Hasta La Gadget!

It’s easy to forget that Apple snapped up P.A. Semi for a song way back when, but now that we’re just days, hours and seconds away from Apple’s expected tablet reveal, a new wave of processor-related conjecture is hitting the fan. Richard Doherty, director of technology consulting firm Envisioneering Group, has come forward with some exceedingly detailed rumors on said tablet, a touchscreen MacBook and an OS X-based unicorn that lives in the cloud. As the story goes, Apple’s pickup of P.A. Semi was primarily an effort to acquire a huge pool of engineering talent to use for its own internal designs, and now Doherty is saying that “before the year is out, Apple will have the most powerful, lowest-cost SoC in the industry.” According to him, there’s nothing from “ARM licensees or Intel that could challenge the power-per-watt, the power-per-buck, the power-per-cubic-millimeter of size,” and he anticipates that four new products are in the pipeline from Cupertino. Need details? How’s about a touchscreen iMac, an “iPod touch on steroids” with a 5-inch display, and “two different versions of media pads in the 7- to 9-inch (screen size) area.” Alright Dick, you just put your reputation on the line — here’s hoping you’ve got your story straight.

Update: Looks like UBS Investment Research has been hearing something similar. According to it, the forthcoming tablet “will be powered by a processor designed by P.A. Semi and built by Samsung.”

Analysts debate P.A. Semi’s role in forthcoming Apple wares originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Should you be lusting after some of that Core i7 oomph but have a distaste for the large thermal and physical footprint of desktops, you’ll want to hear more from Congatec. A relative unknown hailing from Germany, the outfit has just announced its BM57 small form factor setup, which looks to be ideal for homebrew HTPC enthusiasts — primarily because its i7-620M CPU is both powerful (up to 3.33GHz with Turbo Boost) and relatively easy to cool (35W TDP, including chip-integrated graphics). The kit is able to support up to 8GB of dual-channel DDR3, as well as drive two video outputs concurrently. Choices include HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA, leading to some tantalizingly versatile possibilities for the creative self-builder. Prices are not yet available, but the BM57 will be demonstrated at the International Gaming Expo in London at the end of this month.

Congatec BM57 fits mobile Core i7 onto tiny mobo originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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Get ready for the next generation of netbooks and nettops: Intel’s just officially announced the Pine Trail Atom N450, D410, and D510, along with the NM10 Express chipset, and we should see over 80 machines with the 45-nanometer chips at CES 2010. Nothing too surprising about the 1.66GHz chips themselves, which integrate the memory controller and Intel graphics directly onto the CPU die: the N450 is targeted at netbooks, while the single-core D410 and dual-core D510 are designed for nettops, and each chip should use about 20 percent less power than its predecessor. That was borne out in our review of the N450-based ASUS Eee PC 1005PE, which got 10 hours of battery life in regular use, but unfortunately we didn’t experience any performance improvements over the familiar N270 and N280. That jibes with other reports we’ve heard, but we’ll wait to test some more machines before we break out the frowny face permanently — for now, check out the full press release below.

Continue reading Intel’s next-gen Pine Trail Atom processors officially announced

Intel’s next-gen Pine Trail Atom processors officially announced originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Advancements in silicon-germanium have been going on for years now, but a team at UCLA is convinced that their discovery really is “the next big thing.” For scores now, microchip makers have struggled with miniaturizing transistors as the public at large demands that things get smaller and smaller. Thanks to researchers at the aforesaid university, it’s looking like silicon-germanium nanowires could be the key to making the process a whole lot easier. According to study co-author Suneel Kodambaka, the new nanowires could “help speed the development of smaller, faster and more powerful electronics,” also noting that they’re so small that they can be “placed in virtually anything.” Which is great, because the Adamo XPS is just entirely too pudgy.

UCLA nanowire discovery could lead to faster, stronger, smaller electronics originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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