Hasta La Gadget!

Intel’s back in its familiar saddle today with the unveiling of a pair of new CPUs, marking the start of a new K-series that will cater to the overclocker inside all of us. The Core i7-875K is a 2.93GHz quad-core unit, which can scale heights of 3.6GHz via Turbo Boost, or even higher if you have the patience, tenacity and appropriate cooling to make it happen. Review action for this chip shows it to be Intel’s premier offering short of the enthusiastically overpriced and overpowered Core i7-980X. Even more affordable will be the Clarkdale-based Core i5-655K, which trots along at 3.2GHz (with a 3.46GHz gallop option), but response to it was a little more muted. It’s a dual-core CPU, after all, and if you don’t plan on exploiting that unlocked multiplier to achieve some madness above 4GHz, you might be better off looking elsewhere. In amidst all the mad benchmarking, we’ve also found a review of a Falcon Northwest i7-875K rig as well, so give it all a read if you’re mulling over a desktop upgrade.

Read – Tech Report
Read – AnandTech
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Hot Hardware
Read – TweakTown
Read – Legit Reviews

Intel Core i7-875K and Core i5-655K unlock multipliers, better performance originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 03:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Apple is rumored to be considering a bid for ARM, the British company that designs the processors found in some smartphones including the iPhone, according to The London Evening Standard.

ARM’s share prices soared to an eight-year high on Wednesday as a result of the rumor, but ARM chief executive Warren East today told The Guardian that there was no necessity for the company, whose market capitalization stands at $4.6 billion, to be acquired.

“Exciting though it is to have the share price pushed up by these rumors, common sense tells us that our standard business model is an excellent way for technology companies to gain access to our technology,” East told the Guardian. “Nobody has to buy the company.”

However, that statement does not deny the rumor, as some publications have suggested. Companies sometimes use statements provided to the press to talk tough and indirectly negotiate with potential buyers, using ambiguous statements such as East’s.

The takeover offer is rumored to be in the $8 billion range, which would be 20 percent of Apple’s $41.7 billion cash reserves, as MacRumors’ Arnold Kim points out.

The benefits of such a buyout are, however, questionable. Some suggest Apple could acquire ARM to shut out competitors wishing to use the processor, but that wouldn’t prevent them from using mobile processors from other companies. Also, Apple purchased chipmaker PA Semi in April 2008, and Steve Jobs has said the purpose of that buyout was to make system-on chips for mobile devices.

“PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods,” Jobs told NY Times in June 2008.

(A teardown of the iPad, however, reveals Apple is still using an ARM-designed processor.)

Also, Apple is ARM’s biggest customer, and ARM pockets royalties for every iPhone and iPad sold, as well as other mobile devices using ARM chips. Given those facts, an ARM acquistion does seem unnecessary indeed.

City aflame with takeover talk of ARM and Xtrata [London Evening Standard]

See Also:

• Rumor: iPad’s A4 Chip Was Outsourced
• iPad Dissection Reveals Its Secret Powers
• Development of Apple’s iPad Chip Estimated at $1B

Photo of a DIY digital clock equipped with an ARM processor: htomari/Flickr

Stephen Elop, el presidente of Microsoft’s business division has stated that his company has “no current plans” to port its Office productivity suite over to the iPad. Contenting itself with a “wait and see” approach, the Redmond outfit isn’t willing to completely close the door of possibility, but earlier hopes of seeing family favorites like Word and Excel on the iPad might have to be doused for the time being. Should that hamper the enjoyment of your new slate, you might want to console yourself with the extravagantly priced SiteClone Publisher, also available for the iPhone, which converts $900 of your hard-earned cashola into a tool that downloads data off particular sites while online, so that the user may access that content even without a connection. Doesn’t sound worthy of a tenth of its price, but maybe the government and corporate entities it’s aimed at will appreciate it more. Finally, Apple Insider is reporting whispers that Apple retail employees will be getting freebie iPads at some indeterminate point in the future, while NeoSmart has a particularly insightful breakdown of the differences between PowerPC, x86, and ARM CPU instruction sets. Hit up the links below for the full edifying experience.

iPad misses out on Office romance, but gains a $900 app and more originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Business Week, Wired, Apple Insider, NeoSmart  | Email this | Comments

AMD six-core CPU prices and clock speeds unearthed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechPowerUp, Alien Babel Tech  |  DigiTimes  | Email this | Comments

Think netbooks are on their way out? Not according to ARM CEO Warren East, who said in a recent interview with PC Pro that while netbooks now only represent 10% or so of the PC market, he believes that “over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market.” Obviously, he also thinks that would be a huge boon to ARM, and notes that while the main CPU in most netbooks may not be an ARM processor, there are probably at least two or three ARM chips of some sort in each netbook sold. In fairness, we assume that East means netbooks will evolve significantly from their present state over those next several years — but, still, ninety percent?

Update: In the company’s earnings call preceding the interview, Warren East also dropped a few tidbits about ARM’s roadmap, noting that, “Cortex-A9 will comfortably run at those sorts of frequencies (1GHz) and, indeed, with physical IP optimization, we demonstrated can scale up to 2 gigahertz today.” East further added that the “other Cortex-A9 has a lot more headroom to go, it’s a multi-processor design, so you can have quad-core — or up to quad-core implementation.”

ARM CEO says netbooks could eventually grab 90 percent of PC market originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot  |  PC Pro  | Email this | Comments