ARM sees 44 percent profit increase in Q1 2013, ships 2.6 billion ARM-based chips

ARM has had a great quarter — again. This time it’s seen pre-tax profits soar 44 percent, while revenues are up 26 percent (to $209.4 million) since the same period last year. The company’s thanking the continued adoption of its low-power chip designs, encompassing smartphones, mobile computing and even digital TVs and wearable tech. The advanced tech within its ARMv8, Mali and big.LITTLE ranges has meant the company can command higher royalties per chip.

In total, 2.6 billion ARM-based chips have made their way into the gadgets this quarter, an increase of 35 percent year-on-year, with embedded hardware up a hefty 50 percent since Q1 2012. It’s seen even better performance from its Mali graphics processor shipments, which are up five times since the same period last year. As outgoing CEO Warren East notes: “Even low cost smart devices can contain multiple ARM-based chips and be based on ARM’s advanced Cortex-A series technology and Mali graphics processors.” With new friends on board for the near-future, the good times are likely to continue.

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Source: ARM

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ARM sees 16 percent profit increase in Q4 2012, 21 percent increase in royalty payments

UK-based chipmaker ARM had yet another profitable quarter, announcing that the end of 2012 saw pre-tax profits of around $126 million — an increase of 16 percent since the same period last year. Revenue totaled $262.8 million for Q4 and with a huge proportion of Android and iOS devices containing chip know-how from ARM, it continues to benefit from the smartphone boom. In fact, shipments of chips based on its processors totaled 2.5 billion in Q4 alone, while royalty revenue grew 21 percent year-on-year, thanks to successes with both its Cortex-A and Mali silicon series. ARM chief exec Warren East added that the company is “well positioned” to have a great 2013, too — unless everyone stops buying phones all of a sudden.

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Via: Reuters

Source: ARM

Samsung’s next-gen Exynos 5 Octa rumored to have only current-gen PowerVR graphics

Samsung Exynos Octa chip rumored to use lastgen PowerVR graphics

There’s nothing we can concretely do or say about the Exynos 5 Octa until it’s in a device and in our hands. It’s all just educated guesswork in the meantime, but that happens to be something AnandTech is rather good at. That site has reached the conclusion, based on “numerous sources,” that the Octa probably uses a PowerVR 544MP3 GPU clocked at 533MHz. If true, this implies that the ARM Mali T-604 used in Exynos Dual devices like the Sammy Chromebook somehow couldn’t meet Octa’s needs, and that the higher-specced T-658 perhaps wasn’t ready. It also suggests that Octa’s graphical and GPU compute performance might lie somewhere between that of the third-gen iPad (A5X) and the fourth-gen (A6X). Frankly, a newer GPU would have been more exciting, especially given the appearance of PowerVR Series6 at CES, but big.LITTLE should still give us plenty to talk about when the new eight-core chip finally arrives.

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Source: AnandTech

ASUS MeMo Pad makes quiet post-CES debut, offers Jelly Bean and 16GB of storage for $150

ASUS MeMo Pad makes quiet postCES debut, offers Jelly Bean and 16GB of storage for $150

Despite a strong showing of slates in 2012, ASUS showed precious few tablets at CES last week. Missing from the show? Its latest MeMo Pad — a 7-inch 1024 x 600 tablet rocking Jelly Bean, 16GB of storage, a Mali 400 GPU, 1GB of RAM and a 1MP front-facing camera. ASUS didn’t name the tablet by model number, but it’s a dead ringer for the ME172V that slipped through GLBenchmarks last month, and fits the bill of a recent federal authorization. The new slab isn’t quite as nice as the Nexus 7 its predecessor became, but at $150, it’s a little easier on the wallet. ASUS also cautions buyers that the MeMo pad is a “tablet-only product,” clarifying that it won’t be getting a Transformer Pad-like keyboard dock — assuming you could type on a 7-inch keyboard, that is. Check out the slate’s official press release after the break.

