Samsung’s Exynos processors have powered a lot of the faster devices out there, from the Galaxy S II, which was way ahead of everyone in terms of speed, to the newer Nexus 10. Now the Exynos 5 Octa Processor is here. Wait, octa? As in eight cores? More »
With the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900, the company enters in the race for a real live hero phone for the whole world, here reminding us instantly of the other massive smartphone in this warring market – the Samsung Galaxy Note II. What we’ve got here is a real live fight for a dominant beast, a massive machine made to rule them all, starting with displays – and Lenovo takes the cake with resolution right out of the box. Samsung, on the other hand, has the physically larger display (though it is a bit less dense in its pixel distribution.)
The thing about the IdeaPhone K900 right this minute is that it’s still in its prototype phase, not actually coming out until somewhere around April of this year – and the initial plan is to release it in China alone. The Samsung Galaxy Note II is already out in quite a few countries around the world, including the USA and Europe. The prospect of the IdeaPhone K900 is great though, regardless of its release range, simply because it’s working with the relatively rare Intel Atom Z2580 Clover Trail SoC.
The Samsung Galaxy Note II works with the Samsung Exynos quad-core processor we know works to great effect even across its massive face. The IdeaPhone K900 has a display that’s 5.5-inches and 1080p resolution with IPS technology while the Galaxy Note II’s face is a 5.5-inch 720p display working with Super AMOLED – bright as can be.
Some of the items we’re really not able to compare at the moment are the Android OS versions, as though the Note is up to Android 4.2 in some places, the Lenovo offering has not yet been shown with a full working version of Android as of yet. We’ll be sure to see a whole lot more in the very near future from the company as the device hits the market. Have a peek at our hands-on comparison images above and below and let us know which one you’d choose if given the chance!
Also be sure to check out our giant CES portal to see all the CES 2013 content your heart can handle, and check our ShowStoppers 2013 tag to see everything we’ve seen today!
Lenovo IdeaPhone K900 vs Samsung Galaxy Note II is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Intel’s Perceptual Computing SDK is so smart that it can pick you out from the world around you and put you on any background as if the whole world was a green screen. Think Kinect only way way smarter. More »
AMD held their press event here at CES 2013, and announced a slew of new accelerated processing units (APUs). And as typical fashion of any chipset maker, they were full of codenames. The company announced Kabini, Kaveri, Richland, and Temash APUs today, the first and the last being AMD’s first true SoC APUs.
As far as the other two go, Richland is an APU that’s currently shipping to OEMs and it promises to deliver a performance boost of 20 to 40% over the previous generation of the company’s A-series chips, and the Kaveri is a new 28nm chip that features heterogeneous system architecture (HSA), and it should ship to customers sometime during the second half of this year.
Richland will also be bundling some new software with the chip, specifically a handful of gesture- and facial-recognition tools. These new chips will be used in various HP, ASUS, and Vizio ultrathin laptops, as well as Vizio’s 24-inch AIO desktop. The company announced these earlier in the day.
Senior vice president and general manager Lisa Su made an appearance at AMD’s press event and mentioned that the company is dedicated “to bring true surround computing and immersive experiences to our everyday lives.” She also mentioned that the new APU’s are “the industry’s first x86 quad-core SoC,” proving the company’s leadership in the gaming industry.
AMD announces Kabini, Kaveri, Richland, and Temash APUs at CES 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Not so long ago, mobile processors from Intel had thermal design points (TDP) of 45W. TDP designates the energy that the chip and its cooling system are designed to dissipate. It is not really a measure of power draw, but both are correlated because dissipating more heat, means that more energy is consumed to produce that heat. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Facebook DNS Issues Resolved, Google Discounting Chromebooks For Schools To $99 Until 12/21,
It isn’t exactly a secret that Texas Instruments has been struggling in the mobile space a bit lately, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that today the company announced it will soon be broadening its focus when it comes to its OMAP processors. We’ve heard about such a change before, but today Texas Instruments is giving us a better idea of what pros and cons this broader focus will have. While the company will be able to save a healthy amount of money by focusing less on the smartphone space, this unfortunately means that TI will be letting around 1,700 employees go.
In a statement today, the company reiterated plans to “focus its OMAP processors and wireless connectivity solutions on a broader set of embedded applications with long life cycles, instead of its historical focus on the mobile market where large customers are increasingly developing their own custom chips.” This is all in an attempt to save money moving forward, and Texas Instruments expects this move to result in annualized savings for $450 million by the end of 2013.
Texas Instruments elected to go this route because making these changes will be less expensive than other options, but the company will still be paying a hefty sum to implement this shift in focus. TI expects the changes to cost a total of $325 million, most of which will be covered in the current quarter’s financials. Even though Texas Instruments will have to plop down a lot of cash to make the shift it needs to, it sounds like the company will still come out on top.
It’s just a shame to hear that nearly 2,000 employees will have to lose their jobs in order for Texas Instruments to save some money. Hopefully the company’s plan works out, because if it doesn’t, even more people may be out of a job in the future. Stay tuned.
