Hasta La Gadget!

Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day — we dig deep into each topic’s history and how it benefits our lives. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com.

My, how times have changed over the last eight months. At CES 2011, we ecstatically witnessed the introduction of mobile devices with dual-core CPUs and drooled over the possibilities we’d soon have at our fingertips. Now, we look down at anything that doesn’t have more than one core — regardless of its performance. Not only are these new chips quickly becoming mainstream, Moore’s Law is in full effect with our handheld devices since tri-core and quad-core systems are just over the horizon. We can’t even fathom what’s in the pipeline for the year 2015 and beyond (we don’t think we’re too far away from that 3D shark seen in Back to the Future 2).

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, however. After all, we first need to wrap our puny human minds around the idea of what this newfound power can do, and why it’s changing the entire landscape of smartphones and tablets. In this edition of Primed, we’ll focus on why multicore technology makes such a difference in the way we use our handheld devices, whether we should even consider purchasing a handset with a single-core chip inside, and why one-core tech is so 2010. Check out the whole enchilada after the break.

Continue reading Engadget Primed: are multi-core chips worth the investment?

Engadget Primed: are multi-core chips worth the investment? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We hope you’re ready for a heaping helping of Apple speculation, because Reuters is serving up a nice big slice of rumor pie today. According to the ever-present “source with knowledge of the matter,” Taiwanese chipmaker, TSMC is gearing up to supply Apple with its next generation mobile processors. According to the apparently credible anonymous source, TSMC has already begun trial manufacturing on the chips and “has got all the authorization and details ready.” As you may already know, Apple’s current supplier of its A5 CPU is Samsung, and relations between the two have been rocky (at least in court). This round of speculation also comes just one year after TSMC began construction on its new $9.3 billion foundry, and teamed up with ARM — the brains behind the A5. Of course all parties have declined to comment, which lands this report squarely in the grapevine for now, but we’ll keep you posted if it winds its way into reality.

Apple considering TSMC mobile chips? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So AMD’s Bulldozer has been chugging along at a snail’s pace when it comes to actually making it to market, but if these benchmarks are any clue, the sluggishness stops there. Donanim Haber recently obtained an 8-core (that’s four Bulldozer cores) engineering sample and put it through its paces alongside an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU, and from the looks of things it faired pretty well, pulling in a 3DMark 11 score of 6265, with a physics (CPU-centric) score of 7487. As Ars Technica points out, that puts it solidly in the center of Tom’s Hardware’s physics scores for the Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K, scoring 6667, and Core i7-2600K, pulling in 8152. When it came to PCMark 7 scores, however, Bulldozer fell far behind the competition. Of course, these are just numbers — for an engineering sample, no less — which means they should be taken with a fistful of salt, but it’s nice to finally see Bulldozer getting down and dirty. If your hunger for benchmarks hasn’t been fully satisfied, hop on over to the source for more results.

AMD Bulldozer prototype gets benchmarked, could give Sandy Bridge some competition originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Until recently, AMD has kept pretty mum on its tablet plans, with it only officially entering the fray last month. It’s clear that the first batch of Z-Series chips, codenamed Desna, are are not terribly different from the rest Fusion line but, according to a leaked roadmap, that will all change with its successor — Hondo. Supposedly the next gen of tablet APUs will ditch a number features that aren’t essential to burgeoning form factor, including VGA output, PCIe support, and couple of USB pathways. It will also add an “active standby” mode for maintaining connectivity while reducing power draw and cut TDP by about a third. Hondo is expect to enter production in Q2 of next year, and be succeeded by Samara which will feature a new graphics core. Check out the source link for a few more slides.

Leaked AMD roadmap reveals next-gen Fusion tablet chips originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in March, Genesi announced its plans to target emerging markets by dropping the price of its Efika MX Smartbook and Smarttop machines. Those devices packed i.MX 51 CPUs, and post-cut price tags of $199 and $129, respectively. Now the San Antonio-based outfit is hinting at any even bigger price break for the developing world with the introduction of its i.MX 53 netbook PCB. According to a Genesi rep at the Freescale Technology Forum, the board, which is significantly smaller than its predecessor, is “as cheap as we can possibly make it,” and will likely power even more cost efficient Genesi computers in the near future. No word on just how low Genesi is willing to go, but it’s shooting for an i.MX 53 debut sometime this summer. If cheap is your thing, check out the PCB in all its glory after the break.

Continue reading Genesi i.MX 53 netbooks, nettops to take Freescale machines deeper into the bargain basement

Genesi i.MX 53 netbooks, nettops to take Freescale machines deeper into the bargain basement originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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