CPUs

Qualcomm this morning is taking the wraps off of a new smartphone SoC for the mid-range market, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. The second of Qualcomm’s down-market ‘S’ tier Snapdragon 7 parts, the 7s series is functionally the entry-level tier for the Snapdragon 7 family – and really, most Qualcomm-powered handsets in North America. With three tiers of Snapdragon 7 chips, the 7s can easily be lost in the noise that comes with more powerful chips. But the latest iteration of the 7s is a bit more interesting than usual, as rather than reusing an existing die, Qualcomm has seemingly minted a whole new die for this part. As a result, the company has upgraded the 7s family to use Arm’s current Armv9 CPU cores...

Intel Core i7 3960X (Sandy Bridge E) Review: Keeping the High End Alive

If you look carefully enough, you may notice that things are changing. It first became apparent shortly after the release of Nehalem. Intel bifurcated the performance desktop space by...

188 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011

AMD's Project Win: A Misunderstanding

Last week AMD announced layoffs that impacted 10% of its workforce. A disproportionate number of those AMDers were apparently from the marketing and PR groups, but even engineering was...

27 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011

Intel Haswell Info: Single Chip for Ultrabooks, GT3 GPU for Mobile, LGA-1150 for Desktop

VR-Zone spotted a bunch of very interesting slides about Haswell over at Chiphell. The slides and information both look fairly believable so let's get with the analyzing shall we? Haswell...

38 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011

A Quick Look at MSI's X79 Motherboards

Sandy Bridge E is right around the corner and the amount of Socket-2011 related emails we're getting is going up. The latest is from MSI - we got an...

16 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/7/2011

Some Thoughts on the Impact of AMD's Layoffs on the Future of AMD GPUs

Here's something I'm concerned about. AMD's Carrell Killebrew, part of yesterday's announced layoffs, was a Director of Product Planning for AMD's GPU division. His job, at least as he...

48 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011

AMD Implements Cost Cutting Workforce Reduction, Carrell Killebrew is Out

I had a feeling I was going to have to write a post like this after I published that Rick Bergman left AMD. Those of you who remember the...

20 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011

Bulldozer Does It Again: Overclocked to 8.58GHz

Last week, we reported that Andre Yang had managed to overclock AMD's FX-8150 CPU to 8.46GHz, breaking the former record set by AMD. Andre Yang has now been able...

45 by Kristian Vättö on 11/3/2011

Bulldozer Breaks Frequency Record Again: Overclocked to 8.46GHz

Just before the launch of Bulldozer, AMD demonstrated it at 8.43GHz, which was the world record back then. Now an overclocker named Andre Yang has achieved an overclock of...

60 by Kristian Vättö on 10/29/2011

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

Details on Trinity - AMD's Next Gen APU

DonahimHaber has leaked a slide concerning AMD's next generation APU, called Trinity. The slide does not reveal any detailed specifications, it's merely an overview of Trinity. Lets begin with...

44 by Kristian Vättö on 10/25/2011

Intel Releases Core i7-2700K and Cuts the Prices of Three CPUs

Intel has quietly released a new top-of-the-line Sandy Bridge CPU: Core i7-2700K. We reported the i7-2700K "leak" about a month ago, and guessed that i7-2700K will be released around...

35 by Kristian Vättö on 10/24/2011

AMD Working on Bulldozer B3 Stepping

AMD released their highly anticipated Bulldozer CPUs last week (our review). The reception was not very warm, and a common thought was that Bulldozer didn't perform as well as...

60 by Kristian Vättö on 10/20/2011

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

The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested

AMD has been trailing Intel in the x86 performance space for years now. Ever since the introduction of the first Core 2 processors in 2006, AMD hasn't been able...

430 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/12/2011

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

Intel Releases Two Pentium and Two Core i-series CPUs

Intel has updated their product database (ARK) with four new CPUs. Two of these are branded as Pentiums: 967 and B960. The former is a low-power model with only...

13 by Kristian Vättö on 10/5/2011

Rick Bergman Resurfaces...as the CEO of Synaptics

Last week I regrettably posted that AMD's Products Group GP, Rick Bergman, had left the company for unknown reasons. Tonight I got an email from Synaptics telling me that...

4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/28/2011

Intel Engineer Ports QuickSync Video Decoding to FFDShow

An Intel engineer by the name of Eric Gur started an AVSForum thread indicating he had begun work on enabling Quick Sync support in FFDShow's video decoder. Quick Sync...

23 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/28/2011

AMD Confirms 32nm Yield Issues at Global Foundries

AMD just announced revised revenue projections for Q3. Revenue is up compared to Q2 by 4 - 6%, but AMD had originally expected an increase of 10%. The reason...

38 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/28/2011

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