regarding low-power and …

Nvidia Corp. on Thursday said that it had started volume shipments of its Jetson TK1 development kits, which are based on the company’s highly-anticipated Tegra K1 system-on-chip with four ARM Cortex-A15 cores, Nvidia Kepler-based graphics and a variety of other hardware. The development kit is aimed at designers of software …

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday unveiled two new families of accelerated processing units with low and ultra-low power consumption. The new chips, previously known as Beema and Mullins, will power thin laptops, 2-in-1s, as well as various Microsoft Windows-based tablets. Unfortunately, the majority of actual devices based on AMD’s new …

New-generation video game consoles from Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. not only help AMD to offset declines of PC chips sales, but actually drive the company’s share on the market of x86 microprocessors. In the first quarter of 2014 AMD managed to gain share, whereas Intel Corp. lost some ground. …

Advanced Micro Devices has started a countdown till the announcement of an important chip in three days from now. The company wants its customers to guess, what is going to be unveiled. Based on the image that AMD demonstrates, it is fairly easy to guess that it plans to reveal …

Advanced Micro Devices last week confirmed that it is developing chips that would be made using 20nm manufacturing technology. The company also re-affirmed plans to continue adopting new fabrication processes, including those with FinFET transistors. “What we have said in the past is [that] this year all of our products …

Advanced Micro Devices said this week that its next-gen accelerated processing units for ultra-mobile devices were on-track for launch in calendar Q2 2014. The company's new management did not not reveal any peculiarities about the news chips. Yet, the company clearly has plans to reveal them commercially this quarter. “For …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week unveiled an improved version of its 16nm FinFET process technology that will hit volume production in 2015. In addition, the company revealed some details regarding its 10nm FinFET fabrication process and said that it would start risk production using the technology in Q4 2015, …

Advanced Micro Devices this week demonstrated its next-generation AMD Opteron X-series accelerated processing unit code-named “Berlin” running Fedora Linux operating system. The new APU is projected to significantly boost performance of servers running APUs and bring heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) capabilities to servers. AMD Opteron X-series “Berlin” APU in many …

Intel Corp. has been offering application processors for smartphones and tablets for several years now, but none of those chips featured integrated baseband capabilities, which is why the company was unable to address the mass market of mobile devices. However, this is going to change in the fourth quarter of …

GlobalFoundries and Samsung Semiconductor, two leading contract makers of chips, on Thursday signed a pact under which they will be able to jointly produce chips using 14nm FinFET fabrication process. The two foundries will “synchronise” not only their general jointly-developed process technologies, but peculiarities of their manufacturing processes that are …

Intel Corp. on Tuesday said that it had shipped around five million of application processors designed for tablet computers in the first quarter of 2014. The company hopes that it would achieve its goal of selling 40 million tablet chips this fiscal year. The firm did not reveal any additional …

Intel Corp. said this week that despite the delay that occurred to mass production of the code-named Broadwell microprocessor, the company is on-track to start manufacturing of chips based on the all-new next-generation micro-architecture known as Skylake in 2015. “We have a lot going on, the ramp of Broadwell, the …

Intel Corp. on Monday quietly added numerous microprocessors that belong to the so-called “Haswell Refresh” family into the price-list. The addition of certain chips into the list indicates that the world’s largest chipmaker has begun to sell and ship them to customers. At present the lineup of “HSR” chips lacks …

In a bid to boost its share on the market of media tablets, Intel Corp. has aggressively lowered the price on some of its system-on-chips designed for media tablets. While the chips are most probably outdated, it looks like Intel is extremely serious about winning designs in the tablet space, …

The gaming and enthusiast audiences love their big, quick, expensive powerhouse machines – there's no denying that. But the reality is that many users – about 38% of the market, in fact – in a wide span of geographical regions simply cannot afford or justify the latest-and-greatest in both CPU …

While it was pretty obvious that Intel Corp. plans to start selling its new code-named “Haswell Refresh” central processing units sometimes in April or May, the actual launch date was not completely clear. Apparently, that will happen in exactly one month time. Intel plans to start selling its improved Core …

One of the more surprising things about the way the world has changed since the advent of the network and tablet PC revolutions, is the way that desktops are holding their own. Sure, it's more of a gentle decline that the rampant growth we experienced in the past, but it …

GlobalFoundries, the world’s second largest contract maker of semiconductors, seems to be the leading candidate that can get IBM Corp.’s chip manufacturing operations, a media report claims. The deal has not been finalised yet and the talks are ongoing, but chances are rather high that Abu Dhabi-backed GlobalFoundries will get …

With the introduction of Google Android Wear operating system, hardware makers developing ultra-low-power chipsets started to unveil their platforms for wearable devices, such as smart-watches or smart-eyewear. Imagination Technologies, a leading designer of general purpose processing cores as well as multimedia and graphics processing engines, said this week that it …

Intel Corp. this week revealed the name of its new-generation code-named Braswell system-on-chip that will power upcoming value notebooks and desktops. The new chip will be made using a leading-edge process technology and will combine relatively high performance, small footprint, low power consumption and low cost. Intel did not reveal …

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday announced plans to slightly boost its purchase commitment from GlobalFoundries by around $50 million this year compared to last year. As part of the agreement, the contract maker of chips will manufacture not only its traditional central processing units (CPUs) and accelerated processing units (APUs) …

Although Qualcomm took part in the announcement of Microsoft Corp.’s DirectX 12 application programming interface, the company’s plans regarding support of the new API were not completely clear. Last week an executive of Qualcomm confirmed that the future Adreno graphics cores will fully support DirectX 12. The current Snapdragon 800 …

Intel Corp. and Altera this week said they would extend their collaboration to the development of multi-die devices that leverage Intel's world-class package and assembly capabilities. The multi-die devices will feature Altera's Stratix 10 FPGAs and SoCs made using 14nm process technology as well as other components. This will allow …

From time to time large PC makers unveil hardware that chip companies like Advanced Micro Devices would rather not discuss with the general public. Recently it turned out that some of the desktops sold by Hewlett-Packard carry a strange microprocessor called AMD FX-670K, which does not seem to be exactly …