Hasta La Gadget!

VIA may not have the clout that AMD or Intel have, but one thing’s for sure: these guys sure love to bring as much heat as possible to the broke-as-a-joke among us. Take the all new VN1000 chipset, for instance, which is designed for Windows 7-based all-in-one PCs and other low-end desktops that yearn for the ability to handle modern day multimedia. The chipset is compatible with VIA’s range of Nano, C7, C7-M and Eden processors, and aside from supporting DDR3 memory, up to five PCI slots, up to four SATA II drives, a multicard reader and 12 USB 2.0 ports, it also allows for Blu-ray playback. Users can slap up to 16GB of RAM around it, and the integrated Chrome 520 GPU is apparently potent enough to support DirectX 10.1 and BD films. Who says 1080p is reserved for royalty?

VIA’s power-sipping VN1000 chipset brings Blu-ray playback, DX 10.1 support to low-end rigs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I remember the day AMD announced it was going to acquire ATI. NVIDIA told me that its only competitor just threw in the towel. What a difference a few years can make.

The last time NVIDIA was this late to a major DirectX transition was seven years ago, and the company just quietly confirmed we won’t see its next-generation GPU, Fermi, until Q1 2010. If AMD’s manufacturing partner TSMC weren’t having such a terrible time making 40nm chips I’d say that AMD would be gobbling up marketshare like a fat kid. By the time NVIDIA gets its entire stack of DX11 hardware out the gate, AMD will be a quarter away from putting out newly refreshed GPUs.

Things aren’t much better on the chipset side either — for all intents and purposes, the future of NVIDIA’s chipset business in the PC space is dead. Not only has NVIDIA recently announced that it won’t be pursuing any chipsets for Intel’s Core i3, i5. or i7 processors until its various legal disputes with Intel are resolved, It doesn’t really make sense to be a third-party chipset vendor anymore. Both AMD and Intel are more than capable of doing chipsets in-house, and the only form of differentiation comes from the integrated graphics core — so why not just sell cheap discrete GPUs for OEMs to use alongside Intel chipsets instead?

Even Ion is going to be short lived. NVIDIA’s planning to mold an updated graphics chip into an updated chipset for the next-gen Atom processor, but Pine Trail brings the memory controller and graphics onto the CPU and leaves NVIDIA out in the cold once again.

Let’s see, no competitive GPUs, no future chipset business. This isn’t looking good so far — but the one thing I’ve learned from writing about these companies for the past 12 years is that the future’s never as it seems. Chances are, NVIDIA’s going to look a lot different in the future because of two things: Tesla and Tegra.

Continue reading Core Values: What’s next for NVIDIA?

Core Values: What’s next for NVIDIA? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:00:00 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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Believe it or not, it’s just about time for AMD to start thinking about its future. We know — you’re still doing your best to wrap that noodle around Congos and Thubans, but now it’s time to wonder how exactly Leo, Llano and Zambezi (to name a few) can fit into your already hectic schedule. At an Analyst Day event this week, the chipmaker removed the wraps on its goals for 2010 and 2011, and while it’s still focusing intently on Fusion (better described as heterogeneous computing, where “workloads are divided between the CPU and GPU”), it’s the forthcoming platforms that really have us worked up. For starters, AMD is looking into Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) configurations, which “represent the combined capabilities of [practically any] two separate processors.” We’re also told that the firm may actually introduce its Bulldozer (architecture for mainstream machines) and Bobcat (architecture for low-power, ultrathin PCs) platforms more hastily than similar ones have been rolled out in the past, which demonstrates an effort to really target the consumer market where Intel currently reigns. Frankly, we’re jazzed about the possibilities, so hit the links below for a deep dive into what just might be powering your next (or next-next) PC.

[Via Digitimes]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

AMD spells out the future: heterogeneous computing, Bulldozer and Bobcats galore originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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