Intel providing 22nm fabrication capacity to semiconductor start-up

Well, there sure are interesting things afoot in the land of Intel these days. Just last month the chipmaker announced a $6 to $8 billion dollar investment in factory upgrades to push ahead with hits 22nm manufacturing process, and it’s now announced that its struck a first of its kind deal with upstart semiconductor company Achronix. That deal involves Intel actually giving Achronix access to its 22nm fab process, which Achronix will use to manufacture its 22i Speedster FPGAs (said to boast a 300% higher performance and 50% lower power than FPGAs using any other process technology). While that arrangement is notable in and of itself, Intel seems to be going out of its way to downplay the size of the deal. In a blog post discussing the matter, Intel’s Bill Kircos notes that the deal “would only make up a tiny amount of our overall capacity, significantly less than one percent, and is not currently viewed as financially material to Intel’s earnings.” He does add that it is an “important endeavor” for Intel, though, which could possibly suggest that Intel is using the company as a testbed of sorts for its new manufacturing process.

Intel providing 22nm fabrication capacity to semiconductor start-up originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Roku makes hardware and software available to license, embedded TVs can’t be far out

Aw, suki suki now! Roku — the guys responsible for taking over your living room — just announced that it’s making its hardware and software platform available to license. At first glance, you may assume this means little to nothing for consumers, but you’re (hopefully) mistaken. If you’ll recall, the Roku XD was rebranded in order to slip into Netgear’s vast sales channels, but the software part of this equation has our interest very much piqued. We’ve already seen Vudu’s software baked into a number of HDTVs, and we’re envisioning a future filled with world peace, In-N-Out for all and Roku-embedded television sets. We’ll take two outta three if we have to, though.

Continue reading Roku makes hardware and software available to license, embedded TVs can’t be far out

Roku makes hardware and software available to license, embedded TVs can’t be far out originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS officially walks away from Garmin-Asus partnership

Chalk another up to the rumor mill. Just as we’d heard, the Garmin-Asus partnership will soon be no more. After a few arguably valiant attempts to break into the smartphone market, it seems as if ASUS is walking away in hopes of finding greener grass elsewhere. According to Reuters, an unnamed ASUS official has confirmed that it would be “ending its mobile phone cooperation agreement with Garmin.” We’re expecting the rest of the breakup details to roll tomorrow, but honestly, you’d turn the other cheek and move on if you were classy. But we both know that’s not happening, right?

ASUS officially walks away from Garmin-Asus partnership originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips

Want to know where the next breakthrough in mobile technology will come from? Well, if Elpida and Sharp have their way, the answer will be the usual suspect of Japan, where they’re working away on new memory chips said to be capable of four orders of magnitude faster performance than the ordinary NAND flash storage of today. Dubbed ReRAM, or Resistive Random Access Memory, this project targets a 2013 date for commercialization and counts the University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology among its development team. Details on how such blinding speeds will be reached aren’t readily available, but the Nikkei reports power consumption will be down to “virtually zero” when the memory’s not in use. So with ReRAM and HP’s memristors both set for three years from now, can we schedule NAND’s funeral for 2014 or what?

Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Marvell shows OLPC some serious love with a $5.6 million grant for XO-3 tablet

Marvell and One Laptop Per Child’s close partnership has been no secret, but according to Xconomy, Marvell’s about to put a whole lot more green into the XO. The semiconductor company is forking over $5.6 million to fund the creation of the next gen XO-3 tablet, and according to OLPC founder and former Engadget Show guest Nicholas Negroponte, it’s still slated for a 2012 release. Obviously, the tablet will be based on Marvell’s SoC — though, there’s no telling which version of Armada will be up for grabs by then. Additionally, Marvell and OLPC will be showing another tablet at CES, but this one is apparently for children of the developed world and won’t carry OLPC’s brand. Our guess is that it’ll be something closer to the Android-running Moby than to the plastic, bendable, Pixel Qi-equipped XO-3. It’s all sounding rather confusing to us, but hey, at least the kids won’t have a shortage of tablets to choose from.

Marvell shows OLPC some serious love with a $5.6 million grant for XO-3 tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony brings TomTom to US-bound XNV-770BT and XNV-660BT in-dash head units

We heard back at IFA that Sony was making the absolutely brilliant move of incorporating a market leading navigational system into its Xplod line of in-dash A/V units, and now that love is being shipped across the Atlantic (or the Pacific, if you’re taking the scenic route) in the form of the XNV-770BT and XNV-660BT. The beautiful Sony / TomTom partnership will soon be assisting clueless American motorists when both of the previously mentioned units ship in November, with the 770BT offering a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen and the 660BT stepping down to a 6.1-incher. They’ll both feature rear USB ports for iDevice connections, support for multi-channel audio playback and most importantly, pre-loaded maps of US and Canadian roadways. TomTom claims that its maps offer more than one million more miles of roads than other GPS brands in America alone, and buyers will also be treated to familiar TomTom extras like IQ Routes, Advanced Lane Guidance, MapShare and six million POIs. We still wish Garmin would’ve received the nod here, but it’s certainly better than some white label system — check ’em soon for $1,300 and $1,000 in order of mention.

