Posted 11/04/09 at 08:38:08 AM by Paul Lilly

Graphics chip maker Nvidia appears to be interested in talent from Transmeta, and that could mean only one thing: they're moving into the x86 market, says AmTech analyst Doug Freedman.

Freedman's theory is at least plausible. During a Q&A session at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Nvidia acknowledged it would eventually try its hand at the x86 business, saying it was a matter of "when," not "if."

If Nvidia's looking for the right time, now might be it. The chip maker continues to be at odds with Intel over continued licensing disputes, the latest of which has bumped Nvidia out of contention with Nehalem. And because AMD owns ATI, the chip maker finds itself between rock and a hard place.

That's not good, considering over 30 percent of Nvidia's revenue comes from chipsets. Backing out, even if temporary, puts a lot of pressure on the company's graphics business to hold the fort while licensing disputes are worked out.

It's worth noting that Nvidia probably wouldn't go after the high performance sector, where Intel's Core i7 pretty much stands alone. But the market is wide open in the low performance segment. An Atom alternative combined with the chip maker's Ion platform could conceivably shake things up and give Intel's Atom platform some serious competition.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 10:45:29 AM by Paul Lilly

Watch out Atom, there's a new line of VIA Nano processors on the block, and they're after your lunch money. They just may have the muscle to take it, too.

The new VIA Nano 3000 series is based on the 64-bit superscalar "Isaiah' architecture and comes with a bevy of noteworthy features. Among them is the ability to support 1080p playback. Other notable traits include 64-bit support, SSE instructions, and encryption and security capabilities.

"With the VIA Nano 3000 Series, we are launching our fastest and most power-efficient processors yet," commented Richard Brown, VP International Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Coupled with our market-leading digital media chipsets, they enable the richest experience across a broad range of mobile and all-in-one system designs."

The new chips will ship in early 2010 at clockspeeds ranging from 1GHz to 2GHz and all run on an 800MHz frontside bus. The x86 parts are also compatible with both Windows and Linux.

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Posted 11/02/09 at 08:59:26 AM by Paul Lilly

According to AMD's updated CPU release schedule, the chip maker plans to put several Phenom II X4 900 series chips on the chopping block. The company has already stopped taking orders for the Phenom II X4 910 (2.6Ghz) and 945 (3.0GHz) and will stop shipments in the second quarter of 2010.

Starting in the first quarter of 2010, AMD will no longer take orders for its Phenom II X4 965 (3.4GHz) and 925 (2.8Ghz) processors, while orders for the Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz) are scheduled to end in the second quarter.

In addition to the above named parts, AMD will start phasing out its Phenom II X4 800, X3 700, and X2 500 series, and Athlon II X4 600 and X3 400 series sometime next year.

To replenish its CPU lineup, AMD plans to launch a 95W Phenom II X4 955 processor in Q2 2010, as well as its six-core desktop chip codenamed Thuban. The 2.8Ghz Thuban part will be built around a 45nm manufacturing process and come with 512KB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache.

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Posted 10/30/09 at 08:29:27 AM by Paul Lilly

Low power consumption is the name of the game in the server market, and Intel thinks it has a winning hand with its upcoming two-core 'Clarksdale' processor. The low-power slice of silicon comes rated at just 30W and is being aimed at "microservers," a new form factor Intel began pushing at IDF.

"We're looking to define a new form factor that allows companies to come up with a uni-processor [machine] that's reasonably capable and cost-effective and easy to deploy," said Jason Waxman, General Manager in Intel's Server Platforms Group. "We want this to become a new building block for the types of applications where you have lots of Web servers or a hosting type of environment or something where you need many images of a server."

Initially, Clarksdale will come clocked at 2.26GHz and take advantage of Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture. This will replace the chip maker's current reference system consisting of hardback-sized PCBs running a 1.86GHz, 45W quad-core Lynnfield chip.

Looking longer-term, Intel will attempt to reduce the power consumption footprint down to just 25W when idle, and no more than 75W  under a heavy load.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 08:37:57 AM by Paul Lilly

The economic squeeze that has been choking the tech industry might be loosening its grip. How so? Following news that the GPU market skyrocketed 21 percent in the third quarter with a strong outlook ahead, iSuppli reports global semiconductor revenues are signaling the start of a recovery.

"The seeds of the current recovery were sown in the second quarter," said Dale ford, senior vice president, market intelligence, for iSuppli. "During that period, manufacturers began to report positive book-to-bill ratios, indicating future revenue growth. This was followed by another sequential increase in revenues in the third quarter."

After a 5.8 percent decrease in 2008, the research firm estimates global semiconductor revenues will grow by 16.5 percent in 2009. Part of the reason for this comes from chip suppliers "slashing costs dramatically" to clear out unsold inventory in the third quarter.

iSuppli did warn that the first two quarters of 2010 will see revenues that are slightly down compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, but added that the second half of the year should show a strong 13.8 percent growth rate, finally ending the two-year losing streak.

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Posted 10/26/09 at 08:17:01 AM by Paul Lilly

Tilera today announced its new TILE-GX line of processors, including the TILE-Gx100, the world's first 100-core CPU. According to Tilera, the 100-core part offers the highest performance of any processor on the planet by at least a factor of four.

"The launch of the TILE-Gx family, including the world's first 100-core microprocessor, ushers in a new era of many-core processing. We believe this next generation of high-core count, ultra high-performance chips will open completely new computing possibilities," said Omid Tahernia, Tilera's CEO.

While the 100-core part is not meant to run Crysis (so please don't ask) or any other desktop application, it does offer 10 times the performance per watt as Intel's fastest Nehalem-based server chips. Assuming Tilera can convince customers to switch from Intel and Texas Instruments, The TILE-Gx100 will likely end up in data centers powering cell phone network equipment and cloud computing ventures.

Tilera says its 100-core chip will start shipping in Q4 of this year.

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Posted 10/23/09 at 03:30:09 PM by Paul Lilly

AMD recently announced a bunch of new processors, including its first triple-core Athlon II chip, and coming soon, the CPU  maker will also release a tri-core part for notebooks, Fudzilla says.

Planned as part of the Danube platform, the upcoming Phenom II triple-core N820 mobile processor will essentially be a quad-core part with one of the cores disabled. It will carry a 35W TDP and come packed with 1.5MB of total cache split into 512KB per core. It will also boast DDR3-1333 support, an HT speed of 3.6GT/s, and AMD-V support.

It's not yet known how fast the part will come clocked, nor is there any word on a projected release date or price point. But if AMD plays its cards right, the mobile Phenom could prove awfully tempting for consumers who want to step up from a dual-core platform but lack the ducats to go quad. Or it could force Intel's hand at lowering the price of its mobile Core 2 Quad chips. Either way, notebook shoppers stand to win.

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Posted 10/21/09 at 09:16:03 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Chip designer ARM has announced a new version of its popular Cortex microprocessor. The new chip, called the Cortex-A5, will have the performance if the fastest current generation ARM11 cores, as well as reduced power consumption. ARM will be making the chip available for licensing later this year.

ARM designs microprocessors, then licenses the designs to manufacturing. Most cell phones currently use ARM chips, but ARM isn’t content with owning just that market. They hope the new chip will find its way into other products, possibly in direct competition with Intel. The Cortex-A5 is fast enough to run a laptop or netbook, though Windows does not currently run on ARM chips.

Cortex-A5 chips are expected to run at clock speeds in the gigahertz range, and draw only 80 milliwatts of power. This should provide better performance and power efficiency than upcoming Intel chips. The first products with the new design should begin showing up sometime in 2011.

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