Items tagged with Atom
2009 and the struggles that came with it must feel like a century ago for Intel. This week, Intel released their latest quarterly earnings numbers, and they're really impressive. Intel managed to gather $11.1 billion in revenue, with a gross margin of 66%, an operating income of $4.1 billion and a net income of $3.0 billion. That represents an earnings-per-share of $0.52. It also represents an 18% year-over-year increase in revenue, and if you thought they may be the best ever, they are. “Intel’s third-quarter results set all-time records for revenue and operating income,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. So, what was driving sales? PC Client Group revenue was up...
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Acer's Aspire One range of netbooks has been highly regarded for some time now, and while many other netbook makers jumped at the chance to integrate Intel's newest Atom processor, Acer held back some. That's okay though, as their new Aspre One AOD255 looks to have been worth the wait. It ships with the Atom N550 dual-core CPU, DDR3 memory support (1GB included), Windows 7 Starter, Office Starter 2010 and a 250GB hard drive. It also ships in a variety of colors (red, black, brown and aquamarine), and if you're looking for something a little cheaper, two other machines are launching under its umbrella. The Acer Aspire One AO721 (11.6") and Aspire One AO521 (10.1") netbooks feature AMD Athlon II...
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Zotac recently launched a couple of revamped ZBox nettops, that feature a new, sleeker design and integrated Blu-Ray drive, the ZBox HD-ID33 and HD-ID34. The only difference between the two models is the included / not included RAM and hard drive; the ID33 is better suited to DIYers who may already have a spare 2.5" HDD and SO-DIMM laying around, while the ID34 ships with a 250GB 5400RPM drive and 2GB of RAM. There's also NVIDIA's next generation Ion (Ion 2) inside, which means that 1080p playback and some light-duty gaming should theoretically be no problem... Zotac Blu-ray HD-ID34 Nettop / HTPC Review...
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Nettops are not nearly as popular as their mobile contemporaries, i.e. netbooks, arguably due to the lack of any significant horsepower within the tiny machines. Up until now, most nettops have been good for little more than basic Office duties, Web surfing, and occasional 720p (max) movie playback. There's a fine line that has to be walked with a nettop; there's far too little space to shove a Core i3 or better CPU in there, and besides, companies are trying to keep pricing at reasonable levels. Thus, nettops have largely been left with one main processor option: Intel's Atom family. If you've read a few of our past netbook reviews, you may have noticed that we've been somewhat...
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When Intel announced it would miss its Q3 targets in late August, there was speculation as to whether or not AMD would escape the same fate. With the third quarter having officially ended, the answer is no. According to a statement the company made late last week, revenue will be down 1-4.5 percent compared to second-quarter revenue of 1.65 billion. AMD didn't provide much detail on the change, saying only: "The sequential decrease is due to weaker than expected demand, particularly in the consumer notebook market in Western Europe and North America." AMD's new mobile processing is supposed to pack a punch, but that only helps if people buy them. AMD picked up a significant bit of notebook share...
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Roughly 13 months ago, we wrote a story discussing the importance of Tegra to NVIDIA's future and why the company has devoted so much time and money to it. Just over a year later, NVIDIA has affirmed that Tegra remains an essential part of its future business model, while tacitly admitting that the number of Tegra/Tegra 2 devices on the market hasn't ramped as aggressively as the company had hoped. When we pressed for details on why Tegra 2 had largely fizzled after its impressive debut at CES last year, company reps told us it wasn't a manufacturing issue or a problem with any part of Tegra 2's silicon. Instead, NV noted that mobile products tend to have long lead times (the new ARM Cortex A-15...
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Intel kicked off the third and final day of IDF 2010 with a keynote detailing the future evolution of devices it refers to as "contextually aware." This is far from the first time Intel has put a spotlight on the future of device design; we've covered several announcements in this vein over the past 12 months. According to Justin Rattner, CTO and Senior Fellow at Intel, context awareness will change the nature of how we interact with devices. Intel's goal is to create devices that can function more like personal assistants and less like PDAs. These theoretical gadgets would gather and process both hard data (physical location, outside conditions) and soft data (calendar, social networking preferences,...