Continue reading Sony brings TomTom to US-bound XNV-770BT and XNV-660BT in-dash head units

Sony brings TomTom to US-bound XNV-770BT and XNV-660BT in-dash head units originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Trident and ARM get together to make smarter STBs, bring more of the web to your tube

Trident and ARM get together to make smarter STBs, bring more of the web to your tubeWhile you’re surely familiar with ARM and its suite of processors powering many a spicy mobile device, Trident is something of a more silent entity — having a presence in half of the TVs sold worldwide but hardly making a mark when it comes to consumer perception. That could change with a new line of web-enabled set top boxes that will be powered by the ARM Cortex-A9 processor, which, even in its earliest incarnations, does a fine job of handling web duties and even decoding HD video. The goal is to deliver “the most advanced multimedia experiences into the home,” and while we think that’s perhaps a bit optimistic, the right players are involved here, with an “extensive ecosystem” being developed including Flash, Android, and Qt user elements. It remains to be seen whether this device will actually run Android, perhaps joining Google TV on the STB front, but there is talk of pushing content to mobile devices and matching a consistent user experience whether you’re couch or coach-bound. When will all this come to pass? We think it’s a bit too early to be troubled by such details.

Continue reading Trident and ARM get together to make smarter STBs, bring more of the web to your tube

Trident and ARM get together to make smarter STBs, bring more of the web to your tube originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 23:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Plex announces partnership with LG, pledges to beat Boxee Box and Apple TV for free

Plex announces paternship with LG, pledges to beat Boxee Box and Apple TV for free

We’re excited about the Boxee Box, and the new-look Apple TV is intriguing, but no single box is as good as a box that doesn’t exist yet does the same stuff. Confused? Sit down, let us explain. That’s the point Plex is making in announcing its new partnership with LG, which will integrate Plex software into its 2011 Netcast HDTVs and Blu-ray players. Plex enables the same sort of functionality as those smart little boxes mentioned above, letting you serve content from a machine running OS X and push it to your TV or to a mobile device (iPhone and iPad right now, Android coming). Plex also supports all the major online streamers, like Netflix, Hulu, and even the BBC iPlayer. Lack of PC support is something of a bummer, but a Windows version is said to be coming, so even your beige box can soon get in on the box-free fun.

Continue reading Plex announces partnership with LG, pledges to beat Boxee Box and Apple TV for free

Plex announces partnership with LG, pledges to beat Boxee Box and Apple TV for free originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia and Intel build a joint research lab, plan to create the mobile 3D future

Thought Nokia and Intel’s partnership was just some fleeting MeeGo fling? Just a carefree hookup in their times of mobile panic? Not quite. The companies are certainly in this thing for the long haul and today’s announcement of their new research lab in Oulu, Finland is all the evidence you’ll need. The Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center — as it’s been dubbed — is part of the University of Oulu and will now be home to about two-dozen researchers. What exactly will the white coats be working on? Well, the 3D mobile internet, of course, technology that Nokia’s been dabling with for awhile. The focus of the initial work will be on three-dimensional virtual reality platforms as well as on mapping. Sounds pretty neat and futuristic, but for some reason all we can keep thinking about is the immediate future of getting our hands on Nokia’s MeeGo-running N9. Hit the break for the full press release and a few more details on the lab itself.

Continue reading Nokia and Intel build a joint research lab, plan to create the mobile 3D future

Nokia and Intel build a joint research lab, plan to create the mobile 3D future originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Adobe’s CEO: ‘we’ve moved on’ from Apple’s argument, and Flash still rules

You can only humor someone for so long, and it seems as if Adobe is at its breaking point with Apple. Just three months after publishing a new ad campaign that sought to ease the tension between the two mega-corps, Adobe’s CEO has been quoted as saying that his company has “moved on” from the whole ordeal. On one hand, we’re glad to see Adobe focusing its resources on optimizing Flash for the myriad Android 2.2 devices that’ll support its mobile player in the months to come, but on the other, it’s a bit depressing to see Shantanu Narayen essentially give up hope that Jobs and Company will ever come to their senses. For example, have a listen at this, with “they” most certainly referring to Apple:

“They’ve chosen to keep their system closed and we’d rather work with partners who are interested in working with us. We believe in open systems. We believe in the power of the internet and in customers making choices and I think a lot of the controversy was about their decision at that point. They’ve made their choice. We’ve made ours and we’ve moved on.”

Something tells us the FTC won’t be so quick to follow suit. Oh, and if you’re wondering how Adobe could just turn the other cheek here, the company’s Anup Murarka just said at the Flash / Android event ongoing in San Francisco that Adobe has “relationships with 19 of the top 20 mobile manufacturers in the world.” One is the loneliest number, or so we hear.

Adobe’s CEO: ‘we’ve moved on’ from Apple’s argument, and Flash still rules originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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