CPUs
Qualcomm this morning is taking the wraps off of a new smartphone SoC for the mid-range market, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. The second of Qualcomm’s down-market ‘S’ tier Snapdragon 7 parts, the 7s series is functionally the entry-level tier for the Snapdragon 7 family – and really, most Qualcomm-powered handsets in North America. With three tiers of Snapdragon 7 chips, the 7s can easily be lost in the noise that comes with more powerful chips. But the latest iteration of the 7s is a bit more interesting than usual, as rather than reusing an existing die, Qualcomm has seemingly minted a whole new die for this part. As a result, the company has upgraded the 7s family to use Arm’s current Armv9 CPU cores...
Lucid's Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms
We first met LucidLogix (now just Lucid) 2.5 years ago at IDF. The promise was vendor-agnostic multi-GPU setups with perfect performance scaling. The technology was announced at a very...
40 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2011Intel's Codename Light Peak Launches as Thunderbolt
Back at IDF 2010, we wrote about Intel Light Peak nearing its eventual launch in 2011. Back then, the story was a 10 Gbps or faster physical link tunneling...
108 by Brian Klug on 2/25/2011AT Bench Update: Now with Mobile, Smartphone, and GPU 2011 Results!
Since starting our Bench results databases, they've grown by leaps and bounds. Bench is a central place where you can compare products based on the variety of tests and...
36 by Dustin Sklavos on 2/1/2011The Source of Intel's Cougar Point SATA Bug
I just got off the phone with Intel’s Steve Smith (VP and Director of Intel Client PC Operations and Enabling) and got some more detail on this morning’s 6-series...
127 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/31/2011Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis
In our Sandy Bridge review I pointed out that Intel was unfortunately very conservative in one area of the platform: its chipset. Although the 6-series chipset finally brought native...
162 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/31/2011The Brazos Review: AMD's E-350 Supplants ION for mini-ITX
AMD has been curiously absent from the value netbook and nettop segments since Atom’s arrival nearly three years ago. These markets are highly profitable only for component vendors, as...
176 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/27/2011What a Day: AMD's CEO Dirk Meyer Resigns
I don’t usually pay much attention to corporate executives and the hirings, firings and resignations thereof. It’s not that executives are unimportant, it’s that they’re not exactly what I’m...
67 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011Intel Settles With NVIDIA: More Money, Fewer Problems, No x86
NVIDIA and Intel just released their respective PR announcements a bit ago, but after much rumor mongering it’s official: Intel and NVIDIA are the latest duo to bury the...
30 by Ryan Smith on 1/10/2011CES 2011: Intel WiDi 2.0 Brings New Media Extenders
One major feature of mobile Sandy Bridge is support for Intel WiDi 2.0. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, WiDi 2.0 uses SNB’s Quick Sync engine...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011A Closer Look at the Sandy Bridge Die
Aside from a stack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I snagged something else of interest at my Intel meeting at CES 2011: a shot of some exposed Sandy Bridge...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011Intel Insider: Sandy Bridge Gets 1080p High Bitrate Streaming
In an attempt to ultimately raise its stock price, Intel is trying to shock and surprise investors by keeping details scarce on unannounced products. We saw the first example...
20 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/10/2011Lucid Enables Quick Sync with Discrete Graphics on Sandy Bridge
If you read our Sandy Bridge Review you’ll know that we were very excited about Intel’s Quick Sync hardware transcode engine. It easily offers at least twice the performance...
44 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/7/2011AMD and GlobalFoundries, CES 2011
The entities formerly known as AMD—namely, AMD and GlobalFoundries—are both here in Vegas for CES, and we had an opportunity to stop by and discuss their current and future...
73 by Jarred Walton on 1/7/2011Ask Your 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor Questions Here, Update: Now with Answers!
ASUS and Intel are putting together a webcast that they've invited me to attend. The topic of discussion? Sandy Bridge. The webcast will air after Intel's official announcement of...
223 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/5/2011The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested
Intel never quite reached 4GHz with the Pentium 4. Despite being on a dedicated quest for gigahertz the company stopped short and the best we ever got was 3.8GHz...
284 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/3/2011AMD's Winter Update: Athlon II X3 455, Phenom II X2 565 and Phenom II X6 1100T
AMD is usually pretty aggressive with turning process tweaks and yield improvements into new products. Just two months ago AMD gave us the Athlon II X3 450 and the...
66 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/7/2010The Brazos Performance Preview: AMD E-350 Benchmarked
Last week I mentioned that I had recently spent some time with AMD down in Austin, TX, benchmarking its upcoming Brazos platform. The Brazos platform is composed of an...
222 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/16/2010VIA's Dual Core Nano & VN1000 Chipset Previewed
I haven’t had an official product briefing with VIA in years. The last time I met with a representative from the company was two years ago outside of IDF...
54 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/15/2010Previewing AMD's Brazos, Part 1: More Details on Zacate/Ontario and Fusion
I hate to keep things from you all, but last week I was diligently working in a room at AMD’s new campus in Austin, Texas. You see, AMD wanted...
115 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2010AMD’s Radeon HD 6800 Series & Llano “Fusion” APU: A Story in Pictures
We happen to have the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 in-house for testing at the moment. We wanted to play Show & Tell, but the nice...
54 by Ryan Smith on 10/19/2010