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AMD always hosts an event in the shadow of Intel's Developer Forum, so it wasn't surprising to hear the company was demoing its upcoming Zacate processor this week. Zacate is the codename associated with AMD's 18W dual-core APU and will target the $500 notebook market. The second chip, Ontario, is a 9W APU that'll chase after Atom's business. According to AMD's Director of Fusion Marketing, John Taylor, Zacate-class APUs are ideal platforms for what he calls "no-compromise cloud computing." Why's that? He's glad you asked. Increasingly, we go online for collaboration and social interaction...Nowhere is this more evident than on social networking sites. These sites...often requir[e] quite a bit...
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Day two of the Intel Developer’s Forum was kicked off with a couple of keynote addresses from Renee James, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel and Doug Davis, the Vice President and General Manager of the Embedded and Communications Group. The main focus of their talks revolved around Atom, the ecosystem surrounding it and other low-power Intel platforms, as well as physics and improving the gaming experience for Intel IGP enabled products. Physics and Intel Architecture and Atom CE 4200 - Day 2 IDF Keynote https://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Developer-Forum-2010-Day-2-Keynote-Coverage/...
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Day two of the Intel Developer’s Forum was kicked off with a couple of keynote addresses from Renee James, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel and Doug Davis, the Vice President and General Manager of the Embedded and Communications Group. The main focus of their talks revolved around Atom and the ecosystem surrounding it and other low-power Intel platforms. Renee started off talking about some of the history of mobile PC and more specifically of tablets. She went on for a bit outlining the evolution of tablets and talking about the improvements in graphics, compute performance, touch interfaces,...
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Earlier this week, we detailed GlobalFoundries roadmap for the next few years and touched on the company's rapidly growing list of partners. A new announcement from ARM today sheds fresh detail on where the semiconductor industry is headed in the next few years. Say hello to the next-generation ARM core, the ARM Cortex-A15. Unlike the ARM-A5 architecture, whose launch we covered nearly a year ago, ARM-15 is aimed squarely at high-end markets. The degree of overlap suggests that A15 may nudge A8 out of the lineup altogether. The A15 is based on the same ARM v7-A Cortex architecture as the A9, but adds support for LPAE (Long Physical Address Extensions) and is designed to maintain cache coherency...
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After witnessing countless press releases for single-core netbooks over the past couple of years, the dual-core revolution is finally here, and it's Asus that's leading the charge. According to Asus, its newly introduced Eee PC 1015PEM netbook is the first netbook in the U.S. to feature Intel's two-cored Atom N550 processor, though it certainly won't be the last. Likely serving as a blueprint for all future dual-core netbook releases, the Eee PC 1015PEM ships with a 10.1-inch LED backlit screen, up to 2GB of DDR3 memory, 160GB/250GB/320GB hard drive (Asus also tosses in 500GB of its cloud-based Eee Storage), 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 0.3MP webcam, HD audio, three dedicated USB 2.0 ports (USB 3.0 optional),...
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We are back again this week with a brand new video podcast to talk about some recent developments in the hardware and technology scenes. Topics in this episode of the HotHardware Video Podcast include the coverage from the Global Technology Conference, Origin’s insane PC / Xbox 360 hybrid, the AMD FirePro 9800 professional workstation graphics card, Zotac’s new Blu-Ray equipped nettop, and we hint at a new Tegra 2 powered tablet and high-end OCZ SSD that we’ll be covering in-depth soon... Show Notes: 0:13 - GlobalFoundries Details Plans For 2011 And Beyond 2:00 - Origin PC Introduces "Big O" Gaming Tower With PC And Xbox 360 5:04 - ATI Introduces Ultra High End FirePro V9800...
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We seem to be heading into an era where netbooks aren't being positioned as the bargain bin machines that they once were. We can't recall the last time we saw a $199 or $249 netbook arrive. The vast majority coming our way now are priced at around $399 at least, and Asus' Eee PC 1215N fits the mold here. With a $499 MSRP, this isn't the netbook to get if you're looking to pinch pennies, but it does offer the latest Intel Atom CPU, NVIDIA's next generation Ion GPU with Optimus graphics switching technology. That's solid power in a netbook... Asus Eee PC 1215N Netbook Review...
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Is Intel's Pinetrail platform really all its cracked up to be? We recently took an in-depth look at the 1.8GHz processor / platform, but it's a different thing to take a look at the same thing in a shipping product that's available today to consumers. We have been longing for faster Atom processors, and particularly in recent months, we felt as if even the newer Atom chips weren't fast enough compared to their predecessors. That said, the new Atom D525 dual-core chip holds a bit more promise, at least on paper, for the next generation of netbooks. We seem to be heading into an era where netbooks aren't the bargain bin machines that they once were. We can't recall the last time we saw a $199 or...
