For a CPU that hasn't seen the light of day, there's a great deal of debate surrounding Apple's A6—and the suggestion that it may not appear until later in 2012. The A6 is a complex bit of hardware; rumors indicate that the chip is a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU built on 28nm at TSMC and utilizing the latter's 3D fabrication technology. We've...Read more...
Up until now, Samsung has handled all of Apple's CPU manufacturing needs, including the A4 and A5 processor. New rumors, however, suggest that TSMC has been tapped for the company's next-generation A6. Apple hasn't committed to actually purchasing chips at this point, but has handed the Taiwanese foundry what it needs to test product yields....Read more...
It's been 10 years since Microsoft and Nvidia colaborated on a console development project, but a clause in the agreement between the two companies could still have ramifications for the GPU manufacturer. The company's recent FY 2011 report with the SEC states: On March 5, 2000, we entered into an agreement...Read more...
It's only been two weeks since Apple and Samsung jointly sued each other for alleged patent infringement, but relations between the two companies have apparently already turned ice cold. Rumors in April suggested that Apple was discussing an arrangement with TSMC (there's been no official confirmation on either side). Gus Richard, an analyst...Read more...
When Steve Jobs launched the iPad 2 recently, he was even more close-mouthed about its enhancements than usual. With NVIDIA's Tegra 2 starting to ship en masse and tablets on the hot seat for 2011, there's a tremendous amount of interest in the iPad 2's nuts and bolts. Much of that interest has focused on the tablet's...Read more...
When Apple launched the iPad last April, Qualcomm's Snapdragon QSD8250 was a popular point of comparison. The results, if you were a Qualcomm fan, were a bit disappointing. Clock-for-clock, the 1GHz A4 generally whomped all over the 1GHz Snapdragon. To be fair, this could also be the result of unoptimized software or...Read more...
In the months between the iPad's announcement and the product's launch, a great deal of attention was lavished on the A4 CPU at the heart of the new device. Apple has been characteristically tight-lipped about the SoC's design and characteristics, but industry analysts have been determinedly chipping away at the question of what the A4 is—and...Read more...
Intrinsity. It's a company you have probably never, ever heard of in your entire life. And if it weren't for a little company from California called "Apple," you may perish without ever hearing of them, either. But that's not exactly the case anymore, as Apple has just decided to plunk down the necessary funds in...Read more...
Heard the latest? The stock world is abuzz over the rumor that Apple might purchase ARM Semiconductor. The rumor apparently began in London and was fueled by the combination of Apple's recent spectacular quarter and the fact that English accents sound so darn sophisticated. The train of logic goes something like this:Apple has built its own...Read more...
One of the more amusing things about being an IT journalist is that, after you've been writing for awhile, you realize that many of the juiciest or interesting rumors don't appear so much as reappear, travelling in and out of the public eye much as a comet orbits a star. In this case, the AMD+Apple chestnut has hoved...Read more...
You can bet that someone, somewhere, is a very unhappy ex-Apple employee now that one of the company's prototype next-generation iPhones was lost (and found) in a Redwood City bar. Whoever found the device (they're understandably laying low) turned it over to Gizmodo, which has spent a significant chunk of time disassembling the device, snapping...Read more...
Oh my! Could it be? Is it a dream? Is it still April 1st? The video shown here, just a day after Apple's iPad went on sale to throngs of consumers around the U.S., clearly shows a copy of Windows 7 running on a machine that was designed to run only on iPhone OS. Is it a fake? Amazingly it's not, but it's probably not the hack you were hoping...Read more...
Interest in the iPad is running high on launch day—just in time for photos of a 'naked' iPad to pop up on the FCC's website. The images detail what's underneath the hood of Apple's new tablet and while some of the text was originally grayed out, there are ways to access the original image beneath. The iPad has taken some heat from critics...Read more...
A number of iPad-related stories broke over the last couple days; we've rounded up some of the larger topics into a single news post. First up, graphic designer Paul Threatt took exception to some of Apple's iPad advertisements, several of which purported to show the device running Flash without a hitch. In the screenshot below, the iPad is...Read more...
As you've no doubt heard by now, Apple launched a new mobile computing device and it's within a product category that is all-new territory for the traditionally tight-lipped company. It's a bit of an odd choice for a company that revels in innovation, and after today's announcement, we're left with more questions than...Read more...
As you've no doubt heard by now, Apple launched a new mobile computing device and it's within a product category that is all-new territory for the traditionally tight-lipped company. It's a bit of an odd choice for a company that revels in innovation, and after today's announcement, we're left with more questions than answers on whether or...Read more...