Intel Ships Samples Of Medfield Smartphone Chip

For long Intel has been the king of microprocessors. The whole PC revolution was a dual monopoly of Intel and Microsoft, well known as Wintel monopoly.  Yet, during a recent period of few short years, mobile handsets, particularly the smartphones became huge. This was a ARM game. The basic core is the same yet most companies create their own individualized SoC and and use that processor. I have mentioned elsewhere, may be Intel has missed the boat on this. I was talking about Oak Trail then. This story is about Medfield processors for smartphones. Yet, ARM is so well entrenched that the boat is actually too far gone! In fact what is more likely to happen is ARM with the Windows 8 (that has an ARM version) may start biting into the PC share. According to Apple, PCs are irrelevant in this post PC era, tablets shall rule. This is an exciting time. keep watching this space for ongoing updates!


Intel Ships Samples Of Medfield Smartphone Chip -- InformationWeek

Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU line-up

 Qualcomm has added a new processor to their Snapdragon line up, designated, APQ 8x60 family. The first one is APQ 8060. As with all new introductions at this time, this processor too has increased general performance as well as graphics performance so that a consumers overall experience is enhanced including the multimedia experience. Towards that purpose what this system on chip offers is a pair of its own Scorpion processor cores operating at 1.5 GHz and Adreno 220 graphics processor. The Scorpions use the ARM v7 instruction set. Along with the graphics processor it aims at providing viewing of stereoscopic 3D (S3D) videos or still images, 1080P HD video capture and playback, "console-quality" gaming and Flash-equipped web browsing for not only smartphone handsets but large screen tablets too.

The two cores can run asynchronously, not only at different frequencies but at different voltages too.  It supports all the ARM instructions. That includes the NEON  group of instructions assisting multimedia applications.  According to the manufacturer the processor is faster than OMAP4 from Texas Instruments. But, then OMAP 5 is already on the way. We'll have to see how the Snapdragon compares with that. According to one review the numbers for the CPU are like Linpack Scores at around 48 - 49 mflops . While the GPU, Adreno 220 is capable of rendering 88 million triangles/sec. Some benchmark scores are 39 FPS in GLBenchmark Egypt, 93.6fps in GL Benchmark Pro, 80 fps on quake 3. That's a five times improvement on its predecessor the Adreno 205.

Qualcomm updates Snapdragon CPU line-up

Quad-Core Kal-El Mobile Processors

The mobile marketplace, mobile handsets as well as the new fangled tablets  is seeing a lively amount of activity with manufacturers bringing out ever  better performing devices. This Mobile World Conference time, back in Mar, saw a lot of announcement prior to and during the conference.Nvidia's own Tegra 2 was quite a leg up in performance compared to the first generation chips.Tegra 2 was representative of the new generation as it represented the combined force of a CPU and a GPU being used to address the mobile computing needs.

The new Kal El (Superman as he is known on his birth planet) is quad core chip and should be about twice fast than the 2 core devices.. That is the CPU side. With the enhanced graphics built in the graphics performance too becomes almost double. For example if Tegra 2 had a Coremark benchmark rating of 5840, the Kal El has 11, 352 as Nvidia claimed during launch.

All this firepower is aimed at making HD video possible on mobile devices, may be even 3D video visibility besides all the smartphone features we have come to expect on smart devices./

Nvidia Unveils Quad-Core Kal-El Mobile Processors

New Intel Atom Processors

This post is a real indicator to how things are changing, changing very quickly, in the PC/Notebook, netbook, nettop categories of products. I noticed this news item in Feb 2011. In this two short months after that, March  and April, tablets came on the scene. The netbook has quickly lost its relevance, in fact even the PC is threatened as a category. Steve Jobs calls it the "post- PC era". Quite likely so!

Anyway, these Atom improvements, Cedarview processors,  are coming by the last quarter of this year. Netbook as a category was largely fueled by the Intel Atom. Yet the category is , in all likelihood, going to be wiped out. Intel will have to find a new market segment for it. Tablets may be! The processor will have higher power, to be able to manage playback of Blu-ray video and lower power consumption through the smaller 32 nm process devices.
New Intel Atom Processors for Netbooks and Nettops Due in Fourth Quarter

Nanowire Processors

The article, reporting on nanowire developments, says "A programmable processor built from nanowires could lead to chips that are far more efficient than current CMOS processors."  According tyo Wikipedia,
"A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10⁻⁹ meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. Many different types of nanowires exist, including metallic, semiconducting, and insulating are composed of repeating molecular units either organic inorganic."

This component then could be used to fabricate and link tiny components into really very small devices. The fabrication is simple so that manufacturers could get attracted and the power consumption is extremely low. A part of the reason is that the devices would be non volatile and would, thus hold the state even when power is taken off. Those are the things one would be looking for for the coming generations. The power consumption angle will be a powerful motivator for studying these devices closely! A Harvard research team is working on these structures and is led by Prof.Charles Lieber.

Nanowire processors promise chip revolution