nanometer

Intel has the go-ahead to construct a $4 billion plant in Ireland where it will design the next generation of 14 nanometer processors.

The chip giant received the OK from Ireland's lead planning agency, according to Ireland-based tech news site Silicon Republic. With that approval a done deal, the project just needs authorization from Intel's board to move forward.

Construction is expected to take two years and could create 3,500 construction jobs and 800 full-time permanent positions. The plant will be located at Intel's campus in Leixlip, County Kildare, where 4,000 people already work, Silicon … 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

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

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

Ever felt like that game or tabbed-out browser on your phone or tablet could use more memory? Samsung says it has the answer.

The South Korean electronics giant announced today that it has begun making low-power double-data-rate 2 (LPDDR2) memory using 20 nanometer class technology.

Translation: Samsung's most advanced manufacturing process allows it to pack 20 percent thinner memory chips into a 2-gigabyte package.

And that means potentially more large-screen phones and tablets with 2GB of standard system memory instead of the 1GB limit that's prevalent today. And that, in turn, means more DRAM to power memory-hungry games … Read more

That seemingly ordinary iPad 2 that Apple is selling for $399 has actually been modified internally in ways that, in some cases, can yield better battery life, according to a report.

Along with the new third-generation iPad, Apple in March began selling a lower-priced, $399 iPad 2.

Among those iPad 3 models is a variant, the "iPad 2,4," that sports a more advanced 32-nanometer version of the dual-core Apple A5 series chip, according to chip review site Anandtech. (The older iPad 2 uses an A5 based on a lagging-edge 45-nanometer manufacturing process.)

And an A5 built on … Read more

Qualcomm is proving that a phone doesn't have to be quad-core to be fast.

"Scoring 25 percent higher than its older siblings...in [central processing unit] performance benchmarks, shows Qualcomm has delivered on its promise for higher performance CPU," Jim Mielke, vice president of engineering at ABI Research, said in a note today, referring to the HTC One S.

That phone comes with the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system.

The HTC smartphone taps the first Qualcomm 28-nanometer (nm) chip -- the "Snapdragon" MSM8260A. That's a big step up in chip … Read more

Nvidia mobile chief Rene Haas laid out in an interview with CNET some of the device choices Windows 8 shoppers may face this fall. Inside some, Nvidia snuggles up next to Intel. In others, Nvidia and Intel are worlds apart.

Nvidia is in a unique position because it offers chips that land in devices in two giant markets: Windows-Intel and ARM--the latter's chip designs power virtually every smartphone and tablet on the planet.

For Windows-Intel, Nvidia's mobile focus is laptops. There, Nvidia will supply its latest power-efficient graphics processing units (GPUs), the 640M and 620M--formally announced today … Read more

Intel today spelled out in more exacting detail just what the Ivy Bridge chip delay means in the wake of comments published Sunday from an Intel executive.

"Reports of an eight-week delay to the Ivy Bridge launch are inaccurate and our schedule has only been impacted by a few weeks," spokesman Jon Carvill told CNET today.

So, for instance, if a desktop Ivy Bridge product was slated for an April launch, that would be pushed to May. And a mobile product scheduled for May, would launch in June. Intel always staggers production schedules. For example, Intel's most … Read more