Hasta La Gadget!

A teardown of Apple‘s A6 mobile processor powering the new iPhone 5 has revealed some details this afternoon. Like many of their previous processors there’s been a lot of mystery around just what exactly is powering the new device, but thanks to iFixit we now have an in depth teardown of the A6 processor itself.

The teardown reveals that the chip has been highly customized, as it sways away from the standard ARM-based design and layout for Apple’s own needs. This is completely custom and and ARM-based CPU cores seem to all be arranged manually for optimal performance. The microscopic inspection by iFixit shows just how advanced this SoC really is.

While we already knew the A6 was a dual-core processor, this reveals things such as 1GB of RAM, dual CPU cores and a triple-core GPU for graphics and rendering. Those three GPU cores will help with all those smooth UI transitions, as well as the stunning gameplay and graphics performance Apple touted during their announcement of the iPhone 5.

When we said manually arranged above, we mean that each core was placed manually, rather than automated like most processors these days. iFixit states this is “much more expensive and time consuming” but obviously the performance benefits outweigh the costs. This allows the chip to be extremely powerful, efficient, and perform great without the need to boost CPU speeds like the competition. The teardown also confirms the Apple A6 processor powering the iPhone 5 is indeed a Samsung 32nm chip. This makes us excited to see how Apple can maximize performance with other ARM-based layouts moving forward.

[via Electronista]

Apple A6 teardown reveals dual-core CPU, tri-core GPU power is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s not uncommon for manufacturers in the technology industry to have secret projects in the works. For many things in the technology world secrecy is very important. One secret project that Nvidia is said to be working on is called Project Boulder.

Bright Side of News (BSN) reports that one of its sources claiming to know about Project Boulder says that the project represents Nvidia’s “claim to fame” in the server environment. Project Boulder focuses on high-performance and doesn’t care about miserly power consumption as much is it cares about sucking in the all power it needs to operate as quickly as possible. According to reports, Project Boulder is expected to be a new multiple core SoC.

BSN reports that Project Boulder is expected to result in an 8-16 core SoC with a high-bandwidth interconnect. The product is also expected that use high-bandwidth memory along the lines of DDR4. Interestingly, Nvidia and Fusion-io recently started working together on an effort to expand the ability of GPUs and SoCs to address memory directly with a component called ioFX, so the SoC could be paired with more memory than we are used to seeing in similar products.

It’s certainly worth noting that there are no official details of Project Boulder out there right now. That means that the source cited by BSN could be leading us all astray, and we would have no way to know that. Nvidia has been big on using its GPUs for computing for a while now, so a move into the server space with a new product would be no surprise.

[via Bright Side of News

Nvidia Project Boulder tipped is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

For all the noise that was made around the relative lack of novelty with the iPhone 5, it’s fair to say that most people will probably agree on the fact that it is a faster phone, and not in a small way. Without running proper benchmarks, we’re not sure if it is really “2X faster” than the previous one but it is obviously faster.

One of the first theories to emerge was that Apple was using the ARM A15 core design instead of the ARM A9 design that was integrated to the Apple A4 and A5 chips. I know, the naming scheme is confusing, so to put this in context, ARM’s A9 and A15 core designs are CPU blocks, which can be integrated into Apple’s (or other) chips that also contain graphics processors, video processors etc. A full chip like the Apple A6 is called a “system-on-a-chip” or SoC (learn more about SoCs). Qualcomm’s Snapdragon , NVIDIA’s Tegra and TI’s OMAP are other well-known SoCs. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPhone 5 held back by… dogma, The unibody iPhone,

You’ve already got plenty of options if you’re in the market for a developer board, but it might be worth taking a look at the new $49 Cubieboard, which packs quite the specs given its price point. The board hosts a 1GHz AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 CPU with Mali-400 GPU, 1GB of RAM and 4 gigs of onboard storage. For ins and outs, you’re looking at 1080p HDMI, Ethernet, one MultiMediaCard (MMC) slot, a SATA port, two USB hosts, an IR sensor and 96 extender pins for solder junkies. Cubieboard’s Wiki page lists an additional MMC slot and USB OTG, but as this doesn’t check out in the pictures, we assume they’ve either been scrapped, or they’ll be added on for later production runs. As you would expect, several versions of Linux and Android are supported by the Raspberry Pi bully, which is expected to start shipping to select developers sometime this week. There’s no word on when it may be available for general consumption, but by then you’ll hopefully have a better product anyway — if the pros have done their job, that is.

Filed under: Misc

$49 Cubieboard for developers is heavy on specs, light on the wallet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Sep 2012 02:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We saw a leaked hint of what was coming for Intel’s Valleyview system-on-a-chip (SoC), but now the full plan appears to have been outed by Chinese blog Expreview. The lineup will feature four models of the 22nm chips, with the D- and M-series looking to replace the Cedar Trail 32nm SoC chips used in current netbook and low-end desktop devices. The I-series is for embedded and industrial use, while the T-series would appear in tablets and other small form-factor devices, according to the leaked slides. That model would supersede the Clover Trail SoCs, which are only just arriving themselves in upcoming Windows 8 slates like the Acer W510 or Asus Tablet 810.

The chips should offer a burly horsepower bump over their predecessors, with up to four cores and clock speeds topping out at 2.4Ghz. The icing on the cake will be the integrated Gen 7 graphics engines of Ivy Bridge fame, featuring the same HD 4000 and HD 2500 GPU‘s as the grownup chips, but with only four “execution units” instead of the 16 you’d find there. That would offload functions like video decoding and 3D rendering from the CPU and allow simultaneous display to a TV or monitor. Bay Trail would also support 8GB of DDR3 RAM, double that of the “last” gen, as well as USB 3.0, SATA 2.0 and a host of other connection options. If the leak is accurate, the processors would arrive sometime next year, we’ll just have to wait and see if that’s soon enough for Intel to take a run at its formidable competition.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablets

Intel’s full Atom ‘Bay Trail’ roadmap leaked: 22nm, Ivy Bridge graphics, quad-core originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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