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In the wake of AMD's architecture discussions at Hot Chips last month, eyes have increasingly turned towards the company's upcoming Bobcat processor. Now, AMD's director of Fusion marketing, John Taylor, has written a blog post with additional details on the diminutive chip, including several photos. We know the unveiling of this info was in Europe, but would it have killed someone to plunk down a quarter? We've covered much of the company's plans before, so we'll skip straight to the new stuff. Taylor notes that the upcoming Fusion processor will include a "new" UVD block, though we're guessing this term refers more to the need to redesign a block for the APU as opposed to a new set of features/capabilities....
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HP is definitely on a roll. First comes a slew of new notebooks and a Wireless Adapter, and now the company is issuing a pair of new netbooks. Way to round things off, guys! The newly redesigned Mini 210 is a sleeker, slimmer and more powerful Mini than what you're used to, equipped with built-in Wi-Fi, a webcam, microphone, near-full-size keyboard and a dual-core Intel Atom N550 or Atom N455/N475. The unit supports DDR3 memory, measures under 1" thick, weighs 3.1lbs. and comes standard with an inline 6-cell battery that is supposedly good for 10.75 hours of battery life. It's available in charcoal, crimson red, lavender frost, luminous rose and ocean drive. It has a 10.1" display, and it's equipped...
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Intel just recently announced that its dual-core Atom N550 processor will be shipping in no less than 12 netbooks now and in the coming weeks, so we'll cut Hewlett Packard (HP) some slack for being slow to update its main product pages. But while the company's HP Mini 5103 netbook landing still shows old specs, the product's Energy Star profile and user manual reveal that a dual-core upgrade is in the netbook's cards. As originally configured, the HP Mini 5103 comes with the now oldie-moldy, single-core N455 (or N475). The Atom N550 upgrade comes clocked a little slower than both of those other chips (1.5GHz versus 1.66GHz and 1.83GHz, respectively), but with two cores, it should provide a much...
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Earlier this week we discussed new details on AMD's two next-generation cores, Bobcat and Bulldozer. AMD built the two processors to fill two distinct markets, with Bobcat focusing on netbooks/notebooks, and Bulldozer in servers, workstations, and high-end desktops. It's now rumored that AMD is investigating whether or not it could make a decent bit of scratch by launching Bobcat-powered server processors. Don't laugh—it makes more sense than you think. The server industry has embraced virtualization as a means of improving utilization and overall efficiency, but it's not the option. There are various reasons why—in some cases, high-end x86 processors chew through too much energy...
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There is little argument that most netbook owners wouldn't take a little bit more performance headroom in their machine if it was available. The reality is, though Intel has mopped the floor with netbook design-wins that employ its ultra low-power Atom processor, performance on Atom-based machines has always felt a little (or a lot perhaps?) emaciated. And that's regardless of whether you're looking to run multimedia or gaming applications. Regardless, technology marches on, especially with the endless resources of Intel's monstrous fabrication technologies, and as such, Intel's darling netbook processor has been evolving of course. Today we've got a quick, breaking look at an...
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Yesterday, we chided AMD for its decision not to reveal more details about Bulldozer and Bobcat, but it turns out we didn't have all the facts. AMD was planning on disclosing more information later in the day at Hot Chips—but the company failed to disclose that tid-bit before we went live with our previous coverage. We're going to take a look at the new information about Bobcat and Bulldozer that's subsequently been revealed; if you want more general backround data you can get it here... Next-Gen AMD Bobcat and Bulldozer CPU Deep Dive...
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Yesterday, we chided AMD for its decision not to reveal more details about Bulldozer and Bobcat, but it turns out we didn't have all the facts. AMD was planning on disclosing more information later in the day at Hot Chips—but the company failed to disclose that before we went live with our previous coverage. We're going to take a look at the new information about Bobcat and Bulldozer that's subsequently been revealed; if you want more general background data, check the links above. Bully For Bobcat We'll start with the high-level block diagram of Bobcat's architecture, then step through some of the pertinent details. Bobcat shares certain characteristics with Atom but AMD's new...
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