qualcomm

Qualcomm's first quad-core Snapdragon chip has arrived in a tablet -- but only for those with $1,300 burning a hole in their pockets and developers.

The tablet packs an APQ8064 Snapdragon S4 quad-core chip -- one of the most highly-anticipated quad-core ARM processors. Why? Because Qualcomm S4 silicon -- currently dual-core -- can be found in popular mobile devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S III and the HTC One S.

The S4 is also slated to appear in the 4G version of the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity tablet.

And that means, of course, we can expect the quad-core … Read more

Qualcomm just missed Wall Street expectations with its latest earnings report, forcing the Snapdragon maker to slightly cut its outlook for the fourth fiscal quarter.

The mobile chip maker reported a third fiscal quarter net income of $1.21 billion, or 69 cents a share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 85 cents a share on a revenue of $4.63 billion.

Wall Street was expecting Qualcomm to report fiscal third earnings of 86 cents a share on revenue of $4.67 billion. Qualcomm said in its second quarter that it was having trouble meeting meeting demand.

Qualcomm chairman and CEO Paul … Read more

Support for multi-core processors was one of the biggest pieces of news to come from Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 unveiling today. Qualcomm has just confirmed that it will supply its dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus chipset to power future Windows phones.

The Snapdragon S4 is Qualcomm's fastest chip to date and goes up to clock speeds of 1.7GHz per core. It currently powers four of the U.S. market's fastest phones, the HTC One X, HTC Evo 4G LTE, HTC One S, and the Samsung Galaxy S3. Both phones earned CNET Editors' Choice awards, in part due … Read more

In just a couple of weeks, the U.S. will receive its first Samsung Galaxy S III smartphones. The flagship phones share most of the features of the global version of the device -- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and a huge 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, to name but two -- but the U.S. variant differs on three points: LTE capability, 2GB RAM (versus 1GB in the global version), and a dual-core processor instead of a quad-core processor.

It's this last spec that tends to get people in a tizzy, despite the fact that quad-core processors aren't necessarily faster or more efficient than dual-core CPUs.

In fact, CNET and other tech outlets have found Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 chipset more than capable in the HTC One X and HTC One S phones, which were also the first to debut with Qualcomm's fastest-yet system-on-a-chip.

There's a good reason that Samsung and HTC both chose Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 processor for their flagship handsets, instead of the quad-core processors introduced in the global version of the devices (Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor, in HTC's case.) And that reason more or less boils down to LTE.… Read more

Intel will do what many would consider, at the very least, unusual: make the very kind of chip that it has vowed to crush.

That would be ARM, Intel's biggest nemesis.

First a little background. Intel is the world's largest chipmaker because it owns the x86 design that Apple and all of the world's PC makers use for laptops, desktops, and servers.

But Intel's x86 chips must compete mightily these days against ARM, the chip of choice for smartphones and tablets. Those chips are supplied by Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Samsung.

So, this is where … Read more

Windows phones will finally be able to support more than one processor when the next version of Microsoft's mobile operating system hits, Qualcomm suggested Wednesday at Computex.

With Android phones already making the jump to quad-core it seems to be almost a throwback to the dawn of smartphones that Windows Phone 7 devices are still single core.

Generally, dual-core devices perform better than those with only one processor core -- as Microsoft and Intel know well in the Windows laptop world -- so it would be logical for Redmond to finally offer support for more processors in the Windows … Read more

Device makers continue to concoct novel designs to take advantage of Windows 8 Metro interface.

On Tuesday at Computex in Taipei, Samsung showed a Series 5 ultrabook running Windows 8 with a 13.3-inch touch display. … Read more

One of the reasons Windows 8 is a big deal is the promise of newfangled devices that span laptop and tablet design. Here are some the hottest appearing at Computex in Taipei so far.

Asus more than any single PC maker is pointing the way toward this brave new device world with the Taichi, a dual-screen Windows 8 ultrabook sporting an extra tablet-mode display on the back of the display panel.

And that screen is no ordinary display: it boasts a resolution of 1,920x1,080: that's a lot of pixels for an 11.6-inch tablet screen. And there'… Read more

The Samsung's Galaxy S III's vast 4.8-inch screen sits atop a quad-core processor and Sony camera, among other goodies exposed in detail via a chipworks teardown.

Before we dive into the specs, let's be clear. For a phone, it's big. Big enough to be brushing up against 5-inch mini tablets.

"I'd say it does verge on being unnecessarily large, but thankfully it isn't as ludicrously big as the Samsung Galaxy Note with its 5.3-inch screen," said CNET"s Jessica Dolcourt in her review of the phone.

And note this … Read more