While most of us spent Labor Day weekend squeezing in one final barbeque before the kids head back to school and we jump back into the hustle and bustle of the work week, Intel was busy beefing up its 32nm Sandy Bridge processor line. The Santa Clara chip maker unveiled a price list detailing 16 new processors spread across its desktop and...Read more...
AMD and Intel are both preparing to launch new CPU architectures between now and the end of the year, but rumors have surfaced that suggest the two companies may delay their product introductions, albeit for different reasons. Taiwanese site DigiTimes refers to various unnamed "PC Players" who have apparently reported...Read more...
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...
Nvidia and HP have developed a limited edition GPU Starter Kit meant to provide a drop-shipped means for anyone interested in developing for HPC applications. The term 'starter kit' is very nearly a misnomer, as the package deal provides a system more than sufficient to get the ball rolling. The system contains eight ProLiant SL390 G7 servers,...Read more...
There aren't many competitions where the one that sucks the best is considered the winner, and even less that are fit for print on a family friendly technology website. But we're talking about vacuums here, so we're in the clear. We know that's going to disappoint some of you who were hoping for...something else, but get over it and read on,...Read more...
Microsoft's initial declaration that Windows 8 would run on ARM CPUs and early product demonstrations earned the nascent OS a great deal of attention. Since then, however, the company has remained largely silent on the features and capabilities of the new operating system, even as questions regarding the OS's support...Read more...
id Software's long-awaited FPS Rage is set to ship in October. When it launches, it'll be the first game to feature id's newest graphics engine, dubbed id Tech 5. With expectations running high in the wake of the latest game trailer shown at QuakeCon last week, we've put together an article to examine the merits of both the game and the technology...Read more...
id Software's long-awaited FPS Rage is set to ship in October. When it launches, it'll be the first game to feature id's newest graphics engine, dubbed id Tech 5. With expectations running high in the wake of the latest game trailer shown at QuakeCon last week, we've put together an article to examine the merits of both the game and the...Read more...
You might recall that Intel toyed with the idea of "Upgrade Cards" for its Pentium G6951 processor around this time last year. For fifty bucks, you could buy one of these cards containing a software code that you would download from Intel's site, and just like that, your Pentium chip would suddenly have an additional...Read more...
Four years ago almost to the day, the National Science Board handed the National science Foundation a mandate to build the most powerful petaflop-class supercomputer in the world. The NSF announced in turn that the system would be based on IBM's Power7 processor technology. One of the features that won IBM the...Read more...
Earlier this year, Intel unveiled its plan to redefine the concept of a PC around an ultra thin-and-light chassis reminiscent of the Macbook Air and with a standard CPU TDP of just 15W. OEM reactions to the CPU giant's attempt to reinvent the personal computer have been mixed. For all the platform's theoretical...Read more...
A few weeks back, AMD officially launched their Llano-based A-Series Accelerated Processing Units, or APUs, in both desktop and mobile flavors. If you’re unfamiliar with Llano, it’s AMD’s mainstream, low-power APU that fuses four x86 cores with a DX11-class graphics processor on a single piece of silicon. The current flagship...Read more...
A few weeks back, AMD officially launched their Llano-based A-Series Accelerated Processing Units, or APUs, in both desktop and mobile flavors. At the time, we covered the high-end variants of both A-Series offerings; our coverage of the desktop version A8-3850 APU and its companion chipsets is posted here and the mobile...Read more...
Multiple bits of CPU data have crept out from under the woodwork in the last few days; here's a roundup of what's making the rounds. On the AMD side of the equation comes a rumor that the company is about to stop producing Phenom II X2 and X4 processors in favor of moving consumers along to the Fusion-based A8...Read more...
Qualcomm: a name that most average consumers probably weren't even familiar with just five or ten years ago, but these days, is impossible to ignore. The Snapdragon processor platform has taken over the tablet and smartphone space, and a huge percentage of today's hottest devices run with Qualcomm silicon inside. It's still tough being...Read more...
Fancy yourself a cheapskate in need of something decidedly more powerful than an Atom-powered netbook? Lucky for you Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture is still kicking tail and taking names, and if you look hard enough, you can find a handful of notebook PCs going for less than $400 (and we don't mean $399.99). Head...Read more...
AMD released its results for Q2 2011 today and the news was generally good, though not as strong as investors might have preferred. Sales revenue was $1.57B, down two percent from Q1 and five percent year-on-year. AMD notes that Q2 was a 13 week quarter as opposed to the 14-week Q1, but that's not something that hurt Intel's results. Operating...Read more...
With Bobcat and Llano launched, AMD has one more major product overhaul set for this year. The company's Bulldozer CPU will launch in the next few months, and after years of waiting, enthusiasts and IT industry analysts are both curious to see what AMD has in its high performance pipeline. A Turkish website, Donanim Haber, recently got its...Read more...
AMD's Llano has now debuted in both mobile and desktop flavors to generally strong approval. While CPU performance significantly lags Intel's, Llano's GPU (officially labeled as the Radeon HD 6550D) steamrolls Intel's integrated Sandy Bridge in virtually every gaming benchmark. The two chips take a markedly different approach to CPU/GPU communication;...Read more...
A couple of weeks back, we took a look at AMD's Llano mobile platform and we came away impressed. In the mobile space, Llano offers a capable quad-core CPU, with excellent DX11-class integrated graphics, in a very low power-envelope. Those things translate into good performance and solid battery life in a notebook, two highly desirable traits...Read more...
A couple of weeks back, we took a look at AMD's Llano mobile platform, with a mainstream notebook from Compal, and we came away impressed. If you're unfamiliar with Llano, be sure to check out our launch coverage (available here). But to quickly recap, Llano is the codename for AMD's latest Fusion-based product, that combines...Read more...
Desktop CPUs are great, sure, but they only get you so far. With handheld computing on the rise, companies like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale have plenty of reasons to celebrate. This week, the last amongst those showcased their scalable i.MX 6 quad-core ARM-based apps processor. It's built on ARM's Cortex A9, and it's targeting...Read more...