News

• Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 to contain Intel Atom chip, source says

  Samsung will soon release its first Android tablet based on an Intel Atom processor, according to a source familiar with the plan, in what would be a vote of confidence for Intel chips in mobile devices.

• Shrinking chips challenge Moore's Law

  Intel will continue to fulfill Moore's Law for the foreseeable future, but the challenge of keeping up with it is growing as chips get smaller, says a company executive.

• Wall Street Beat: Market stokes tech IPOs, as Tableau and Marketo debut

  A strong stock market could open the floodgates for more tech IPOs in the wake of Friday's solid debut of Marketo and Tableau, but not all segments of IT may be able to ride the wave.

• Desktop chips zip past 4GHz; next stop 5GHz?

  Mobility has all but eclipsed speed and anything else as the capability garnering the most attention in desktop processors.

• Nvidia says Tegra 4 devices will be announced this quarter

  The first mobile devices to use Nvidia's Tegra 4 chips will be announced this quarter, meaning smartphones and tablets based on the new processor should be available soon.

• Galaxy S4's U.S. version needs added image processor for eye-tracking

  Samsung has built several different Galaxy S4 smartphones, including a U.S. version running a Snapdragon processor that requires an extra image processor to enable heavily promoted user functions such as eye-movement recognition.

• New boot firmware a step toward 64-bit Windows RT

  A standards organisation has created a boot environment for tablets and PCs that could potentially run a 64-bit version of Windows RT.

• More support for Windows RT, this time from Nvidia

  Nvidia will stay on board with making Tegra ARM-based processors for Windows RT tablets despite sluggish early sales of the devices, making the same commitment that Qualcomm has made, an Nvidia executive said

• Intel: Keeping up with Moore's Law becoming a challenge

  Intel will advance Moore's Law for the foreseeable future, but keeping up with it is becoming more challenging as chip geometries shrink, according to a company executive.

• Intel's new Atom chips peak on performance, power consumption

  Intel's upcoming Atom chips with new CPU architecture will be up to three times faster and five times more power efficient than their predecessors and break the "myth" that ARM processors are more power efficient, Intel said.

• MediaTek to improve low-cost Android smartphone performance

  Semiconductor company MediaTek wants to improve the performance of low-cost Android-based smartphones with its latest system-on-a-chip (SoC), the MT6572.

• AMD thinks beyond PCs with new custom chip business unit

  Armed with a contract to build chips for Sony's PlayStation 4 gaming console, Advanced Micro Devices has now officially established a custom-chip business unit in an effort to break away from its heavy reliance on the slumping PC market.

• Intel's Haswell gets massive graphics performance boost

  Intel is expected to announce its fourth-generation Core processors code-named Haswell for laptops and desktops in June, but the company is already releasing teasers that talk about their performance.

• Samsung builds chips to supercharge your smartphone

  Samsung began production of the industry's first ultra-high-speed, 4Gbit, LPDDR3 mobile memory, which it says has performance levels comparable to the standard DRAM used in personal computers.

• Details expected soon on Intel's $200 laptop and tablet chip architecture

  Intel is expanding into low-cost laptops and tablets starting at US$200 with new low-power Atom chips based on an architecture called Silvermont, which the company is expected to talk about next week, according to a source familiar with Intel's plans.