SoCs

MediaTek this week has introduced a new lineup of Dimensity Auto Cockpit system-on-chips, covering the entire market spectrum from entry-level to premium. And while automotive chip announcements are admittedly not normally the most interesting of things, this one is going to be an exception to that rule because of whose graphics IP MediaTek is tapping for the chips: NVIDIA's. This means the upcoming Dimensity Auto Cockpit chips will be the first chips to be released by a third-party (non-NVIDIA) vendor to be based around NVIDIA's GeForce graphics technology. NVIDIA's first attempt to license its GPU IP to third parties dates back to the year 2013, when the company proposed to license its Kepler GPU IP and thus rival Arm and Imagination Technologies. An effort that...

Snapdragon S4 “Krait” – MSM8960 GPU Benchmark Surfaces

A NenaMark 2 benchmark score for an unknown device based on Qualcomm’s upcoming 28nm Snapdragon S4 “Krait” MSM8960 SoC has just surfaced. The device seems to have 1.5Ghz CPU...

33 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 1/28/2012

Samsung Exynos 5250 Begins Sampling – Mass Production in Q2 2012

Back in November, Samsung announced its next generation Exynos 5250 SoC based on ARM’s Cortex-A15 architecture. Samsung confirmed today during its earnings call that the Exynos 5250 has begun...

32 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 1/27/2012

Why Thunderbolt Won't Come to the iPhone Anytime Soon

Before CES there was a bunch of silliness floating around about how Apple might bring Thunderbolt to the iPhone based on a creative interpretation of an Apple patent. Some...

14 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on 1/14/2012

TI Shows Off OMAP 5 & ARM Cortex A15 at CES

We weren't allowed to take photos but we've just seen TI's OMAP 5 reference platform up and running Ice Cream Sandwich with full GPU acceleration enabled. The 28nm chip...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on 1/12/2012

Intel Shows Off Competitive Medfield x86 Android Power & Performance

You may have seen some Medfield related news today - I thought I'd chime in with some of my thoughts on the topic. As a recap, in 2008 Intel...

39 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/21/2011

ARM & GlobalFoundries Demo 2.5GHz+ 28nm Cortex A9 & 20nm Test Vehicle

GlobalFoundries sent over a PR showcasing two significant milestones in its march towards being a major foundry player in the mobile space. The first is the announcement of a...

12 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/14/2011

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime & NVIDIA Tegra 3 Review

Going from making good motherboards to going head to head with Samsung for Google's affection is a pretty big step for ASUS, but it's one that the company has...

205 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/1/2011

Qualcomm Announces a Bunch of Krait Based Snapdragon S4 SoCs

In February at MWC, Qualcomm unveiled three SoCs based on its brand new Krait microarchitecture: the single/dual-core MSM8930, dual-core MSM8960 and the quad-core APQ8064. More recently, we dove into...

5 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/16/2011

Applied Micro's X-Gene: The First ARMv8 SoC

We covered the X-Gene announcement a couple of weeks ago when the news was first made public. I was in London at the time meeting with Nokia so I...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011

Samsung Licenses PowerVR SGX MP from Imagination Technologies

Samsung is a bit of a mobile GPU conoisseur it seems. Its previous flagship, Hummingbird, used a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU. Its most recent high-end SoC, the Exynos 4210...

18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/10/2011

ARM's Mali-T658 GPU in 2013, Up to 10x Faster than Mali-400

ARM's licensed CPU cores dominate the mobile space. This year the core of choice for high-end smartphones and tablets is ARM's Cortex A9 and late next year it'll be...

21 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Launched: Architecture Revealed

Originally announced in February of this year at MWC, NVIDIA is finally officially launching its next-generation SoC. Previously known under the code name Kal-El, the official name is Tegra...

94 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011

AppliedMicro Announces 64-bit ARM Based X-Gene SoCs

AppliedMicro has released specifications of their upcoming X-Gene SoC (Server-on-a-Chip this time, not System). AppliedMicro X-Gene Specifications Architecture ARMv8 Cores From 2 to up to 128 Frequency Up to 3GHz Process TSMC 40/28nm Power Usage Up to 2W per core Above...

23 by Kristian Vättö on 10/28/2011

Samsung Focus S & Flash: Official Images, 1.4GHz Mango Devices Shipping This Fall

The one area Microsoft hasn't touched while upgrading Windows Phone has been the SoC requirements. The platform launched with 65nm Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs featuring the quite-slow Adreno 200 GPU...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2011

ARM's Cortex A7: Bringing Cheaper Dual-Core & More Power Efficient High-End Devices

How do you keep increasing performance in a power constrained environment like a smartphone without decreasing battery life? You can design more efficient microarchitectures, but at some point you’ll...

77 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2011

ARM & Cadence Tape Out 20nm Cortex A15 Test Chip

Although we won't see the first ARM Cortex A15 based designs until the second half of next year, and even then only on 28/32nm processes, ARM and design tools...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/18/2011

iPhone 4S Preliminary Benchmarks: ~800MHz A5, Slightly Slower GPU than iPad 2, Still Very Fast

Apple's ability to control the entire information chain, down to the point of limiting leaks, appears to be gradually slipping as it grows as a company. Case in point...

217 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 10/11/2011

Intel Focuses on Tablets, Winds Down Digital Home Group

Intel's Digital Home Group (DHG) is responsible for the consumer electronics versions of the Atom SoC family. Last year we saw the launch of the Boxee Box and Google...

7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/10/2011

Qualcomm's New Snapdragon S4: MSM8960 & Krait Architecture Explored

Let's recap the current smartphone/tablet SoC landscape. Everything shipping today is built on a 4x-nm process, built either at Global Foundries, Samsung, TSMC or UMC. Next year we'll see...

108 by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/7/2011

Samsung Talks About 32nm 1.5GHz Exynos SoC

In our Galaxy S 2 review we highlighted an extremely unique aspect of Samsung's latest: its Exynos 4210 SoC. The 4210 features two ARM Cortex A9 cores running at...

14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/29/2011

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