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Apple has unveiled its latest mobile chipset, the Apple A6X, replacing the already-capable A6 in the third-gen iPad, and doubling performance compared to the A5X along the way. The new chipset, a custom SoC using ARM cores, delivers not only that 2x CPU grunt but doubled graphics performance too. It’s the new chipset at the heart of the 4th-generation iPad.

Apple hasn’t detailed exactly what’s going on inside the SoC, and we’ll probably have to wait for the first teardowns and assessments to see which ARM cores exactly have been used. We do know that it gets new, next-generation ISP, however, for better multimedia performance.

What’s particularly interesting is how the A6X could fit into Apple’s rumored ambitions to do away with traditional Intel processors in its desktop line-up, and instead adopt ARM-based chips of its own design. That could prolong battery life as well as leave Apple in control of its own silicon.

That probably isn’t in the pipeline for some time, though, and we’ll likely see a couple of iterations of A-series chips before they appear in notebook form factors. More on the new iPad 4th-gen in our Apple Hub.

Apple A6X revealed: New flagship chip is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you get the impression that AMD is diverting its energy away from traditional CPUs and towards APUs and fresher PC form factors such as all-in-ones, then you’re certainly right — but you’re also slightly ahead of the game. The company promises there’s a still a good few years of life left in its CPU-only chips and the AM3+ socket, and it’s putting today’s announcement forward as evidence. As of now, last year’s eight-core FX-8150 has been superseded on retailers’ shelves by the FX-8350, which notches the stock clock speed up to 4GHz, or 4.2GHz on turbo (alas with no obvious sign of that resonant mesh we once heard about). The full stack (codenamed ‘Vishera’) includes eight-, six- and four-core options, all based on the new Piledriver architecture which — when combined with these higher clock speeds — promises an overall performance uplift of around 15 percent versus the old Bulldozer cores. To be fair though, those Bulldozers weren’t so snappy to begin with, and besides, the most significant performance claims with this upgrade relate to multi-threaded applications and a few gaming titles like Skyrim and Civ 5. Judging from the slide deck below, gains in other areas of performance may be lower — perhaps in the region of seven percent — so as usual we’re going to roundup a bunch of reviews later today before we jump to any conclusions.

If it turns out that stock performance alone isn’t enough to sell these chips, then potential buyers still ought to check out FX’s pricing relative to Intel — not least because, as is typical, AMD sells overclockable chips at no extra charge. The top-end FX-8350 will hit the market at $195, which is not only cheaper than some earlier leaks suggested, but also $40 cheaper than an unlocked Core i5-3570K that has a lower clock speed and a smaller L3 cache — although the relative performance of these two chips remains to be independently tested. Meanwhile, the entry-level quad-core FX-4300 will virtually match the price of a locked i3-2120 at $122, but can be readily overclocked to 5GHz with water-cooling. AMD is also making a few claims based on the cost of multiple components in a rig: for example, that you can spend $372 on an FX-8350 and Radeon HD 7850 combo that delivers a 25 to 70 percent gaming advantage over a similarly priced Core i5 3570K with a GeForce GTX 650 Ti. Again, stay tuned for our roundup and we’ll figure out just how compelling this really is.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, AMD

AMD updates its FX processors: 8-core chip has 4GHz base clock, ’15 percent’ more oomph, $195 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With Windows 8 on the horizon and the school season just beginning, it would appear that Intel’s profits this most recent quarter are not doing as well as they had the quarter before it. Today’s Q3 earnings report showed Intel to have a third-quarter profit fall of 14% while they noted operating expenses as being on the climb and personal computer sales declining. The quarter reported today showed Intel with revenue of $13.6 billion, this number having a range of error plus or minus $500 million.

This report had Thomson Reuters analysts nearly correct with their guess at $13.7 billion in revenue, with expectations hitting roughly 57% to 58% for expected gross margin. Chief Executive Paul Otellini spoke on the earnings call saying that the world was in the midst of a “period of breakthrough innovation and creativity.” With this in mind, he continued, “As we look to the fourth quarter, we’re pleased with the continued progress in Ultrabooks and phones and excited about the range of Intel-based tablets coming to market.”

