Chipmakers are eying the maker community as a possible development community for the internet of things. Texas Instruments has two new offerings for this crowd. Read more »
Despite the shuttering of its only announced customer, ST-Ericsson, the German AR firm Metaio says it expects its dedicated processors to be in mobile devices by the end of the year. Read more »
In 2013 cleantech investing will move toward companies serving unsubsidized markets where software plays a role in reducing power consumption. In many ways this is a return to plays for energy efficiency, and there’s still money to be made from business models built around saving energy. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Sales of semiconductors are expected to fall this year. The only sector that didn’t see a decline year-over-year is the wireless business, and in that sector Qualcomm has seen sales grow by 27.2 percent. More proof of the upheaval occurring in the chip biz. Read more »
Texas Instruments will join the slew of chipmakers using cell-phone cores in servers. But it has two twists with its KeyStone architecture — integrated 10 gigabit Ethernet networking and TI’s digital signal processing cores to aid in performing complex math. Read more »
Reports of Amazon considering the purchase of Texas Instruments’ mobile chip business for billions of dollars may not make sense at first glance. But there are several reasons why such a deal could make sense for Amazon in both devices and cloud computing activities. Read more »
After watching the mobile market pass it by, Intel is aggressively moving forward. Its newest chips for smartphones and tablets run longer on a single charge and the company now has the latest version of Google Android, known as Jelly Bean, running on those chips. Read more »
Cloud computing is changing the world of microprocessor-chip design. Soon we will see a division between the traditional players (typified by Intel and AMD) and a group of new incumbents (Tilera and others) that offer fresh solutions to make the world’s microprocessor chips as efficient as possible. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Discussions about the cloud now involve more than just the IT department. New developments in hardware architectures, more-energy-efficient data centers, regulatory concerns and simplifying analytics are all discussions currently circling through the industry. Here’s what to consider when thinking about your business in the cloud. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
AMD, ARM, Texas Instruments and two smaller chip firms have teamed up to create a nonprofit that will try to unseat Intel’s x86 dominance in computing. But this group isn’t just after Intel; it’s taking the CPU — the beating heart of computers today — down a peg. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
MetaWatch announced two key improvements for its smartwatch development platform in an effort to better compete with up-and-comer products. The MetaWatch now has support to get wireless data from iOS devices and also aims for better battery life with the addition of a Bluetooth 4.0 radio. Read more »
Only 20 percent of smartphones sold last year had dual-core chips, but among those, Samsung sold the lion’s share: 60 percent of all dual core smartphones sold in 2011 had a Samsung processor. Who’s poised best to challenge in 2012? Only one company for now. Read more »
Samsung introduced its next generation mobile chip, the Exynos 4 Quad, on Thursday, with claims of twice the processing power with a 20 percent reduction in power use. The company will use the new processor in its next Galaxy phone, debuting in a few weeks. Read more »
The $249 Asus MeMo Android tablet shown off at January’s Consumer Electronics Show is expected to be the first Google Nexus tablet with a price target of $149 to $199. To lower the price, Asus may be dropping Nvidia’s Tegra 3 for a dual-core chip. Read more »
The chips that power today’s smartphones and tablets are expanding to robots as Texas Instruments and iRobot announced a new partnership on Monday. TI’s OMAP platform will be used by Roomba-maker, iRobot, to help develop new robotic technologies. Here’s why, and what to expect. Read more »
Sure, the latest dual- or quad-core in your mobile device looks spritely, but have you seen the next generation of ARM chips? Texas Instruments is showing off its OMAP 5 processor in a browser test with a quad-core chip, and it’s nearly twice as fast. Read more »
Intel’s wireless ambitions go beyond smartphones and tablets. It’s set its sights on the guts of the mobile network as well. By embracing a new network design concept called Cloud-RAN, Intel believes it can reshape wireless network to make the best use of its chips. Read more »
Asian chip manufacturers and NTT DoCoMo will create a joint venture to build mobile phone chips. The joint venture poses a threat to Qualcomm, but the subtext here is that as mobile phones rise in prominence, chip making is turning on its head. Read more »
In the past decade supercomputers were dressed-up versions of Intel’s x86 machines, but increasingly supercomputers are borrowing innovations (and silicon in the form of ARM-based chips or DSPs) from the mobile and big data realms to add speed without guzzling too much power. Read more »
