AMD IS FINALLY doing what we have all been waiting for, promoting their developer relations program to the masses. With that in mind, they introduced three new logos to go along with the program.
SOLID STATE DRIVES or SSDs are one of the hottest topics and add-ons that you can get for your PC now, although there's still a lot of confusion going on with regards to what to get, as there are vast differences between the various models and the cost per GB is fairly high.
ONE QUESTION THAT a lot of the financial set are asking has to do with Nvidia and mobile. While the company is effectively out of mobile for 2010, there was at least one GTX480 based laptop at CeBIT.
AH, BLUETOOTH THAT ubiquitous standard that we all use, or do we? Well, either which way, Bluetooth 4.0 is on its way and should arrive just in time for that cheerful gift buying season of the year. Yup, that's right, another year, another Bluetooth standard.
NOTEBOOKS HAVE ALWAYS involved a trade off between performance and battery life, but it looks like Intel will be getting close to finding a fine balance between the two later this month, when it's set to launch its ULV version of the Calpella mobile platform.
WHAT DO YOU get when you cross Apple, Siemens and Sisvel with the German police at CeBIT? Raids of course, with lots of police, lawyers, and people stripping booths clean of everything electronic.
TRENDNET HAD TWO neat devices at CeBIT, a travel router and a 3G to WiFi router. While neither one is unique, both had features to set them apart from the pack.
IS THIS THE final blow for the good old hard drive? Western Digital has as of today launched two SSD models, the SiliconEdge Blue which is a consumer model and the SiliconDrive N1x which targets data centers and various vertical markets.
POKING AROUND CEBIT has it's benefits, especially if you know what to look for. At the SuperTalent booth, it looks like we found a prototype SATA2 CF/CFast card.
CeBIT 2010 Supertalent breaks the $70 barrier for speed
SUPERTALENT IS SHOWING a line of storage and memory products that range from consumer toys to serious enterprise level kit. The best one is the last missing piece of the storage puzzle, an affordable USB3 memory stick.
CeBIT 2010 High end GPUs, netbooks and mini-projectors
SAPPHIRE HAS STARTED to branch out from GPUs, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a large selection of high end GPUs to show off. New to the boys in blue this year are micro-projectors, netbooks and micro-ITX boards.
Half the shader counts compared to larger ION devices
NVIDIA'S NEXT GENERATION ION GPU chip is upon us, but one little detail that hadn't quite made its way out ahead of the launch is the fact that Nvidia will have two different versions available depending on the product you buy. So when is an ION not a full ION?
THE RUMORS AND bits about Intel's next generation core, Sandy Bridge, are starting to come out here and there, but several big chunks have still not been outed. Here are a few of them.
THERE ARE A lot of curious things coming out of TSMC lately, and they all seem to center around dodging real questions. The problem is yields on their 40nm process, but TSMC will not address half of the reported problems publicly.
IT IS THAT TIME of year again, Nvidia's quarterly conference call for the financial set. Since the company gets pouty every time we try to ask it questions, we decided to publish an open list of questions for you, the people they have far less disdain for than SemiAccurate, to ask directly.
AMD HAS ANNOUNCED its latest Catalyst 10.2 drivers, which in itself isn’t really big news as AMD has been releasing graphics drivers on a monthly basis for quite some time now. However, what is the new is that AMD is aiming to offer monthly driver updates for those with a Radeon Mobility card in their notebook, which is a huge step forward.
WE’RE NOT SURE if hell just froze over or not, but Verizon Wireless has announced that it has teamed up with Skype to deliver unlimited free Skype-to-Skype calls for its customers. There’s a catch of course, although it’s a rather small one.
WE WERE EXPECTING a fair few ARM partner announcements during the Mobile World Congress and so far we haven’t been disappointed. Texas Instruments and ST-Ericsson have both announced dual core ARM CortexA9 MPCore based products with clock speeds in excess of 1GHz.
MICROSOFT WASN’T JOKING when it said that Windows Phone 7 was redesigned from the bottom up, well, at least not as far as we could tell from today unveiling at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
OUT OF THE BLUE, Intel and Nokia announced that they’re working on a new open source Linux based operating system called MeeGo that builds on Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo platforms. This was the only joint announcement at the Mobile World Congress and we’re slightly disappointed that it wasn’t a new x86 based CPU.
ARM LOOKS SET to have field day at the Mobile World Congress next week as its licensees show off new products. Today Marvell released details of upcoming products that looks set to draw a lot of attention for different reasons. On top of that, both NEC and Texas Instruments are set to show off new products at the show.
A SOLUTION IS at hand for those that find it complicated to set up their 3G data connection on their notebook or netbook, as Sagem Orga had developed a SIM card with a built in WiFi hotspot in cooperation with Telefonica.
