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Intel's Clover Trail silicon will be the first major push by the chipmaker for Windows 8 tablets, CNET has learned.

Clover Trail is an Atom chip slated for the second half of the year, about the same time frame that Windows 8 is due, a source familiar with Intel's plans told CNET.

Clover Trail is a follow-on to Medfield--due in the second quarter--which is aimed primarily at smartphones. While the Medfield chip will undoubtedly be used in some tablets, it is a single-core design, while Clover Trail will also be offered in dual-core versions, making it more attractive … Read more

Intel has its sights set on ARM, and now, it's showing off some mobile devices to prove it.

Technology Review reported today that it recently had the chance to try out smartphones and tablets running Intel's Atom-based "Medfield" system-on-a-chip. The devices, known as "reference designs," are made to help the company entice handset makers to develop products running its processor. And in this case, they were also designed to provide some insight into what the company has planned.

There is a lot riding on Intel's Medfield processor. For years now, the company has … Read more

Intel is doing a sweeping reorganization in its mobile device group in order to make the company more competitive in small devices like smartphones and tablets, where its chips are virtually absent.

The chip giant has created a new business unit, the mobile and communications group, Intel spokesman Robert Manetta told CNET. The move was earlier reported in Fortune.

The group is composed of four existing divisions: mobile communications, Netbook and tablet, mobile wireless, and ultra mobility.

Mike Bell and Hermann Eul--both current Intel employees--will lead the group. Eul is a former member of the Infineon technologies management board (Intel … Read more

Samsung is readying a 2GHz chip with amped up graphics, offering more evidence of a wave of high-resolution tablets to come.

The Exynos 5250 dual-core chip is based on the latest and greatest Cortex-A15 ARM design. And just in case you're not sure what kind of device the chip is targeted at, Samsung leaves no doubt. The 5250 is "designed specifically for high-end tablets," according to Samsung's press release.

But let's get the nuts and bolts out of the way first. It uses 32-nanometer "high-k metal gate" process technology (translation: smaller chip geometries … Read more

Native Client has taken only baby steps in its first three years of existence, but Google evidently is hoping its browser-boosting technology will take larger strides soon.

The company has sent out invitations to a Native Client event on the evening of December 8 at Google's Mountain View, Calif., offices, where "we plan to share some news about Native Client," show some demos, and share some wine.

Native Client, aka NaCl, lets Web-based software run natively on x86 processors--and therefore run more quickly than traditional Web apps. That's what Office and Photoshop do, too, of course, … Read more

Nvidia's Tegra chips will for the first time power a supercomputer--more evidence that ARM is movin' on up into Intel territory.

The chipmaker said today the Barcelona Supercomputing Center is developing a new hybrid supercomputer that, for the first time, combines energy-efficient Nvidia Tegra CPUs (central processing units), based on the ARM chip architecture, with Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs).

The supercomputing center plans to develop a system that is two to five times more energy-efficient compared with today's efficient high-performance computing systems. Most of today's supercomputers use Intel processors.

"In most current systems, CPUs … Read more

While last week's MacBook Pro upgrades were mostly minor, and entirely under the hood, I felt it was worth getting my hands on one of the new systems to benchmark and compare with the models we saw earlier in 2011 (read the full review of the fall 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro).

Almost as soon as these system refreshes were announced, I started receiving inquiries via Twitter, e-mail, and other forms of electronic communication (sorry, no telegrams) asking if it was worth upgrading to the new MacBook Pro. Some of these questions were about upgrading from the most recent Pro, others asked about pre-2011 models, and one was from a reader who was considering a MacBook Pro, but wanted to know if a further refresh was coming sometime in the next six months.

To best answer these, it's easiest to start by looking at exactly what's new.… Read more

Steve Jobs had some choice words for Intel that went beyond just censure to hubris in the just-released biography.

In Walter Isaacson's biography, "Steve Jobs," the former Apple CEO, who recently passed away, had significant issues with Intel as a company as well as its world-renowned processors.

Apple switched to Intel's X86 chip design in 2005 when it dropped IBM's and Motorola's PowerPC processors. And Intel chips have been powering Apple's MacBooks and Macs exclusively ever since.

But Jobs implies in the biography that Intel wasn't keeping up with the times. He … Read more

Fifty-year-old Brit Trevor Prideaux is an ordinary man with an extraordinary idea that could make it easier for others who are missing limbs to use smartphones--embed a phone dock right into your prosthetic.

It's worked for him.

The catering manager from Somerset, England, who was born without a left forearm, came up with the idea to integrate a smartphone into his prosthetic after using an iPhone.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Prideaux admits "...it became clear that this piece of technology was not ideally suited to be used with only one hand. When testing an iPhone, with the thoughts of purchase, I had to balance it on my prosthetic limb to text." … Read more