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 »
Our mobile devices are getting smarter, faster and mimicking the functionality of a full-fledged PC. As the top wireless chipmaker, Qualcomm has long been the “Intel inside” for mobile phones. But can it compete against a host of new processors with better graphics and more performance? Read more »
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Over the last few years Mobile World Congress, the mobile phone industry trade show, has experienced a shift from being about mobile phones to being about always-on connectivity. Mobile broadband has changed the value of the mobile ecosystem and thus the players who care about it. Read more »
The Google phone, dubbed the Nexus One–an unbranded HTC-made carrier-unlocked handset running Android 2.0–looks slick. Here is why it won’t be an iPhone killer, though. Read more »
ARM and more than 35 other companies have banded together to create an alliance dubbed the Solution Center for Android, which is aimed at increasing the resources available for developers trying to build for the relatively young OS on top of ARM hardware. Android, an open-source, […] Read more »
Every icon has his or her imitators, and while The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart didn’t invent the concept of snarking at the news in a quasi-reporting format, his influence has had a profound impact not just on the television world, but on web video. And shows […] Read more »
Texas Instruments today launched a calculator for the iPhone that will cost $14.99 and perform all the functions of its BAII financial calculator. The move is a watershed moment for this scion of high-end calculators (yes, I know about HP, but TI is in my home […] Read more »
Having spent a day with iTunes 9 and OS 3.1 on an iPhone and iPod touch, I find that I am completely smitten with a feature I pretty much completely ignored before yesterday. I’m referring to Genius, which hadn’t lived up to its name until this […] Read more »
[qi:gigaom_icon_chip] Texas Instruments last year said it would exit the wireless baseband business (it will still make custom radios for clients, but will dump its catalog of wireless baseband chips), and today the Wall Street Journal notes the effect this is likely to have on TI’s […] Read more »
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Google’s Chrome OS may or may not make it, but the attempt shows how far the computer industry has come from a bulky PC chained to a desk by its power cord and Ethernet cable. The computer is evolving from those dinosaurs to a smaller, mobile model that is always connected to the web. The iPhone brought us apps that are lightweight so users don’t get bogged down by smaller processors and slower wireless web connections on mobile devices. Google’s Chrome OS attempts to keep that speed, while preserving a platform for Google to make money through advertising. Read more »
Nokia, Motorola, Research in Motion, Apple (yes, even Apple) and six other cell phone makers have agreed to a European Commission request to develop a universal charger. The agreement was announced today by the the EC. The new handsets will use Micro-USB connectors, and will be […] Read more »
Texas Instruments is betting that a more powerful cell phone, one that uses identical computing cores working in parallel inside the application processor, a setup it calls symmetric multicore processing, will be here as soon as 2011. Such phones, which will be built with multicore ARM-based […] Read more »
Intel today said it plans to acquire Wind River Systems for $884 million — a deal that gives the world’s largest chipmaker control of development software and operating systems for devices that range from cell phones to routers. Intel last year made a big to-do about […] Read more »
It’s hard to hate too much on the Society for Geek Advancement. I’m not quite sure what or how serious the project is, but the group wants us all to embrace our inner geek while giving a little something to charity (and a lot of self-promotion […] Read more »
Intel made a series of announcements last night that push its low-power Atom processor closer to the smartphone side of the mobile computing spectrum. It announced more details of its Moorestown platform aimed at mobile Internet devices. The platform is coming in 2010 and includes an […] Read more »
Netflix tonight is announcing integration with Facebook Connect, meaning users can link their accounts and relationships across the two services. Netflix members’ ratings for a movie will show up on their Facebook profiles, where friends can comment and click back to Netflix to add the movie […] Read more »
Heterogeneous computing, where hardware vendors mix a variety of processors (graphics processors, CPUs, embedded chips or DSPs) on a server to increase energy efficiency and processing speed, will become a reality in the data center in the next decade, says an IBM executive. Such arrangements increase […] Read more »
Our mobile phones are getting smarter, even as our laptops are getting dumber. Instead of packing fast processors into a notebook, PC makers are stripping them down into netbooks and other devices they can sell for less. Meanwhile, our mobile phones are looking more like mini […] Read more »
As semiconductors try to get faster without breaking the laws of physics (not that researchers aren’t trying that, too) multicore processors have become all the rage. Quad-core chips are commonplace in servers nowadays, and six-core chips have been launched this year. But after a certain point […] Read more »