Continue reading ASUS MeMo Pad makes quiet post-CES debut, offers Jelly Bean and 16GB of storage for $150

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Benchmarks hint at budget ASUS ME172V Jelly Bean tablet, 1GHz processor Mali 400 GPU

GLBenchmarks hint at budget ASUS ME172V Jelly Bean tablet, 1GHz processor Mali 400 Graphics

ASUS has been a strong force in the tablet game even before it set a new price-to-quality standard with Google’s Nexus 7. It looks like the firm could be tightening the budget screw even further, if some recent GLBenchmarks are to be believed. The details are sparse, but outline a product with model number ME172V (which follows from its pre-Nexus smaller tablet line), that runs Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, sports a 1,024 x 552 (likely 1,024 x 600) resolution powered by a Mali 400 GPU and 1GHz chip. There’s no indication on the number of cores, or, well, much else for that matter. Various rumors are keen to suggest there’d be support for microSD, which if true, would make it unlikely to be a Nexus. But a budget tablet by the same manufacturer, is likely enough for many people all the same.

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Via: Pocket Now

Source: GLBenchmark

Lenovo reveals K860 LePhone, quad-core Exynos and a 5-inch screen

It’s been a pretty good week for Lenovo all things told, but the Chinese firms isn’t stopping to congratulate itself too much. Today, it’s business as usual, marked by the official arrival of the new K860 “Music Phone” aka LePhone. The quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos 4412 chip, Mali-400MP GPU, 5-inch (1,280 x 720) display, 1GB of RAM and slight 9.6mm-thick form should come together to sing a sweet song though. The 8-megapixel snapper is no slouch either, with support for 100 frames continuous shooting and 1080p video recording (plus there’s a 2-megapixel camera around the front, too). If all this sounds like a recipe for battery-drain, there’s a 2,250 mAh cell to help keep you going. This will all be running on Android 4.0.4, but currently no word on price or availability — but it’s not like there aren’t any other large phones to think about in the meantime.

Update: We got a little excited in the translation for a moment there. The “Music” (or Happiness — both the same symbol) Phone is of course the LePhone we link to in the article.

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Lenovo reveals K860 LePhone, quad-core Exynos and a 5-inch screen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM’s eight-core Mali GPUs promise ‘dramatic’ boost to mobile graphics

ARM answers call for even more powerful eightcore mobile graphics

The current flagship for ARM’s mobile graphics technology is undoubtedly the Galaxy S III, which contains a quad-core Mali 400 GPU and delivers some wild benchmark scores. By the end of this year though, we should see a whole new generation of Malis — not just a Mali 450 for mid-range handsets, but also the quad-core T604 and the eight-core T658, which are based on ARM’s Midgard architecture and are taking forever to come to market. Now, to whet our appetites even further, ARM has just added three more variants of the chip to its roster, which can almost be considered the next-next-generation: the quad-core T624, and the T628 and T678, which are both scalable up to eight cores.

The trio’s headline feature is that they promise to deliver at least 50 percent more performance with the same silicon area and power draw, with the explicit aim of delivering “console-class gaming,” 4K and even 8K video workloads, as well as buttery 60fps user interfaces in phones, tablets and smart TVs. The premium T678 is aimed at tablets specifically, and in addition to allowing up to eight cores also doubles the number of math-crunching ALUs per core, which means that its compute performance (measured in gigaflops) is actually quadrupled compared to the T624. However, there’s one other, subtler change which could turn out to be equally important — read on for more.

Continue reading ARM’s eight-core Mali GPUs promise ‘dramatic’ boost to mobile graphics

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ARM’s eight-core Mali GPUs promise ‘dramatic’ boost to mobile graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

ARM claims new GPU has desktopclass brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

It’s been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos — that great keeper of open standards — to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn’t settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been “relaxed” for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos’s certification is just a formality at this point, and that today’s news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

Continue reading ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

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ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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