Hasta La Gadget!

This week the folks at Qualcomm have announced that their one and only developer conference Uplinq 2013 will this year be held between September 3rd and 5th, chock-full of mobile application and developer strategy goodness from start to finish. This event will once again be working with technical sessions, chats, demonstrations, and networking opportunities in massive amounts – and SlashGear will be there to cover the whole gamut! While registration isn’t quite open yet, it will be extremely soon for those interested in jumping in on the future of mobile computing from the Qualcomm side of the universe.

Uplinq is as Qualcomm claims it, “the wireless industry’s only cross-platform developer’s conference”, and it’s now been expanded to three full days. This set of events will be featuring here in 2013 a series of professionals from all angles – developers, manufacturers, operators, and technology providers alike. This set of events will show a cross-platform look at the wireless industry from not just a series of perspectives, but the specific perspectives you’ll find valuable to your business.

Qualcomm’s Uplinq series of events is made for “all members of the value chain”, as senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Qualcomm Anand Chandrasekher makes clear, and “Feedback from last year’s attendees has us adding more technical sessions and further enhancing the business development programs we will be offering at Uplinq 2013.” It’s basically going to be one big technology high-five for everyone who’s responsible for creating, delivering, or supporting the industry from top to bottom!

Have a peek at our Uplinq collection to see what we’ve seen in the past from Qualcomm’s premiere developer conference. This event has shown us everything from the tiniest in-device speaker amplifications to the largest previews of Qualcomm technologies for the future. Camera demonstrations with sword fighters, device previews from top manufacturers, and up close and personal action in the Snapdragon environment – hot stuff!

Qualcomm’s Uplinq 2013 set for September with maximum developer potential is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week it’s been made clear – or perhaps just clearer than ever before – that a company able to manufacture its own device components is a company that will thrive. According to the readouts from Gartner showing 2012′s top consumers in the semiconductor universe specifically, Samsung and Apple are out in front of the pack – by a significant margin. Semiconductors, mobile processors, and hardware from displays to memory cards are all a part of this puzzle, and as the two next entries on that list show with double-digit percentage drops show, it’s not just Apple and Samsung that are floating upward here coming into 2013, it’s mobile smart devices as a whole (and all their little bits and pieces).

Samsung is a company that has the ability to create each of the most vital bits, (like their Exynos processor for mobile devices), for each smartphone and tablet it puts on the market. They are the company that went through the most semiconductors in the market in the world in 2012, and they’re making these components themselves. While companies like LG and Lenovo create devices and need billions of dollars worth of semiconductors too, they need groups like Qualcomm and NVIDIA to manufacture those pieces of hardware for them.

So while Samsung is indeed made up of several different businesses, one that makes displays, another that makes processors, another that designs smartphones, it’s still the brand Samsung that profits from one part consuming products from another. So when you see Samsung at the top of the global semiconductor customers list in 2012, a big chunk of that change is being kept in the family. Meanwhile even the third place company HP must rely on groups like Intel in a large way for the architecture in their machines.

Groups like Qualcomm and NVIDIA rely on the companies that do not manufacture their own device innards, on the other hand, so it’s not as if there’s only one perfect model here created by these top companies with their own supplies. Qualcomm creates mobile modems that sit in a large cross-section of the smartphones you see on the market today, while NVIDIA’s Tegra line of processors all but dominated the first wave of Android tablets and Super Phones that came out across 2011.

You’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon line of processors coming out in some of the most popular smartphones over the past year, too, including none other than Samsung’s Galaxy S III. What we’re going to be seeing here through 2013 – and what we’ve begun to see already – is Samsung sticking with their own Exynos processor lineup as much as they can muster. Meanwhile groups like ViewSonic, Toshiba, and ASUS will continue to work with NVIDIA and HTC, LG, and Nokia will opt for Qualcomm. Of course those partnerships aren’t definitive by any means, and several of the companies have gone between Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments (now out of the mobile processor business), and others in the past.

There’s also a cross-over happening on the part of NVIDIA with their first production device by the name of Project SHIELD. This is a mobile gaming handheld that’s branded by NVIDIA and includes both the Tegra 4 processor and their own Icera modem. we’ll just have to wait and see who they worked with to create the rest of the components in the final build, but for now, the point is clear: it seems clear that creating your own device, top to bottom, is becoming more and more preferable by companies with the ability to work with such a process.

Samsung and Apple one-brand manufacturing puts competition on notice is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s the end of an era: Intel has announced that, over the next three years, it will wind down production of desktop motherboards to zero. More »

Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor architecture has been kicking it in public for almost a year now, but the new chips weren’t very friendly towards the budget crowd. However, the company finally released new Ivy Bridge processors that cater towards the frugal bunch, including new Celeron, Pentium, and Core dual-core chips.

In total, there are three Celeron CPUs, four Pentiums, and a new Core i3-3210, which all range from $42 to $117. All of the Celeron chips have 2MB of L3 cache, HD integrated graphics, and range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz. The Pentiums have 3MB of L3 cache, HD integrated graphics, and clock in from 2.5GHz to 3.2GHz. The Core i3-3210 is the flagship CPU out of the bunch, and it comes with HD 2500 graphics and clocks in at 3.2GHz.

All of these new processors are compatible with Intel’s existing Socket 1155, so there’s no need to upgrade motherboards if you’re looking to downgrade to one of these budget CPUs. However, the Celeron and Pentium chips don’t include hyper-threading, so if you’re looking to get the most performance, the $117 Core i3 might fit the bill.

The best part is, these new chips will be available starting today. We’re not seeing them on retailers’ websites just yet, but it should only be a matter of time. And while the Ivy Bridge architecture won’t last for much longer, we can’t say that it’ll be a huge deal for budget builders looking for a decent CPU at a really great price.

[via CPU World]

Intel launches budget-friendly Ivy Bridge processors is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

CES 2013 has already brought some very exciting news about mobile processors, with NVIDIA revealing its Tegra 4 processor during its press conference earlier in the week. Not one to be outdone, Samsung today officially pulled the veil off its 8-core Exynos 5 Octa chip. Comprised of two sets of four cores, the Exynos 5 Octa is obviously geared toward keeping things moving fast and fluid, even when multiple applications are running on your mobile device.

As such, don’t expect to see the Exynos 5 Octa present in anything but high-end smartphones and tablets. The upshot to this is, obviously, a better experience when doing things like watching video or using multiple tabs in your mobile browser. In fact, Samsung CEO Stephen Woo says that there won’t be any stutter during HD video playback, which, as many of you likely know, can be something of an issue on slower processors.

In addition to trying to knock multitasking out of the park, the Exynos 5 Octa is also sporting 3D capabilities. That, of course, means better 3D gaming, so expect to see mobile games take a step up after the Octa starts showing up in devices. This processor also has the distinction of being the first mobile CPU to implement the ARM big.LITTLE technology, something we’ve described at length in the past.

Of course, all the power in the world isn’t worth anything if your battery can’t last long enough to take full advantage of it, which is why Samsung is also focusing on efficiency with this release. By packing together four Cortex A15 processors to do the heavy lifting and four A7 cores for lighter work, users should have the power they need while also saving on battery power when they can.

It’ll probably be a little while before we see the latest in the Exynos line begin making an appearance in a significant number of devices, but it should be making a splash in the mobile world before long. It’s been an incredibly exciting CES for mobile computing, so be sure to have a look at our CES portal for news you may have missed. As always, keep it here at SlashGear for even more from the show.

Samsung goes big with 8-core Exynos 5 Octa chip reveal is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.