Notebook makers are reportedly bidding on chip supplies from both Intel and those provided by vendors using the ARM architecture, presumably to compete better on pricing with Apple. The real story is that the next round of chip wars between Intel and ARM licensees is here. Read more »
On Wednesday, processor licensing company ARM announced that it has designed an ultra efficient processor core, the Cortex-A7, as well as an energy-efficient method of processing that jumps back and forth between two processors to minimize the energy use of the phone. Read more »
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 chips are expected next year and will be the first to support all of the major 2G, 3G and 4G networks with a single integrated modem. It’s smaller, more powerful and should improve battery life on 4G smartphones, tablets and other devices. Read more »
Google’s third flagship Android phone, code-named the Nexus Prime, is expected to launch next week. Thursday a list of believeable specifications surfaced. The phone could be a Verizon exclusive in the U.S., explaining why the carrier opted to pass on Samsung’s Galaxy S II: no LTE. Read more »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Microsoft and Intel unveiled initiatives Tuesday that show how the Wintel partners are trying to separately navigate a new post-PC world. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, which will work on ARM-based tablets and computers while Intel announced a partnership with Google to optimize its chips for Android. Read more »
More capable smartphones and tablets, combined with a growing number of online video services are heavily increasing mobile media consumption: Limelight’s data shows a 600-percent jump from the past year and that’s a bad sign for those hoping unlimited data plans will stick around. Read more »
Texas Instruments has ceded much of the mobile chip market to Qualcomm and Nvidia, but is ready to challenge with a new OMAP 4 chip. The dual-core processor paired with a PowerVR graphics core can power smartphones, tablets and even notebook computers running Linux or Windows. Read more »
Mobile video is here to stay whether it’s chatting with friends via Skype or streaming movies from Netflix. Even Adobe’s Flash player has a place in the Apple-definedpost-PC era judging by several announcements showing application providers and chipmakers marrying various video codecs to their silicon. Read more »
If you didn’t think computing’s future was both visual and mobile, then Nvidia’s decision to buy wireless radio startup Icera clinches it. The $367 million cash deal is setting Nvidia up for a competitive battle with Qualcomm in the mobile application processor market. Read more »
Consumers may not be quite ready for wearable computers, but watch-maker Fossil, along with Texas Instruments, thinks the time is near. The Meta Watch arrives in July for $200 and acts as a wearable computer that pairs with your smartphone for email, alerts and more. Read more »
When it comes to mobile devices, the gigahertz race is just beginning. Here’s why phones and tablets will need 4 GHz or even 10 GHz processors. The answers range from gesture controls to virtualization, but the computer of the future is mobile, connected and fast. Read more »
The broadband-enabled smart energy home finally started to make some initial headway as the new year ushered in 2011, and if the news trickling out from the massive wireless conference Mobile World Congress this week, is any indicator, this trend will only continue throughout the year. Read more »
LG is betting big on mobile 3-D: first, the G-Slate with dual cameras and now the Optimus 3D smartphone with a dual lens camera for recording 3-D. No glasses are needed to view content, which can be piped to a 3-D television or YouTube’s 3-D channel. Read more »
Hewlett-Packard’s introduction of new webOS handsets and tablets has gadget geeks’ hearts a-flutter, but the happiest folks may be those at Qualcomm: Their new Snapdragon chip is powering HP’s tablet, and they won the chip business away from TI for new webOS phones. Here’s why. Read more »
People Power has made a lot of changes from its start as a would-be home energy management device maker. Now it’s got a platform that could work in homes and offices — an example of how it and other startups may need to change to ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Infineon, one of the top five wireless chipmakers, has hired J.P. Morgan to seek a buyer for its wireless chip business, according to the Financial Times. Will Infineon be any more successful than Freescale or Texas Instruments, which tried and failed to sell their wireless businesses? Read more »
Intel’s Paul Otellini said on Tuesday night that the chip firm would release a dual-core Atom chip during the second quarter. Intel won’t be alone in adding more cores for mobile devices, smartphones could get multiple cores by the end of this year or in 2011. Read more »
ARM has released a new low-end core that adds higher-level math to chips inside microwaves and headsets to prepare for a connected future. If we’re gonna connect everything to the web, that means even the tiny brains inside relatively dumb devices need a boost. Read more »
On2 shareholders finally agreed yesterday to allow the encoding company to be purchased by Google, after the search giant raised its bid by $26.5 million earlier this year. But with the acquisition now set to close this week, questions are arising as to just what Google’s […] Read more »