Intel also reported a profit of $2.97 billion, this down from $3.47 billion a year earlier. The current shares ring in at 58 cents per with per-share profit falling from 68 cents to 60 cents year-over-year. This number excludes acquisition-related costs. Revenue fell 5.5% to $13.5 billion, this putting the company well in range with the company’s prediction from September of $13.2 billion (plus or minus $300 million). Gross margin also narrowed from 63.4% to 63.3%.

Operating expenses – noted above as one of the reasons the company isn’t doing quite as well this quarter – rose 10% this quarter to $10.4 billion. Data-center revenue increased 5.7% while Intel’s PC client group fell 8.3%. Stocks in Intel have fallen since the report was released earlier today down 1.9% to $21.92 in after-hours trading. In other news, Intel remains a mainstay in the vast majority of high-end computers working with Windows 8 in this upcoming holiday season – keep your head high!

[via WSJ]

Intel Q3 profits fall 14% with PC demand on the drop is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple and Samsung depend heavily on one another, despite the fact that they’re also at each other’s throats in intellectual property legal disputes around the world. But Apple is looking to reduce Samsung’s role in the manufacturing and design side of its business, in a move that could have greater long-term repercussions for the Korean electronics giant than for the iPhone maker.

The Korea Times reported this weekend that Samsung will no longer be involved in any part of its chip business other than manufacturing, according to a Samsung official who spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity. Previously, Samsung has been somewhat involved on the design side, too, the official said, but now it’s operating strictly on a “foundry basis,” with Apple exclusively handling any and all design duties. That’s in keeping with what teardowns have shown of the chip, which seems to leverage Apple’s chip design-focused acquisitions to create its first truly in-house created system-on-a-chip with the A6 processor that powers the iPhone 5.

It’s also in keeping with another move Apple made recently; namely, the decision to drop Google from its platform as a partner for native apps like YouTube and Maps. Apple seems eager to reclaim control of its platform and hardware from its biggest rivals in the smartphone space, those being Samsung on the hardware side and Google in terms of mobile OS. Of course, cutting the cord has repercussions, as we’ve seen with the blowback from the maps debacle that led to a public apology from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Apple recently poached one of Samsung’s top chip designers, and the company has also been apparently grooming Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) for taking over more production of its processors following the A6. Apple has the resources to lift up Samsung’s chip foundry competition, but it’ll take time – Samsung is still one of the few companies in the world who can handle the kind of volume manufacturing Apple requires to keep its stock of mobile devices flowing to store shelves, and probably the only one that can currently handle its chip foundry needs.

Samsung sold around $7.8 billion worth of components to Apple in 2011, according to one report. And production of the A6 for the iPhone 5 will reportedly bring in more money for the Korean company than any of Apple’s previous processors, but necessity seems to be driving that continued relationship, and Apple is clearly looking for ways around its dependence on its biggest rival. Apple has the luxury of being able to wait until the time is right to switch elsewhere for its chipmaking needs, at which point Samsung will take a big cut in its supply-side business. Now that Apple’s taken the reins with chip design, we’ll see how long it takes for that other shoe to drop.

The iPhone 5 already proved Apple’s desire to move away from existing processor designs and exert more control over these fundamental components. Is it too crazy to imagine that Cupertino would like the same sense of freedom with its laptops? Perhaps not, especially since the biggest company in the world just hired a guy called Jim Mergard, who helped to pioneer AMD’s low-power Brazos netbook chips and who had only recently moved to Samsung. A former colleague of Mergard’s, Patrick Moorhead, told the WSJ that he would be “very capable of pulling together internal and external resources to do a PC processor for Apple” — possibly based on a mobile-style SoC (system-on-chip) rather than a traditional PC approach. That’s pure speculation of course, but funnily enough it’s where Intel seems to be headed too.

Filed under: Laptops, Apple, Samsung, AMD

Low-power chip guru quits Samsung for Apple, with heavily implied implications originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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