Texas Instruments announces plans to lay off 1,700 workers is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Samsung has reportedly increased the price of the mobile processors it manufactures for Apple’s iOS devices by 20 percent, according to South Korean daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo (via MarketWatch), which says it received the information with someone familiar with negotiations between the two firms. Apple apparently wanted to walk away rather than accept the new terms, according to the source, but had no replacement supplier to take over manufacturing.
Apple has looked to other suppliers to begin supplementing its mobile processor needs, including Taiwan-based TSMC, which is rumored to begin working on quad-core chips for both mobile devices and possibly future Macs according to a report from mid-October. Another Taiwanese firm, Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corporation, is said to be also on board to take over some chip manufacturing duties, and the Taiwanese suppliers were reportedly attractive to Apple because they could produce processors for about 10 percent less than Samsung. Given that this price hike is indeed now going into effect, as the Chosun Ilbo report argues, suddenly those plans to shift manufacturing become even more urgent for Apple, since the 10 percent cost savings was based on previous pricing.
The biggest challenge for Apple will be making sure other manufacturers can produce chips at sufficient volumes for its needs. Apple reportedly purchased over 200 million processors from Samsung this year, and if it can maintain its past and current device sales growth trends, the volumes it requires will only increase. Samsung has a contract to continue manufacturing at least some of these components for Apple throughout 2014, according to the report, and earlier information puts the timeline for building chips with TSMC and other Taiwanese suppliers at late 2013, so there may be some crossover time during which volume burdens are split, if pricing does in fact eventually end the processor supply relationship between Apple and Samsung.
Earlier this year, The Korea Times reported that Samsung would be cutting its LCD supplier relationship with Apple, but Samsung quickly moved to refute those claims. Apple has been adding new suppliers to its pool of display panel partners, including Sharp and LG, but it does indeed continue to use Samsung panels in its latest products, including the iPad mini.
In its latest earnings call, Apple repeatedly brought up lower product margins as a reason for more cautious guidance on the next quarter, and it’s possible that at the time this was a key issue informing that outlook. If true, this is also exactly the kind of problem that explains why Apple is making decisions to do things like drop Google Maps from its platform: regardless of whether you’re talking about software or hardware, giving any one competitor/partner too much of a role on its devices leads to issues like this one.
Samsung and Apple have been at each other’s throats through various patent suits all around the world for a long time. In some places, Apple has won a few and in others, Samsung has won. Apple won a jury award against Samsung of roughly $1 billion in the US. However, Samsung is trying to get the case thrown out with allegations of juror misconduct.
In Europe, Apple was forced to run apology ads in major publications after courts ruled that Samsung hadn’t infringed on Apple design patents having to do with tablets. Despite all the legal battles raging between Apple and Samsung, Samsung Electronics continues to be the provider to Apple for processors used in the iPhone and the iPad.
Reports indicate that Samsung has hit Apple with a price increase on mobile processors of 20% recently. The tip comes from a person claiming to be familiar with the negotiations between the two companies. The source claims that originally Apple declined to pay the price increase.
However, the source says that after Apple failed to find another supplier of processors for the products, it accepted the 20% price increase. Apple is said to have purchased 130 million processor from Samsung last year and over 200 million units this year. Samsung has a long-term contract with Apple for processors that is good through 2014. No official comment has been made by Samsung or Apple on the dealings.
[via MarketWatch]
Samsung raises mobile processor prices on Apple is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The pain from recently announced job cuts by AMD could ripple out to the Linux community, as the chipmaker has shut down a small but important Linux OS research facility in Dresden, Germany. The center housed 25 employees who helped port AMD technology like PowerNow over to new Linux distros, and according to The H, many engineers who submitted major processor and chipset revisions for the OS would be pink slipped. The closure won’t affect GPU and APU development, according to the source, but it’s not yet known exactly who will pick up the slack from the former Dresden team — though the research center in Austin Texas is reported to be a likely bet.
Filed under: Software
AMD shutters key Linux support lab in Germany as part of company-wide layoffs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Nov 2012 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ARM has announced its new Cortex A-50 Series, a line of energy-efficient 64-bit processors. According to the press release, the Cortex A-50 Series is the world’s most energy efficient 64-bit processors “set to drive the next era in mobile and enterprise.” The series is comprised of two processors: the A57 and the A53.
First up is the Cortex-A53 processor, which is “the most efficient ARM application processor ever.” Says the press release, the A53 can run a high-end smartphone using only a quarter of what is used by current offerings. The processor is optimized for throughput processing, and is only 25% the size of “mainstream superphone CPUs,” making it positively tiny.
The Cortex-A57 processor is “optimized for high performance,” offering three times the performance of current offerings. This CPU is ARM’s most advanced and highest single-thread performance processor. According to the press release, the A57 offers “performance comparable to a legacy PC” whilst only sipping power, providing a combination of energy-efficiency and cost effectiveness to meet the needs of both consumer and enterprise users.
According to ARM, this series will provide the market with a means to push the base level of power for mobile devices upwards, with today’s high-end smartphones becoming tomorrow’s entry-level devices. Currently, we can expect to see the Cortex-A50 Series pop up in 2014. Check out the video above for more info.
ARM announces energy-efficient 64-bit Cortex-A50 processors is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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