Hasta La Gadget!

Whoa, Nelly! Just weeks after Intel came clean with its new Pine Trial nettop and netbook platform, the company is today cutting loose with a few more. This go ’round, we’ve got the 32nm Arrandale (which consists of the Core i5 Mobile and Core i3 Mobile) heading for the laptops and the 32nm Clarkdale chips over on the desktop front. Starting with the former, most reviews found the CPU + GPU solution to be faster than rivaling Core 2 Duo + integrated GPU options, with the Core i5 being particularly potent in highly threaded applications. Better still, battery life didn’t seem to take a hit even with the extra performance, though high-end, high-res gaming was still a lesson in futility when working without a discrete graphics card. Overall, the chip was a welcome addition to the fold, but we got the feeling that the first wave was priced too high and offered too little of a performance increase on the gaming side to really warrant a wholehearted recommendation. As for the Clarkdale? The Core i5 661 that everyone seemed to snag was found to be blisteringly fast, with most folks deeming it the outright champion in the dual-core realm. Unfortunately, the integrated GPU was — again — not awesome for hardcore gaming, and the questionable pricing didn’t exactly thrill some critics. Do yourself a favor and dig into the benchmarks below — we get the feeling we’ll be seeing oodles of machines hit the wires this week with these chips within.

Arrandale reviews
Read – HotHardware
Read – AnandTech
Read – Tom’s Hardware
Read – PCPerspective
Read – Legit Reviews

Clarkdale reviews
Read – NeoSeeker
Read – HotHardware
Read – HardOCP
Read – TechSpot
Read – AnandTech
Read – PCPerspective
Read – Legion Hardware
Read – Overclockers Club
Read – Bit-tech

Intel’s Arrandale and Clarkdale CPUs get benchmarked for your enjoyment originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers at Ghent University in Belgium have etched a tiny world map–on a scale of 1 trillion—on to a optical silicon chip. They reduced the earth’s 25,000-mile circumference at the equator down to 40 micrometers or about half the width of a human hair to fit it on the chip.

The map is put in a corner of a chip designed for a project at the University’s Photonics Research Group.

The idea is to successfully demonstrate scale reduction so complex optical functions can be included in a single chip. Such a chip could find applications in telecommunications, high-speed computing, biotechnology and health care.

The world map was defined on a silicon photonics test chip using 200mm processing. The smallest features resolved on the map are about 100 nanometer. The fabrication consisted of a 30-step process and involved creation of four different layers with differing thicknesses, each of which had to be created separately.

Photonics involves generation, modulation, transmission and processing of light. Silicon photonics technology is an emerging area of research that integrates optical circuits onto a small chip. Light can be manipulated on a submicrometer scale in tiny strips of silicon called photonic wires. These silicon photonic circuits can pack a million times more components when compared to the glass-based photonics available currently, say the researchers.

The circuits developed on this chip carrying the world map were used to demonstrate photonic wires with the lowest propagation losses.

Photo: The small world as seen through an optical microscope. The different colors are caused by interference effects in the different layer thicknesses of the silicon (Photonics Research Group at Ghent University)

Well. NVIDIA has to be loving this. Intel has announced today that not only is its Larrabee graphics chip delayed, that chip which promised to usher in a new era of post-GPU computing, but that it’s been downgraded to a “software development platform.” Intel isn’t even saying what that “software development” will be aimed at, though we have to assume it would be some future version of the hybrid GPU / CPU chip. As to when the kit itself might arrive is anybody’s guess, Intel is merely saying “next year.” Meanwhile we can look forward to Intel’s first example of a GPU / CPU hybrid in the upcoming Pineview Atom processor, which kicks those lackluster integrated graphics to the curb and moves everything onto the CPU. Who knows if that will be enough to quell the NVIDIA’s quiet takeover of the higher-end netbook space with its ION graphics, but with Intel’s current track record in the graphics space, we doubt it.

Intel’s Larrabee graphics processor delayed, downsized to mere software development platform originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We already knew that a potent Marvell chip was under the hood of Spring Design’s Alex, but at long last the mystery surrounding the powerhouse within Entourage’s Edge is no more. The Armada PXA168 processor will be responsible for steering the world’s first “Dualbook” through the stormy seas that’ll be created once crazed consumers get ahold of this thing, and while we’ve no idea if the software will actually support this laundry list of capabilities, the chip should have no issue with “full-featured web browsing, multi-format video and image processing.” More specifically, we’re informed that “HD-quality video and 3D graphics” will be supported, which could obviously lead to some pretty interesting applications (you know, like actual web surfing on an e-reader). Hop on past the break for a brief look at an early generation model as well as a functioning version of what should hopefully hit shelves in early 2010.

Continue reading Marvell’s Armada chip bringing ‘HD-quality video, 3D graphics support’ to Entourage Edge

Marvell’s Armada chip bringing ‘HD-quality video, 3D graphics support’ to Entourage Edge originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon has brought about a new wave of possibilities for smartphones, but evidently those chips are just too exclusive to slip into so-called “mainstream smartphones.” In order to remedy such a tragedy, the outfit has today introduced the MSM7x30 family of solutions, which uses an 800 MHz to 1GHz custom superscalar CPU based on the ARM v7 instruction set. The chips support 720p video encoding / decoding at 30fps, integrated 2D and 3D graphics (with support for OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1), 5.1-channel surround sound, a 12 megapixel camera sensor and built-in GPS. In related news, the outfit also announced that it is sampling the industry’s first chipsets for dual-carrier HSPA+ and multi-mode 3G / LTE, which ought to make those champing at the bit for a speedier WWAN highway exceedingly giddy. Hit the links below for all the technobabble.

Read – MSM7x30 solutions
Read – Dual-carrier HSPA+ and Multi-Mode 3G/LTE chipsets

Filed under: Cellphones

Qualcomm chips promises 1GHz speeds in ‘mainstream smartphones,’ simultaneous HSPA+ / LTE support originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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