Intel has revealed limited specifications on its fourth-generation "Haswell" Core-series processors' video circuitry. The upcoming chip line features a graphical power boost well above the third generation, with three discrete levels. One tier is aimed at power efficiency, with two tailored for increased video performance.
Intel has received permission to build a new processor fabrication facility in Ireland, after receiving the go-ahead from Irish planning agency An Bord Pleanála. The $4 billion chip plant will be used by the processor manufacturer to create its 14-nanometer processors, with only the final decision from Intel management left before it can be constructed.
A prominent Taiwanese processor maker that is already supplying Apple and other companies with chips announced on Friday that it expects to be responsible for "almost all" 28-nanometer chips made in 2013, a startling prediction that has the industry buzzing that the company has secured a large-scale deal with the iPhone maker. The news from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company that its output of the processors will triple this year, along with a possible new US-based facility, leads analysts to suspect a further Apple connection.
Intel has demonstrated its fourth generation of Core processors at the company's CES press event. The demonstration also gave the chip maker a chance to demonstrate a new quad-core 22nm Atom System-on-Chip processor it calls "Bay Trail," as well as low-powered versions of existing architectures and processors aimed towards developing nations.
According to reports in a Taiwanese electronics-industry trade publication, Apple is shifting orders for the base ARM chips on which the company builds its Ax line of in-house processors away from Samsung-owned SemCo and towards Taipei-based Unimicron Technology Corporation. If true, it would be yet another move away from using Samsung as a supplier, presumably due to the latter's copying of its technology and litigious SEP abuse.
Intel has all but completely denied the rumors that it would move towards only producing hardwired processors. The chip producer has said it would continue to make processors that use sockets in the future, though it was not able to talk about "specific long-term product roadmap plans" which could still be a socket-less existence.
Intel is moving towards creating processors that are not replaceable, according to a number of reports. It has been claimed that a new 14-nanometer architecture called Broadwell will replace the current Land Grid Array (LGA) with a Ball Grid Array (BGA), which would make processor-only upgrades effectively impossible to perform.
Researchers from Intel are working on processors for mobile devices which will use high numbers of cores. The lab hopes to put a 48-core chip into a smartphone or tablet, dwarfing the dual and quad-core processors currently used, and suggest such a technology could hit the market within the next five to ten years.
Former AMD chief engineer and US-based Samsung chip designer Jim Mergard is leaving the company to work for Apple, where his expertise on desktop system processors and SoC (systems on a chip) will make him a formidable asset in yet another front in the competition between tech companies: original chip design. Both Apple and Samsung rely increasingly on their own in-house designed chips, though both use technology from ARM as a foundation for their work, which is largely used in mobile devices.
Jim Keller, a veteran chip designer who started with Digital Equipment Corporation's Alpha processor before eventually starting P.A. Semi and subsequently joining Apple, has left the company to join Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Keller will help lead the company in an effort to develop lower-power but more-efficient processors based on the ARM design, similar to the work he did with P.A. Semi and Apple. AMD recently noted it was now licensing ARM's processor designs.
Fujitsu, NEC and NTT Docomo have formed an alliance to manufacture their own smartphone mobile processors. Access Network Technology will see Fujitsu taking a majority 52.8 percent stake, with Docomo holding 19.9 percent and NEC 17.8 percent - Fujitsu Semiconductor will pick up the remaining 9.5 percent stake. The partnership has been borne out necessity as mobile chip supplies are constrained due to global demand, while the Japanese companies want to reduce their reliance on chips sourced from outside Japan.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini has made it clear to investors and reporters that the company will continue to angle for more business from Apple in mobile devices, saying his mission was to "ensure our silicon is so compelling [that] they can't ignore us." Intel is already responsible for the chips in all of Apple's desktop and notebook products, but has longed to replace ARM-based processors as the heart of its mobile lineup, Forbes reports.
Intel will expand its push in server platform, chipsets and processors into the second quarter of the year, DigiTimes reports. The chip company recently unveiled the E5-2600 series processors, which some believe will end up in refreshed Mac Pros in the near future, as well as three Xeon E5-1600 processors. It's set to debut a new server platform called Carlow that combines the USB 3-supporting Panther Point (C216) chipset with Ivy Bridge processors.
AMD on Tuesday introduced its 2010 lineup of components for mainstream desktop PCs, including a 3.0GHz Athlon II X4 offering. The X4 640 is said to be the company's first quad-core desktop CPU in the Athlon II family to run at 3.0GHz, a modest increase over the current X4 635 model that offers 2.9GHz performance.
Five owners of Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard laptops have combined their lawsuits against Nvidia in an attempt to make the company replace allegedly flawed processors, according to court documents. The five plaintiffs filed an amended complaint last week in San Francisco federal court that accused Nvidia of violating the consumer-protection laws. According to one plaintiff Todd Feinstein of Louisiana, after purchasing his MacBook in April 2008, the computer ran hot, periodically shut-down without warning and displayed only grey or black at times.
IBM on Thursday announced plans to use water to cool its next-generation of computer chips internally, allowing it to develop faster multi-layer processors that don't require additional external cooling. To this end, the company showed off a prototype 3D chip with thousands of tiny water passages in between the chip's layers. The company says interlayer cooling was necessary, as traditional heat sinks weren't efficient enough to cool today's densely packaged processors. The water-carrying tubes are just 50 microns in diameter, and integrating them into the chip necessitated the development of a new thin-film soldering technique by IBM engineers.
On the heels of its C7-based OpenBook reference design, VIA Technologies on Thursday formally introduced its VIA Nano processor family based on the "Isaiah" architecture. VIA claims that the Nano family, which uses Fujitsu’s 65 nanometer process, offers as much as four times the performance of its previous-generation within the same power and thermal envelope, while offering pin-compatibility with VIA C7 processors. Introduced in January, the new low-power CPU features out-of-order processing, a large 1MB L2 cache, and an improved FPU for 2-4 times the performance of the previous-generation C7 processor at the same clock speeds. While already sampling the chips to vendors, VIA says expects to ship the low-power (L-series) and ultra-low-power (U-series) Nano chips in the third quarter in speeds up to 1.8GHz.
Details of AMD's planned announcements at Computex have emerged, OEM sources for TG Daily are said to claim. The Puma platform is expected to be launched at the beginning of the show, June 3rd, and will feature the "Griffin" CPU, now named the Turion Ultra. Also said to be included is the RS780M, a mobile version of the 780G chipset; on this will be a Mobility Radeon 3200 graphics chip, and Wi-Fi receivers from the likes of Atheros and Broadcom.
AMD on Monday announced it will be adding Business Class platforms to its line-up of multi-core CPUs. The maker's dual-core Athlon and triple or quad-core Phenom CPUs, coupled with AMD 780V chipset and optional ATI Radeon integrated graphics support are featured in the Business Class. The benefits of the new platforms will include up to 24-month image stability when installed in first-issue desktops, and a minimum 12 months in subsequent models. Furthermore, all are energy efficient thanks to Energy Star 4.0 rating.
AMD engineers this week said that the company plans on introducing new 12-core processors later this year. The first processors based on 45nm Shanghai platform are due later this year and will be nearly identical to the B3 variant of the Socket 1207 Opteron (Barcelona) shipping today, according to DailyTech. The processors will reportedly use the faster HyperTransport 3.0 for inter-CPU communication and will debut later this year as a "native six-core" Shanghai derivative, currently code-named Istanbul. That processor, the report claims, is "clearly targeted at Intel's recently announced six-core, 45nm Dunnington processor." A few months later, Shanghai and its derivatives will also get twin-die per package treatment, allowing for up to 12-cores per package, the report says.
