Hasta La Gadget!

The international versions of the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note, and Galaxy S III all make use of an Exynos processor paired with a Mali-400 GPU, which has proven to be quite a champ in the performance department. Now ARM has unveiled its second-generation of graphics, the Mali-T600 GPU. ARM says that the T600 series has been fine tuned for smartphones, tablet, and smart TVs, with variants ranging from quad- to octo-core.

The Mali-T624 starts with a single core but scale up to four cores, while the more powerful T-628 can go all the way up to eight cores for twice the graphics performance. Both chips are aimed at smart TVs and smartphones, while the T678 is designed for tablets. That chip is four times more powerful than the T624 thanks to increased ALU support, and is meant to be used for computational photography as well as augmented reality.

On top of the boost in performance, ARM is keen to point out the investments it has made in the GPU compute department too. By tapping into the GPU, a wider range of smartphones will be able to leverage real-time photo editing, plus others functions like improved video stabilization. That ties in with partnerships with MediaTek and Rockchip, with both companies working with ARM in order to utilize the new T600 GPUs across a large range of devices.

Naturally, Samsung is along for the ride as well, saying that it will be working closely with ARM in order to bring the improved GPUs to future Exynos chipsets. Currently the Galaxy S III uses an improved Mali-400 GPU, but it’s not hard to imagine that future smartphones and tablets from the company will make use of the new T600 series.

ARM Mali-T600 GPU series promises up to eight cores is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Qualcomm has snatched up a formerly key Intel exec, Anand Chandrasekher, who will now run marketing and external comms for the company as CMO. Chandrasekher was until recently senior VP and general manager for Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group and responsible for the Atom processor that forms the company’s mobile strategy. However, it’s the possibility of ARM chips in laptops, desktops and servers that looks to be whetting Qualcomm’s appetite.

“[Chandrasekher’s] extensive experience in marketing and management makes Anand well-suited to help grow Qualcomm’s communications and marketing efforts across the world and to amplify our consumer offerings to new audiences” Qualcomm president and COO Steve Mollenkopf said in a statement today. Those “new audiences” are likely to include non-smartphone and tablet implementations of Qualcomm chips, a segment which the company currently dominates.

Qualcomm isn’t the only ARM-based chipset firm to target what would traditionally be systems powered by x86 processors. ARM itself has been building links with production partners to create chips that support the same functionality as x86 server cores, only with reduced power consumption and at a far cheaper price.

Chandrasekher’s new role is just the latest in a series of chip company shuffles that have seen high-profile processor experts jump ship between key players in the industry. Earlier this month AMD announced it was hiring a former Apple processor expert, only weeks after Apple hired an ex-AMD Trinity architect.

Qualcomm grabs Intel Atom chief for Snapdragon drive is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos — that great keeper of open standards — to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn’t settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been “relaxed” for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos’s certification is just a formality at this point, and that today’s news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

Continue reading ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We suppose after a reasonably high-profile defection of one of AMD’s own to Apple, the Sunnyvale company had to exact revenge. That payback was announced today in the form of Jim Keller, the now former platform architecture head in Cupertino, who will be joining AMD as corporate vice president and chief architect of its microprocessor unit. In a statement, the company said that Keller will be leveraging his “low-power design expertise,” possibly as part of its oft-rumored ARM plans. Keller previously worked as VP of design at P.A. Semi before being brought into the Apple fold where he played an important role in the development of the processors inside the iPad, iPhone and Apple TV. With AMD struggling to keep pace with Intel in both the desktop and laptop space, a move into low-powered mobile chips could be a plan to stave off more dire days. Check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading AMD poaches Apple’s platform architecture lead to head up CPU team

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

AMD poaches Apple’s platform architecture lead to head up CPU team originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM isn’t content with dominating the mobile space. It’s been by the far the most vocal about an Internet of Things where everything is connected — and to make that happen, it just established an industry forum in the UK that it hopes will establish common ground for all those internet-linked light bulbs, refrigerators and thermostats. Home energy firm Alertme, cloud-aware sensing outfit AquaMW, lighting maker EnLight and white space wireless guru Neul will start meeting with ARM from August 24th onwards to hash out our automated, eco-friendly future. There’s a certain urgency in this for the chip designer: it expects 50 billion devices on the grid by 2020. With IDC estimating a billion new connected devices just in 2011, the clock on that connected device transition is ticking very loudly.

Continue reading ARM forms UK group to foster an Internet of Things, put 50 billion devices online by 2020

Filed under: Household, Internet

ARM forms UK group to foster an Internet of Things, put 50 billion devices online by 2020 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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