Processors

Apple appears to have hit another consumer sweet spot with the iPad Mini. So, how much sweeter can it get in 2013?

First, some numbers that point to just how popular the 7.9-inch iPad seems to be. NPD DisplaySearch had originally expected display makers to ship 6 million iPad Mini displays in the fourth quarter of 2012. But last month it quickly upped that estimate to about 12 million.

Though it's not clear if display makers were actually able to ship that many, owing to supply constraints in regard to displays, it's safe to say the Mini'… Read more

A fresh review of a Windows 8 Acer tablet by chip site Anandtech shows it beating ARM-based devices pretty consistently on central processor unit performance benchmarks but not on graphics. The site also noted a "bug" that has delayed the release of some Intel-based tablets.

"The [Intel] Atom architecture is still faster than every single ARM based [processor] core on the market today with the exception of the Cortex A15," -- ARM's newest chip design -- wrote Anandtech when it posted a review of the Acer W510 today.

Intel's Atom z2760 "Clover Trail&… Read more

Back in August, we heard that Samsung wanted to go forward with a substantial investment in a Texas plant to boost chip production. Now U.S. officials have given their approval.

Samsung Electronics plans to turn the Austin chipmaking plant into a more profitable venture through the $3.9 billion investment, aiming for a renovation to try to cope with the increasing demand for mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Now talks have been completed with Texas officials, production line expansion and renovation has been given permission to go ahead, according to Reuters.

Supply chain issues have the potential to … Read more

Nvidia's mobile future might have been leaked yesterday on a Chinese forum site.

A user going by the name "Xenomorph" yesterday republished an image shared on China's Twitter equivalent Weibo, detailing what could be the mobile processor that Nvidia launches to replace the Tegra 3. And for now, it's being called "Wayne."

According to the image, Wayne, which might eventually be renamed Tegra 4, comes with Nvidia's 4-Plus-1 technology, meaning the chipset will have four regular cores and another low-power core designed to save battery life. That CPU is described as a &… Read more

Is the desktop PC on the road to oblivion? Well, let's put it this way: it's hardly an Intel priority anymore.

Yeah, desktops will still be around in 2016, but it's not something Intel -- which makes most PC processors -- thinks about a lot.

Survival in the age of the big-screen smartphone and tablet is what Intel thinks about.

A recent 75-page study from Goldman Sachs titled "Clash of the Titans" puts it, rather delicately, this way: "We believe the ongoing share shift in consumer computing toward smartphones and tablets and away from … Read more

New York state has emerged as a chipmaking hot spot -- hot enough to fuel the latest speculation about Apple's plans to push for more U.S.-based manufacturing.

In a story on Tuesday, the Albany Times Union speculated that Apple may be behind a push to set up a chipmaking facility in upstate New York.

An "undisclosed company searching for a site for a chip [plant] could be a major supplier to Apple for its popular iPhone and iPad devices," Larry Rulison of the Times Union wrote.

And that undisclosed company? Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) … Read more

MediaTek will take on Samsung and Nvidia in the emerging market for mobile quad-core chips.

The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based company today announced the MT6589, a quad-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) that integrates a modem supporting HSPA+ and other international standards.

Integration of a modem into a quad-core chip is a first, the company says.

The processor is based on ARM's Cortex-A7 design, the same technology used in Qualcomm's upcoming quad-core S4 processors.

But that Qualcomm chip won't be available commercially until well into next year. The MediaTek chip, on the other hand, will appear in smartphones that are expected to … Read more

Intel today disclosed technology that it hopes will get more of its silicon inside smartphones and tablets.

At the International Electron Devices Meeting, Intel laid out its next-generation 22-nanometer "SoC" system-on-a-chip technology. An SoC puts most of a device's core functions onto one piece of silicon and is typically used in mobile devices where space and power efficiency are paramount.

"In the past...we were focused primarily on developing transistors with ever higher performance," Mark Bohr, an Intel senior fellow, said to journalists in a teleconference. "Now we're developing technologies with a much … Read more

IBM has advanced the technology of silicon photonics, fabricating a microchip that has built-in components to send and receive data over optical links.

Researchers have built optical data links into chips before, but IBM's move is notable because it uses conventional chipmaking equipment geared for chips with 90-nanometer features. Today's chips use metal wires to exchange data, but optical links offer the potential of higher transfer speeds over longer distances.

The chip can include several optical components including wavelength division multiplexers that let the chip send and receive signals with multiple frequencies of light, an approach that lets … Read more