Nvidia aims to knock Intel out of supercomputers with ARM CPUs and graphics chips

Nvidia is forging ahead with its plans to revolutionize supercomputers and workstations with a number of announcements today. Among them, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center will be the first in the world to adopt a solution that combines Nvidia’s low-power ARM-based Tegra central processing units (CPUs) with Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs).

That combination could be a powerful way to improve computing power without consuming a lot of electricity. Power consumption and the electricity costs that … Continue Reading

iPhone 4S CPU slower than iPad 2, still faster than all Android phones

Apple’s upcoming iPhone 4S will be a reminder that CPU clock speed isn’t everything.

Even though the iPhone 4S runs the same dual-core A5 CPU as the iPad 2, Apple has apparently reduced the chip’s speed from 1 gigahertz to around 800MHz, reports Anandtech. But that doesn’t stop the iPhone 4S from blazing past all other phones — many of which have CPUs well over 1GHz — in benchmark tests.

In the SunSpider Javascript benchmark, … Continue Reading

China's own Loongson chip will challenge Intel in 2030

In a move that threatens Intel’s lock on vast swaths of the computing market, the Chinese-made Loongson chip will take a giant step from netbooks to supercomputers later this year.

“Like a country’s industry cannot always depend on foreign steel and oil, China’s information industry needs its own CPU,” or central processing unit, said Hu Weiwu, the lead architect Loongson microprocessors, to the People’s Daily newspaper.

Intel doesn’t have to worry yet: It will take … Continue Reading

Nvidia's Tegra 3 is a quad-core powerhouse for smartphones and tablets

We’re going to be seeing Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 chip on a slew of devices this year, including Motorola’s Xoom tablet and LG’s Optimus 2X phone. Now it looks like Nvidia has quad-core ambitions for the chip’s next iteration, the Tegra 3, according to an internal slide revealed by Bright Side of News.

The news means we can expect even more powerful phones and tablets later this year and that the line between mobile devices … Continue Reading

Why is Intel so coy about its new netbook and tablet group?

Intel has quietly formed a new business unit dedicated to tablets and netbooks, the New York Times reports.

It will be spearheaded by Douglas L. Davis, the current head of Intel’s embedded and communications group. Obviously, it’s meant to help the company gear up for the ever-growing tablet and netbook markets. But the real question to me is, why is Intel being so quiet  about this?

Intel already has a significant presence in the netbook … Continue Reading

Intel takes the wraps off its "Nvidia killer"

Intel showed a demo of its hybrid graphics-microprocessor chip today, a chip that’s aimed at eliminating the need for a stand-alone graphics chip in personal computers.

Code-named Sandy Bridge, the hybrid chip is a threat to the maker of stand-alone graphics chips such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. AMD is creating its own rival hybrid chips, but not Nvidia. Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said the company would begin shipping the Sandy Bridge … Continue Reading

Could Intel's new graphics/processor chip kill off Nvidia? (poll)

Intel hopes to shake up the computer chip market as it unveils details on Monday about how it is putting a microprocessor and graphics processor onto a single silicon chip.

Code-named Sandy Bridge, the chip will figure prominently in the keynote speech of Intel chief executive Paul Otellini, who kicks off the Intel Developer Forum event in San Francisco on Monday.

The processor-graphics combo chip is available in prototypes now and will ship to customers … Continue Reading

Samsung's new Orion processor brings dual-core power to phones

Samsung already has a plenty powerful mobile CPU with its Hummingbird processor — the brains behind its Android-powered Galaxy S line of phones — but today the company has announced it has even bigger plans for next year: A low-powered dual-core processor, dubbed Orion, with powerful 3D and video capabilities.

The processor combines two ARM Cortex A9 cores running at 1 gigahertz to create a computing powerhouse. Samsung says it provides 5 times the 3D … Continue Reading