Texas Instruments is looking to hop on the trend of using non x86 processors in the data center, according to Kathy Brown, general manager of the company’s wireless base station infrastructure business. Last night over dinner, Brown said the wireless chip powerhouse was trying to build […] Read more »
As technology companies try to define the slew of devices that are smaller than a laptop or bigger than a smartphone, the mobile Internet device is one of the most vague. Basics such as screen size, whether or not it will have voice and other items […] Read more »
You know how you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover? Well, when it comes to smartphones and netbooks, a semiconductor research firm is predicting that in fact the cover — or rather, the device casing — may soon be one of the only […] Read more »
Texas Instruments is expected to this week release details of its next-generation application processor, the OMAP 4 family of chips, which has made my love for Nvidia’s APX25000 processor grow cold. I’m faithless when a chipmaker shows me the prospect of 1080p video playback, 10 times […] Read more »
The desktop computer is in decline, hurt by netbooks and a grim economy. But as demand for desktops and even notebooks falls, so do Nvidia’s revenues. To keep growing sales, Nvidia is counting on scientific computing, mobility and visual computing. It’s proven it can grow sales […] Read more »
Samsung Electronics is making its own WiMAX and LTE baseband chips for wireless handsets, according to an article in EETimes. The move by the Korean electronics maker shows how much opportunity it sees as the wireless industry transitions to 4G, and the fortunes of the biggest […] Read more »
Yesterday’s news that notebooks had overtaken PCs in the number of units sold last quarter owes a huge debt to Wi-Fi and a smaller one to 3G cellular networks. Without those Intel unwired commercials and images of folks surfing the web at Starbucks or sitting in […] Read more »
A fast new home networking standard was ratified on Friday by the ITU. With the unsexy name G.hn and some quibbles about what the consumer friendly marketing name will be (HomeGrid backed by Intel and Texas Instruments seems likely), writing a headline is hard. But think […] Read more »
Broadcom released a new chipset today that integrates Blueooth, an FM radio and Wi-Fi (in the 802.11n flavor) for mobile devices. Broadcom is trying to own the segment of the market that wants multiple radios on a chipset, while Texas Instruments tries to keep up. The […] Read more »
Today IBM said it will allow people to use its semiconductor manufacturing plants to make power-efficient, higher performance chips that enable startups to compete with the manufacturing prowess of a chip giant such as Intel. Read more »
The last time technology investments took a hit, it was easy to look around at the scattered sock puppets and dark fiber, and blame the downturn on the rapid run-up in venture-backed funding for me-too companies and unproven business models. But this time around, what will […] Read more »
Texas Instruments said today on its earnings call that it plans to sell its merchant baseband processor business — the division that makes off-the-shelf wireless chips for handsets. The company plans to keeps its OMAP applications processor business and will continue to make custom-radios for certain clients. Read more »
A new report from ABI Research on ultra-mobile devices will warm Intel’s heart. The report estimates that the sale of all ultra-mobile devices including mobile Internet devices, ultra-portable PCs, netbooks and basically anything larger than a phone and smaller than laptop will move from $3.5 billion […] Read more »
Freescale Semiconductor said this afternoon that it will consider strategic options for its wireless chip business, including its possible sale. Anyone looking at the varied business units of the former in-house chip division of Motorola would have seen this coming. Read more »
Earlier this month, eight years’ worth of semiconductor development culminated in a DEMO God being awarded to Steve Booth, co-founder and VP of marketing at Microstaq. And his 15 minutes of fame are about to get a repeat performance. On Friday, Microstaq, which supplies an energy-efficient […] Read more »
Yesterday the New York Times reported that an engineer’s LinkedIn profile appears to confirm that Apple will make its own application processors for the iPhone — something long suspected after Apple purchased low-power chip firm PA Semi and got a license to tweak the ARM mobile […] Read more »
Ericsson will contribute $1.1 billion to the proposed joint venture as well as its platform technology used in cell phones and modems. STMicro will fund the venture with $1.2 billion in assets. It will compete with Qualcomm’s Gobi. Read more »
This may not come as a surprise to anyone who owns an iPhone or tests set-top boxes, but wireless and consumer technologies are driving the growth of many of the largest chip vendors. According to the latest rankings released for the first half of the year […] Read more »
The iPhones have been unboxed and torn down, so now it’s the Wall Street watchers’ turn to tally up who won and who lost among the companies that provide chips for the envy-inducing device. The big winner is Infineon with four chips, including GPS and 3G […] Read more »
The move to 4G will not be cheap. Carriers must consider network upgrade costs and a refresh of their handsets, not to mention the issue of backhaul. Will they attempt wireless backhaul? Wait for fiber? One way or another, by 2013 carriers worldwide will invest some […] Read more »
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