GOOGLE'S ANDROID operating system for Smartphone’s is spreading to just about every device manufacturer out there and Garmin-Asus is the latest company to announce a handset running Android. The A50 is somewhat different from your average Android handset though, much as Garmin-Asus’ past efforts, as it focuses on navigation and location based services.
ISSCC 2010 Fine details abound but overviews lacking
AMD IS FINALLY starting to talk about its Fusion CPUs, specifically the first one called Llano. The bad news is that it is not saying very much, but there are some interesting bits that leaked out at ISSCC 2010 in San Francisco.
DESPITE APPLE’S BEST attempts at telling its iPhone and iPod touch users that Adoble Flash is something they don’t need it now looks like more and more users of the devices are longing for some lovin’ from Adobe.
ACCORDING TO the MWC 2010 Milestone awareness campaign, Motorola has taken a step back into the dark ages. A step that might just be a violation of its license agreements.
TINY CHIPS THAT can do a lot of things are always impressive and the Texas Instruments (TI) WiLink 7.0 doesn’t disappoint in that regard. It packs just about every technology you’d want in a handheld device when it comes to not only wireless connectivity but a few other handy features as well.
IT’S NOT EVERY day we’re impressed by some newfangled technology, but this time we have to give it to Nvidia, it's come up with a really good idea, with some caution. Although we’re not sure where Optimus comes into play. But hey, it’s as good a name as any, right?
GOOGLE JUST CAN’T stop dreaming up now products, good ones too, but its latest stroke of genius might one day be something that no traveller will leave home without. If you’ve read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy then you might be familiar with the Babel Fish, although Google hasn’t gone quite that far in its efforts to come up what it said is a universal translator.
IF INTEL'S NEXT generation chip does indeed slip into 2011 as some rumors suggest, there is a very good reason for it. Intel works in strange and mysterious ways, and uses more Feng Shui than anyone would expect.
HERE WE GO again, Intel has come up with yet another nifty marketing name, Core vPro. These are not only Intel’s 'new' processors for businesses of all sizes that add a host of features, but they're also said to gain cost savings.
The Symbian platform, which has been developed over more than 10 years and has shipped in more than 330 million devices around the world, is now completely open and the source code is available for free. According to the Symbian Foundation, an industry group; the transition from proprietary code to open source has been the largest such project in software history.
IT DOESN'T APPEAR as if ARM is getting ready to slow down its product development. Quite the contrary could be said as the company is readying 2GHz ARMv7 Cortex cores for 2011. It looks like Intel and its Atom processors might get a lot more competition.
IT’S ALWAYS GREAT having a choice when it comes to colours, as how boring would it be if everything we owned was the same colour? Sony seems to have taken this to the extreme with its Intel Core i3 and Core i5 based Vaio E series of notebooks, since not only can you have them in a selection of six colours but they’re also available with optional coloured keyboard skins.
THERE HAS BEEN a lot of talk recently about ATI's 'Grey Screen of Death' and almost all of it is hysterically overblown. Let's take a look at the problem in a bit more detail.
HERE'S SOMETHING you don't generally hear when it comes to Apple hardware. The iPad is deemed as being too inexpensive by Taiwanese hardware manufacturers. Considering that Apple has a reputation for selling reassuringly expensive products, it now seems like the company has come up with a product that is too cheap for the competition.
DESPITE THE EXCITEMENT ahead of the launch of the iPad, it seems like Apple has failed to impress not only the media, but even a large share of its otherwise loyal community. It’s not just the name that has been ridiculed, but the device itself just isn’t what most hoped it would be and this could possibly be Apple’s first failure in many years.
APPLE HAS JUST announced its latest addition, the iPad. We’re not sold on the name, but one of the big news items here is that Apple might be forced to change the name, as iPad was a registered trademark of Fujitsu Japan and there’s also a company called Magtek that sells a product called the IPAD. But that’s for another day; let’s take a closer look at what’s on offer.
Sabine and Brazos with fusion for the mobile space
AMD SPENT SOME time talking to the press in Singapore today and unveiled some details of its upcoming platform plans for 2011. What we’re looking at are more cores, fusion and improved notebook battery life.
VOIP TELEPHONY TOOK off with the help of Skype, but the biggest hit in the US and Canada at the moment is the oddly named "magicJack" service, which we'll call Magicjack. Rather than just being a software solution the Magicjack is a small USB dongle to which a normal phone is attached and it allows you use the phone as you normally would when connected to the POTS line.
ONE THING YOU hopefully learn very quickly in the IT business is that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on TV, or read on the Interweb these days. With Apple’s announcement that it’ll be announcing something on January 27th, the rumours about what Apple is up to haven’t stopped. The latest is that Apple is ready to unveil its own CPU, but the question you have to ask is if this makes any sense at all.
