Hasta La Gadget!

For years foreign nations have received better and faster cars than America but, finally, we thought we’d at least received smartphone parity. Not for Motorola, who is bringing its 4.3-inch Droid X slab to China with one major tweak: a processor running at 1.2GHz. That’s a 20 percent boost over its cycles in domestic form despite having the same TI ticker humming away in there. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t ways to unofficially overclock your X to 1.2GHz — and beyond — but those of us who prefer staying stock are left to wonder why, and to hope for an equivalent update on these shores. Futile hopes, these.

Motorola Droid X gets 1.2GHz software overclock for China, we feel slighted too originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Droid Life, electronista  |  Motorola China  | Email this | Comments

NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 was tearing it up on the CES 2011 show floor in a host of new tablets, but unbeknownst to us, Qualcomm’s long-awaited dual-core Snapdragon made a pair of cameo appearances as well. The first was in ASUS’ Eee Pad MeMO, which showed off its pressure-sensitive stylus action on the floor, and the second is in the new Qualcomm reference design you see immediately above. According to a video released on Qualcomm’s website — which you can watch after the break — Qualcomm attempted to distract tech journalists from Verizon’s press conference by giving them a sneak peek at the HTC Thunderbolt here instead. Then, we like to imagine, the company brainwashed the lot into believing the 1.2GHz MSM8660 with Adreno 220 graphics is destined for a host of tablets and phones. Of course, if that’s actually the case, we’ll gladly join the throng. Where do we sign up?

Continue reading Qualcomm unveils dual-core Snapdragon reference handset at CES 2011

Qualcomm unveils dual-core Snapdragon reference handset at CES 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AnandTech  | Email this | Comments

We already confirmed that RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook was deadly fast in use, but up until now, we’ve still been left to wonder what kind of silicon was powering it. According to a RIM representative that spoke to us just now on the CES show floor, a dual-core OMAP chip from Texas Instruments is doing the honors — more specifically, it’s the blisteringly fast 1GHz OMAP 4430. And now, you know.

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook using a 1GHz OMAP 4430 processor originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

This article was written on April 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

We already know that Steve Jobs is on the verge of being a control freak, so the news coming from Forbes today that Apple has agreed to purchase a microprocessor design company makes sense. The company is P.A. Semi, and it’s rumored that Apple is willing to spend $278 million dollars in cash to acquire them. So what would Apple want with a microprocessor design company? Well considering they’re known for their sophisticated, low-power chips, Apple could use their chips for use in future iPhones or iPods.

Apple confirmed that they had in fact purchased the company but wouldn’t go into any details of what they plan to do with them. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling was quoted as saying, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans.” With a microprocessor design company in-house, Apple has more control over over the hardware that goes into their devices and ultimately, it could save the some money and give them the opportunity to include the best possible processor with iPhones or iPods.

This buy probably didn’t make Intel or ARM to happy because Apple uses Intel for their Mac computers and ARM currently for the iPhone. The fact that Apple acquired P.A. Semi is pretty big for the company of 150 employees. Regarding the history between the two companies, Gizmodo says:

Historically, P.A. Semi was trying to be the chip provider for Macs around the time they chose to go for Intel, and it is reported that Dobberpuhl was furious when they went x86, thinking the Intel talks were just a bargaining chip. Some think that P.A. Semi lost its chance to be a brand name like AMD or Intel, but clearly, being under the brand name of Apple isn’t half bad.

P.A. Semi says that their chips are “300% more efficient than any comparable chips,” so they just might be a great buy for Apple.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Apple in Talks to Acquire IntelApple Computer Market Share Progress ReportMore SlashDot Redesigns — This Round Is Much BetterBig Cash Piles in the Tech IndustryYahoo Acquires del.icio.us

We’ve already seen field programmable gate arrays (or FPGAs) used to create energy efficient supercomputers, but a team of researchers at the University of Glasgow led by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede now say that they have “effectively” created a 1,000 core processor based on the technology. To do that, the researchers divvied up the millions of transistors in the FPGA into 1,000 mini-circuits that are each able to process their own instructions — which, while still a proof of concept, has already proven to be about twenty times faster than “modern computers” in some early tests. Interestingly, Intel has also been musing about the idea of a 1,000 core processor recently, with Timothy Mattson of the company’s Microprocessor Technology Laboratory saying that such a processor is “feasible.” He’s referring to Intel’s Single-chip Cloud Computer (or SCC, pictured here), which currently packs a whopping 48 cores, but could “theoretically” scale up to 1,000 cores. He does note, however, that there are a number of other complicating factors that could limit the number of cores that are actually useful — namely, Amdahl’s law (see below) — but he says that Intel is “looking very hard at a range of applications that may indeed require that many cores.”

[Thanks, Andrew]

Researchers create ultra-fast ‘1,000 core’ processor, Intel also toys with the idea originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Daily Mail, UKPA, ZD Net  | Email this | Comments