Items tagged with x86
Intel is making a flurry of announcements today, such as revealing its first desktop Arc Alchemist graphics cards will arrive in the second quarter, and that it plans on shipping 4 million discrete GPUs by the end of the year. It's graphics strategy extends much further than the desktop, though, and all the way into...
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A newly discovered security vulnerability in modern Intel X86 processors has been revealed that affects the processor's speculative execution technology – like Spectre and Meltdown – and can be used to access sensitive information, including encryption related data. Over the last day or two, patches have quietly...
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Each new "Redstone" release of Windows 10 is notable for a handful of reasons, but Redstone 3 could include one of the most ambitious features yet: x86 on ARM64 emulation. What that ultimately means is that ARM-based devices running Windows 10 Mobile, such as the Lumia 950 XL, could see an immediate boost of supported...
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A challenge some software developers must face is having to support more than one architecture - be it x86, ARM, or something else. Wouldn't it be great, then, if one processor could support more than one of them at once, potentially allowing developers to target just one base architecture? China's Loongson seems to...
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Microsoft’s Surface 2 Windows RT tablet was unceremoniously put to death earlier this year. The demise of the Surface 2 wasn’t a shock to industry watchers; various OEMs provided more compelling tablet solutions running x86 processors that were able to access the vast Windows software library (the Windows RT-based...
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For the past few years, Intel has promised that its various low-power Atom-based processors would usher in a wave of low-cost Android and Windows mobile products that could compete with ARM-based solutions from its major competitors. And for years, we've seen no more than a trickle of hardware, often with limited...
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For the past few years, Intel has promised that its various low-power Atom-based processors would usher in a wave of low-cost Android and Windows mobile products that could compete with ARM-based solutions from its major competitors. And for years, we've seen no more than a trickle of hardware, often with limited availability and/or...
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Buried in the details of Microsoft's technical preview for Windows 10 (look for our own discussion in short order), is a bit of a footnote concerning the operating system's requirements. I say footnote because this news -- that Windows 10 will have exactly the same requirements as Windows 8.1, which had the same...
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Today, at ARM TechCon, AMD is kicking off the conference by launching its new embedded ARM platform (codenamed Hierofalcon) and its associated ARM Cortex-A57 chip, codenamed Seattle. This new solution is debuting inside the first ARM-based network function virtualization platform, and is meant as a proof-of-concept...
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For the past few years, as Intel has struggled to gain market share for its Android-x86 project, it's been hampered by software compatibility issues and associated performance degradation. Now, some of that burden is being lifted off the company's products -- the popular and widespread Unity 3D engine has announced...
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Ever since NVIDIA unveiled its 64-bit Project Denver CPU at CES last year, there's been discussion over what the core might be and what kind of performance it would offer. Visibly, the chip is huge -- more than 2x the size of the Cortex-A15 that powers the 32-bit version of Tegra K1. Now we know a bit more about the...
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Earlier this week we covered a deal between Intel and Rockchip that will combine Intel's Atom with Rockchip's graphics IP and considerable share of the Chinese market. I'm returning to the topic because there are some interesting big-picture facets to this move that we didn't cover with the initial announcement. Over...
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Ever since AMD announced it would build an ARM processor, there've been questions about how the company would balance its x86 and ARM obligations and product lines. Today, the company gave a major update to how it sees the future of these products. This year, AMD will debut its first Cortex-A57 based server (codenamed...
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Update: Sharp-eyed reader Justin Jaynes has pointed out that the Llano lawsuit against AMD has been filed by lawyers hoping to convince investors to jump onboard, not by AMD itself. We've updated the story accordingly. There's two pieces of news on the AMD front as the company prepares to announce earnings this...
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The story around AMD's upcoming Kaveri continues to evolve, but it's increasingly clear that the chip won't be available for retail purchase this year. If you recall, AMD initially promised that Kaveri would be available during 2013 and even published roadmaps earlier in May that show the chip shipping in the...
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Just yesterday, we addressed the dubious claim that Intel's Clover Trail+ low power mobile processors had somehow seized a massive lead over ARM's products and we noted some of the suspicious discrepancies in the popular AnTuTu benchmark. It turns out that the situation is far shadier than we initially thought. The...
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Intel announced a set of new enterprise products today aimed at furthering its strengths in the TOP500 supercomputing market. As of today, the Chinese Tiahne-2 supercomputer (aka Milky Way 2) is now the fastest supercomputer on the planet at roughly ~54PFLOPs. That's double the speed of the old leader, the AMD/Nvidia powered Titan at Oak Ridge...
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Although AMD said in January that it was diving in strong with Windows 8 and was not interested in making chips for Android devices, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD Lisa Su told PCWorld that the company may shift some of its focus to building chips for Google’s two operating systems and is in...
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Rumor has it--er, has had it--that the Xbox 720 “Durango”, which is potentially slated to debut in May, would have AMD silicon inside. A Bloomberg report further points to that rumor as being highly likely. Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg says that the Xbox 720 will run on an AMD “Jaguar” SoC, which means that the...
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When the Xbox 360 and PS3 first debuted, one of the major differences between them was how easy it was to access the underlying hardware. Kaz Hirai, then President of Sony Computer Entertainment, confirmed that the PS3 was far more difficult to program -- and that this was intentional. "We don't provide the 'easy to...
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When Microsoft announced that it would build an entirely separate version of Windows for ARM processors in 2011, it galvanized the entire computing industry. For decades, Windows and x86 had been synonymous terms, so this move to support alternative architectures was seen as a fundamental change in how Microsoft would...
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Fitch, the debt rating agency, evidently wasn't pleased with what it heard during AMD's last conference call. The agency has cut AMD's debt rating from a B to a CCC-. That's the last step above default, and it echoes the agency's skepticism over whether or not AMD can continue as a going concern. The agency writes: The ratings reflect Fitch's...
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