TRADITIONALLY APPLE HAS been pretty good at keeping a tight lid on things when it comes to leaks about upcoming products, with the odd slip here and there. That doesn’t stop its fans from coming up with some wild speculations as to what Apple is going to launch next as soon as Apple announces that it is about to host an event. The next such event is on January 27th and the interweb has been full of speculations about what Apple is going to announce.
AMD SEEMS TO BE EXCITED about its potential in the notebook market this year, as the company is expecting to steal away some market share from Intel. AMD is expecting to hit in excess of 10 percent market share by the middle of this year and to reach 15 percent by the end of the year. It might not sound like much, but considering how tiny AMD’s share of the notebook market is, this would be a huge improvement.
SHUTTLE SHOWED OFF a range of notebook products at CES, but you can’t have one. Well, at least not directly from Shuttle for the time being as the company is looking for smaller notebook vendors to join the Shuttle Notebook Ecosystem and they will then in turn offer the notebooks for sale to end users.
GLOBAL FOUNDRIES has been way ahead of the curve with process tech when compared to any other foundry on the market. Today, it somewhat accidentally cemented that lead by publicly displaying an unlabeled 28nm wafer.
IN WIN HAD three really cool things on display at CES, some old, some new, but most had not gotten nearly the attention they deserved. The mix covered things from a USB extension cord and HDD protector to cases.
YOU MAY KNOW about Eye-Fi, the company that makes SD cards with an 802.11 radio in them. It has a new generation of parts called the X2 line about to ship.
GLOBAL FOUNDRIES JUST announced a major win by signing Qualcomm to a fab contract. If anyone was waiting to see if Global Foundries had what it took to compete for the best, they now have their answer.
CES 2010 Forgets that netbooks don't have DVD drives
CYBERLINK MIGHT VERY well be selling the most well known DVD playback software with its PowerDVD, but the company seems to have finally decided that it want more than just the Windows market and has as such announced PowerDVD for Moblin version 2.1. As you might know, Moblin is Intel’s own Linux version for netbooks, but hang on a second, how many netbooks can you buy with a built-in DVD drive?
AMD IS FINALLY doing what we have all been waiting for, promoting their developer relations program to the masses. With that in mind, they introduced three new logos to go along with the program.
SOLID STATE DRIVES or SSDs are one of the hottest topics and add-ons that you can get for your PC now, although there's still a lot of confusion going on with regards to what to get, as there are vast differences between the various models and the cost per GB is fairly high.
ONE QUESTION THAT a lot of the financial set are asking has to do with Nvidia and mobile. While the company is effectively out of mobile for 2010, there was at least one GTX480 based laptop at CeBIT.
AH, BLUETOOTH THAT ubiquitous standard that we all use, or do we? Well, either which way, Bluetooth 4.0 is on its way and should arrive just in time for that cheerful gift buying season of the year. Yup, that's right, another year, another Bluetooth standard.
NOTEBOOKS HAVE ALWAYS involved a trade off between performance and battery life, but it looks like Intel will be getting close to finding a fine balance between the two later this month, when it's set to launch its ULV version of the Calpella mobile platform.
TRENDNET HAD TWO neat devices at CeBIT, a travel router and a 3G to WiFi router. While neither one is unique, both had features to set them apart from the pack.
IS THIS THE final blow for the good old hard drive? Western Digital has as of today launched two SSD models, the SiliconEdge Blue which is a consumer model and the SiliconDrive N1x which targets data centers and various vertical markets.
POKING AROUND CEBIT has it's benefits, especially if you know what to look for. At the SuperTalent booth, it looks like we found a prototype SATA2 CF/CFast card.
SAPPHIRE HAS STARTED to branch out from GPUs, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a large selection of high end GPUs to show off. New to the boys in blue this year are micro-projectors, netbooks and micro-ITX boards.
NVIDIA'S NEXT GENERATION ION GPU chip is upon us, but one little detail that hadn't quite made its way out ahead of the launch is the fact that Nvidia will have two different versions available depending on the product you buy. So when is an ION not a full ION?
THERE ARE A lot of curious things coming out of TSMC lately, and they all seem to center around dodging real questions. The problem is yields on their 40nm process, but TSMC will not address half of the reported problems publicly.
AMD HAS ANNOUNCED its latest Catalyst 10.2 drivers, which in itself isn’t really big news as AMD has been releasing graphics drivers on a monthly basis for quite some time now. However, what is the new is that AMD is aiming to offer monthly driver updates for those with a Radeon Mobility card in their notebook, which is a huge step forward.
WE’RE NOT SURE if hell just froze over or not, but Verizon Wireless has announced that it has teamed up with Skype to deliver unlimited free Skype-to-Skype calls for its customers. There’s a catch of course, although it’s a rather small one.
WE WERE EXPECTING a fair few ARM partner announcements during the Mobile World Congress and so far we haven’t been disappointed. Texas Instruments and ST-Ericsson have both announced dual core ARM CortexA9 MPCore based products with clock speeds in excess of 1GHz.
MICROSOFT WASN’T JOKING when it said that Windows Phone 7 was redesigned from the bottom up, well, at least not as far as we could tell from today unveiling at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
A SOLUTION IS at hand for those that find it complicated to set up their 3G data connection on their notebook or netbook, as Sagem Orga had developed a SIM card with a built in WiFi hotspot in cooperation with Telefonica.
GOOGLE'S ANDROID operating system for Smartphone’s is spreading to just about every device manufacturer out there and Garmin-Asus is the latest company to announce a handset running Android. The A50 is somewhat different from your average Android handset though, much as Garmin-Asus’ past efforts, as it focuses on navigation and location based services.
AMD IS FINALLY starting to talk about its Fusion CPUs, specifically the first one called Llano. The bad news is that it is not saying very much, but there are some interesting bits that leaked out at ISSCC 2010 in San Francisco.
DESPITE APPLE’S BEST attempts at telling its iPhone and iPod touch users that Adoble Flash is something they don’t need it now looks like more and more users of the devices are longing for some lovin’ from Adobe.
TINY CHIPS THAT can do a lot of things are always impressive and the Texas Instruments (TI) WiLink 7.0 doesn’t disappoint in that regard. It packs just about every technology you’d want in a handheld device when it comes to not only wireless connectivity but a few other handy features as well.
REMEMBER WHEN INTEL talked about opening Atom CPUs to other companies? I'll bet you didn't think one of the first customers would be Nokia.
GOOGLE JUST CAN’T stop dreaming up now products, good ones too, but its latest stroke of genius might one day be something that no traveller will leave home without. If you’ve read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy then you might be familiar with the Babel Fish, although Google hasn’t gone quite that far in its efforts to come up what it said is a universal translator.
HERE WE GO again, Intel has come up with yet another nifty marketing name, Core vPro. These are not only Intel’s 'new' processors for businesses of all sizes that add a host of features, but they're also said to gain cost savings.
IT’S ALWAYS GREAT having a choice when it comes to colours, as how boring would it be if everything we owned was the same colour? Sony seems to have taken this to the extreme with its Intel Core i3 and Core i5 based Vaio E series of notebooks, since not only can you have them in a selection of six colours but they’re also available with optional coloured keyboard skins.
THERE HAS BEEN a lot of talk recently about ATI's 'Grey Screen of Death' and almost all of it is hysterically overblown. Let's take a look at the problem in a bit more detail.
AMD SPENT SOME time talking to the press in Singapore today and unveiled some details of its upcoming platform plans for 2011. What we’re looking at are more cores, fusion and improved notebook battery life.
VOIP TELEPHONY TOOK off with the help of Skype, but the biggest hit in the US and Canada at the moment is the oddly named "magicJack" service, which we'll call Magicjack. Rather than just being a software solution the Magicjack is a small USB dongle to which a normal phone is attached and it allows you use the phone as you normally would when connected to the POTS line.
AMD SEEMS TO BE EXCITED about its potential in the notebook market this year, as the company is expecting to steal away some market share from Intel. AMD is expecting to hit in excess of 10 percent market share by the middle of this year and to reach 15 percent by the end of the year. It might not sound like much, but considering how tiny AMD’s share of the notebook market is, this would be a huge improvement.
SHUTTLE SHOWED OFF a range of notebook products at CES, but you can’t have one. Well, at least not directly from Shuttle for the time being as the company is looking for smaller notebook vendors to join the Shuttle Notebook Ecosystem and they will then in turn offer the notebooks for sale to end users.
GLOBAL FOUNDRIES has been way ahead of the curve with process tech when compared to any other foundry on the market. Today, it somewhat accidentally cemented that lead by publicly displaying an unlabeled 28nm wafer.
IN WIN HAD three really cool things on display at CES, some old, some new, but most had not gotten nearly the attention they deserved. The mix covered things from a USB extension cord and HDD protector to cases.
YOU MAY KNOW about Eye-Fi, the company that makes SD cards with an 802.11 radio in them. It has a new generation of parts called the X2 line about to ship.
CYBERLINK MIGHT VERY well be selling the most well known DVD playback software with its PowerDVD, but the company seems to have finally decided that it want more than just the Windows market and has as such announced PowerDVD for Moblin version 2.1. As you might know, Moblin is Intel’s own Linux version for netbooks, but hang on a second, how many netbooks can you buy with a built-in DVD drive?