Hasta La Gadget!

Remember that elusive Atom N570 that popped up here and there in machines debuting last month? At long last, the spec wizards over at Intel’s headquarters have seen fit to divulge a few more details surrounding the new silicon, and it goes a little like this: the chip runs at 1.66GHz, supports four threads and touts 1MB of L2 cache, an 8.5W TDP and DDR3-667. It’ll also start shipping this month, and should emerge soon on low-power machines from ASUS, Lenovo and Samsung. Meanwhile, HP has apparently seen fit to jump the gun a bit by refreshing its Mini 110 and 210 (shown above) netbooks, both of which are making their debut with the new processor over in Japan. It’ll be interesting to see how much traction such a chip gets now that AMD’s Zacate E-350 is out and about, but as mama always said, competition makes everything just a wee bit better.

Intel’s 1.66GHz Atom N570 slips into refreshed HP Mini 110 and 210 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbooks Review  |  Intel  | Email this | Comments

What might Android gaming look like on a Samsung Galaxy S II? You’re staring it in the face right now. We spotted Samsung’s Orion / Exynos 4210 at GDC 2011, showing off the power of its dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU and Mali-400 graphics on a nice big 1080p television screen — with a completely playable asteroid obstacle course that ran at a butter-smooth 60 frames per second in stereoscopic 3D. ARM representatives told us the chip actually has even more headroom, but was actually constrained by its HDMI 1.3 port, and could push stereoscopic content at up to 70fps if their reference board had HDMI 1.4. When we asked if there were any plans to publish the TrueForce space shooter demo, ARM said it might indeed be done; the company’s thinking of releasing it on the Android Market as a benchmark of sorts.

Samsung’s Exynos 4210 flexes 3D gaming muscle at GDC 2011 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

When Paul Otellini isn’t too busy talking about being jilted by Nokia, he spends his time hosting presidents and splashing billions of dollars on new manufacturing facilities. Intel’s CEO is wrapping his tumultuous week on a high note, having welcomed Barack Obama to Chipzilla’s Oregon facility and treated the president to the happy news that Intel will invest $5 billion back into the US economy by building its most advanced fab yet — which will introduce an impossibly small 14nm production process — in Arizona, to begin operation in 2013. Construction starts in the middle of this year and is expected to create “thousands” of jobs, both temporary and permanent. Aside from that, Otellini has disclosed Intel’s intention to create 4,000 new jobs in the US, mostly in R&D and product development. Music to Obama’s ears, we’re sure.

Continue reading Intel to spend $5 billion on new 14nm fab in Arizona, create 4,000 new jobs this year

Intel to spend $5 billion on new 14nm fab in Arizona, create 4,000 new jobs this year originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Consider it a mystery solved. Throughout the week here in Barcelona, we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time chasing down suits from LG, Qualcomm, NVIDIA and Verizon Wireless to answer one simple question: “What’s up with the processor in the Revolution?” If you’ll recall, NVIDIA actually sent one of its own to Verizon’s LTE press event at CES 2011, specifically to bust out a Revolution and gloat about the Tegra 2 chip within (video’s after the break if you don’t believe us). As it stood, it seemed as if the Thunderbolt and Revolution would be butting heads from a CPU standpoint, with the former definitively sporting a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655. And then, came the confusion. We showed up at Qualcomm’s booth here at Mobile World Congress to see which phone it was using to demonstrate the recently unveiled Netflix-on-Android support — lo and behold, LG’s Revolution was the handset of choice. Obviously, there had to be a new Snapdragon processor within, as only the newest of the new will have the necessary DRM libraries at a hardware level that are necessary to pass muster with the MPAA.

After venturing over to LG’s booth, we were also able to confirm that the only Revolution it knew of was boasting a Qualcomm CPU, and the shot above (which was sourced from there) proves it. We also confirmed with Verizon Wireless’ paperwork that the version it’s expecting in the next month or so will ship with Qualcomm inside. Finally, NVIDIA refused to comment on the matter, simply suggesting that we contact LG for more details. Put all of that together, and we’re able to come to two main conclusions. First off, it seems as if LG yanked support for the Tegra 2 at some point between CES and MWC — right around four weeks. Hard to say if there were reliability issues, an unsatisfactory amount of power drain, or just irreconcilable differences between the two CEOs (joking, of course). Secondly, it’s reasonably safe to assume that Verizon’s Revolution will be the first Android handset on Big Red to stream Netflix directly, which may please those who were planning on buying one but weren’t looking forward to going without Netflix thanks to the Tegra 2 that was (presumably) slated for inclusion. Qualcomm 1, NVIDIA 0.

Update: NVIDIA finally saw fit to drop us a line and clarify a bit. Turns out, the confirmation in the video below was a gaff to begin with, as the Revolution was never going to be outfitted with NVIDIA innards. Go figure, right?

Vlad Savov contributed to this report.

Continue reading LG Revolution using 1GHz Snapdragon MSM8655, not NVIDIA’s Tegra 2

LG Revolution using 1GHz Snapdragon MSM8655, not NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

So it turns out that NVIDIA roadmap we saw last month was as true and pure as driven snow. The barely conceivable quad-core Tegra chip that it listed has now been made official by none other than NVIDIA itself, with the company also informing us that the new silicon is already sampling out to prospective clients. Known as Kal-El internally, this will most likely turn into NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 as and when it’s ready to enter the consumer market. Tonight NVIDIA whetted our appetite for what’s to come with a demo that can most fittingly be described as an exhibition of unadulterated computational muscle. A 2560 x 1440 stream was being decoded on a developmental device, scaled down to that slate’s native 1366 x 768 resolution, and additionally displayed on a connected 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 monitor. That entire voluminous workload was being handled in real time by Kal-El and we saw no signs of it struggling.

By NVIDIA’s own estimation, the quad-core newbie provides roughly double the processing power of Tegra 2 and triple the graphics-crunching prowess. In the second demonstration of the evening, we saw an instance of Great Battles Medieval — ran at 720p with 650 enemy soldiers on the field — on both a Tegra 2 and a Kal-El platform, which showed the baby superhero handily dusting its still very new brethren. This was in large part down to the full dozen GPU cores contained within Kal-El, though before you freak out about battery-draining insanity, NVIDIA claims things are much, much more efficient as well — up to 12 hours of HD video playback are promised under the right circumstances.

It’s a big fat wedge of awesome boasts we’ve heard from the GeForce maker today, however the company’s given us a schedule to hold it to as well. The “August timeframe” is when the quad-core Kal-El is expected to land in tablets, while smartphones will have to wait until the holiday season to benefit from what’s likely to be a slightly downgraded variant. Skip past the break to eye the future Tegra roadmap for the next few years plus video of the wildly impressive demos we were witness to.

Continue reading NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video)

NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments