ARM

Nvidia's chief executive officer is emphatic that his company has a strategy for building processors beyond its mainstay graphics chips.

During an interview with CNET, Jen-Hsun Huang addressed an issue with the company's chips and spoke about ongoing Intel litigation.

On Thursday, Nvidia reported a second-quarter net loss of $141 million, or 25 cents per share, worse than the net loss of $105.3 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. The graphics processing unit (GPU) supplier--whose chips are found in PCs from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, Sony, and Toshiba--cited muted demand for consumer graphics chips and economic weakness in Europe and China, which drove consumers to lower-priced products. Nvidia products typically are targeted at the upper end of the market.

In the earnings announcement, the company addressed a longstanding issue--and ongoing financial burden--centered on a defect in some of its earlier GPUs and chipsets. The problem was first cited by Nvidia in July 2008 when it announced a charge ranging from $150 million to $200 million to cover costs to repair and replace GPUs and chipsets due to "weak die/packaging material" in older laptop products. "Die/packaging" essentially describes the chip. Nvidia also announced additional charges after July 2008.

On Thursday, Nvidia said it recorded an "additional net charge" of $193.9 million related to the same problem. "The charge includes additional remediation costs as well as the estimated costs of a pending settlement of a class action lawsuit related to this matter," the company said in a statement. Combined with the $282 million of net charges announced previously, the total net charge related to the issue comes to $475.9 million, the company said.

I asked Huang Thursday if he thought the problem was now largely… Read more

Inside, the Droid 2 has some striking similarities to the Droid X--which isn't a bad thing.

Motorola's Droid 2 will be in stores Thursday for $199.99 with a two-year contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate (like the Droid X). The phone packs the Android 2.2 operating system, which has support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1. (The Droid X shipped with Android 2.1.)

Though the two phones differ physically--the Droid 2 is a slider smartphone, the Droid X eschews the physical keyboard--there's a lot inside that's the same, if not identical. (And note … Read more

The media pad market is brand new. And it's not going to be stuck at a 9.7-inch diagonal.

So, no one should be surprised by rumors about Apple bringing out more tablets (or tablet-like devices) beyond the current 9.7-inch iPad. It's going to happen--bigger or smaller screens, or both--rumors notwithstanding.

And there are plenty of unmet needs out there that Motorola, RIM (via a BlackBerry tablet), Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer or another media pad maker will surely satisfy.

Dell's Streak, which at five inches is not quite a media pad but more than a smartphone, already … Read more

Intel plans to offer a broad selection of silicon technologies for smartphones, as it seeks to grab a part of German chipmaker Infineon.

Intel is on a mission: the world's largest chipmaker is virtually absent in one of the hottest digital device markets. And, as Apple has demonstrated with its iPhone and its own A4 chip, high-end smartphone technology is bleeding over into tablets, another hot market.

The circumstances for Intel couldn't be more different from the PC market, where it is too dominant, as the settlement with the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday underscores.

So, what does Intel have to do to catch up with the dominant silicon players in smartphones, such as the Qualcomm and Texas Instruments? It will buy its way into the market if necessary, while moving its chip manufacturing technology forward at a blistering pace to squeeze more performance onto a smartphone chip than competitors by 2011 or thereabouts.

But first it needs more silicon technology. A requirement for any major smartphone chip supplier is to have not only the processor--referred to as an application processor--but also have a smorgasbord of connection options--such as 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, GPS--for customers.

Enter Infineon's wireless unit, which Intel is making a play for in order to "fill that hole," according to source familiar with Intel's plans.

Or, if necessary, it can make the silicon itself. Intel is currently doing an "aggressive analysis on make versus buy," according to the source. Intel does not want to lose business in the future because it "doesn't have a certain kind of protocol," the source said. In other words, Intel wants to cover all of its connection technology bases.

And this is a long-range plan. Intel is slated to bring out a smartphone-centric chip called Medfield by early next year… Read more

Microsoft has updated its agreement with chip design firm ARM, making the software giant capable of designing its own chips--in theory, at least.

The new pact is an architecture license, which allows Microsoft to design its own ARM chips, much like Qualcomm does with its Snapdragon processors used in products such as the Dell Streak tablet and Google's Nexus One smartphone.

ARM is one of the most prolific chip designers in the world, with its designs used in everything from Apple's iPhone and iPad to high-tech toys and handheld calculators.

"ARM is an important partner for Microsoft, and we deliver multiple operating systems on the company's architecture, most notably Windows Embedded and Windows Phone," KD Hallman, general manager of strategic software and silicon architectures at Microsoft, said in a statement. "With closer access to the ARM technology, we will be able to enhance our research and development activities for ARM-based products."

Microsoft is not commenting further on the agreement, and details will remain confidential.

There are a couple of interesting possibilities, according to Nathan Brookwood, the principal analyst at Insight 64. "If you're going to build your own (processing) cores, that's expensive and time-consuming. You really need to think that you can outdesign the group of designers at ARM,"… Read more

Apple is set to become the world's second largest semiconductor buyer in 2011, another sign of the shift in the balance of power in the chip world.

Driven by the success of the iPad and iPhone, Apple is expected to pass Samsung as the world's No. 2 chip buyer in 2011, second only to Hewlett-Packard, according to market researcher iSuppli.

The firm is projecting that Apple's semiconductor spending in 2011 will hit $16.2 billion, surpassing Samsung Electronics, which is forecast to be at about $13.9 billion. HP will stay in the No. 1 position with $… Read more

Toshiba announced Monday that it will ship an Android-based laptop, the first among top-tier laptop makers to sport a dual-core ARM processor.

By one definition, the Toshiba AC100 (see video below) is a smartbook: an always-on, 3G-enabled Linux-based laptop using a processor based on a design from U.K.-based ARM. That term--in vogue briefly--has lost its luster, however. Principally because real, shipping smartbooks have failed to materialize.

One of the most highly touted smartbooks, the Lenovo Skylight, has never shipped despite plenty of hype earlier in the year from both Lenovo and Qualcomm--the latter was slated to make the Sklylight's silicon. (The fact that a German company disputed the smartbook trademark didn't help matters.)

And a word of caution: The 10-inch Toshiba AC100 is not yet commercially available though it's slated to ship in the third quarter in Europe. There's no word on availability in the U.S., though a Toshiba spokesman contacted Monday said U.S. availability typically comes a couple of quarters after introduction in Europe.

That said, it is a truly unique design, quite different than its Windows-Intel based Netbook cousins. The two marquee features are its Nvidia Tegra 250 processor and the Android 2.1 operating system. The Tegra 250 is a cutting-edge dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor running at speeds of up to 1.0GHz. Virtually all laptop-class ARM processors shipping to date have used a single-core central processing unit, or CPU, design. Android is Google's popular OS that has been used, to date, almost exclusively in smartphones, such as Motorola's Droid.

Another key feature is the integration of mobile broadband: the laptop is designed to be "always on" like a smartphone, needing less than a second… Read more

This year's center-stage rivalry in tablet computers is shaping up as Apple versus Android, according to analysts. Windows, meanwhile, remains hobbled by its PC past.

The rise of the tablet happened almost overnight, after the April release of Apple's iPad, which, as Steve Jobs boasted recently, has been selling at a clip of "one every three seconds." So, the burning question for analysts and consumers alike is, which technology will compete most effectively with that of the iPad, which runs on Apple's iPhone OS?

Answer: Google's Android. Windows may yet power popular tablets, but for now, that seems less certain than Android, analysts say. "Windows is still quite heavy, in terms of its power consumption," Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI Research, said in reference to its tendency to overtax the minimalist silicon in tablets.

Even Dell, despite having deep roots in Windows, has chosen to come out initially with an Android-based device, the Streak. "Dell is deeply committed to Android," said Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies. "There will be a lot of experimentation by them, but at this point, they are going full-bore with Android."

A research note this week from analyst Charles King at Pund-IT gushed about the Streak, whose smaller screen size places it somewhere between the larger iPad and a smartphone. The device comes with "3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth wireless support, integrated GPS, [and a] 5-[megapixel] camera," along with "integrated Google Maps and turn-by-turn navigation, easy integration of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube social-media apps, [and] Android app/market access," he wrote. "This is an impressive package by most measures, but what is most notable is that...the Streak is actually a study in iPad contrasts: a significantly smaller display, integrated camera, immediate support for voice calling and eventually for video chat, easily upgradable memory and accessible battery and, last but not least, support for Adobe Flash." … Read more

IBM, Texas Instruments, Samsung, ARM, and others have formed a company to streamline development of products, such as tablets, on ARM processors.

Typically, companies wanting to develop for ARM processors--one of the most prolific chip designs in the world--need to wade through a morass of different operating systems and versions of those operating systems. Those include Google's Android and Chrome OSes, Ubuntu Linux, Palm's WebOS, and MeeGo from Intel and Nokia.

The new company, Linaro, is a non-profit software engineering outfit that intends to simplify the development process and is backed to the tune of "tens of … Read more