processors

High-end audio amplifiers, born in the U.S.A.

I have fond memories of the original Aragon 4004 power amplifier from my days when I worked as a high-end audio salesman. That was in the late 1980s and the big 200 watt amp sold for a lot less money than the reigning high-end amps of the period. The distinctive styling, with a "V" cutout in the 4004's chassis, made it stand out from rows of lookalike designs at the store. While the Aragon amps sold for a couple of thousand dollars, they were more affordable than most high-end amps. A few years after the 4004 arrived … Read more

Rumor: Apple to include quad-core A6 in next iPhone

Sources in the industry speaking with DigiTimes (via AppleInsider) have reportedly been expecting the competition in the smartphone world to heat up around the adoption of quad-core processors as early as this year's holiday quarter.

HTC, Samsung, LG, and China's Meizu already have quad-core processors in their phones, leading industry sources to believe that indeed, Apple will have to include a new chip to stay competitive.

That new iPhone is largely expected to be released this fall.

While its competition is mostly using Qualcomm's dual-core technology (quad-core is forthcoming later this year), Apple is expected to use … Read more

Better free text editor

Bean is a free, compact, easy-to-use text editor that occupies the middle ground between bare-bones apps like TextEdit and more full-featured (and more expensive) word processors.

Bean launches quickly and uses minimal resources, while giving you access to rich features such as live word count, tabbed documents, templates for boilerplate and automatic dates, page layout settings and in-line graphics, dictionary integration, word completion, plenty of import and export options, a search panel that can handle regular expressions, and an Inspector panel for making tweaks to text, format, and spacing.

Bean can't handle some specialized tasks, like footnotes and predefined … Read more

ST-Ericsson refocuses business, announces layoffs

ST-Ericsson, a chip maker that got caught up with the wrong crowd, has announced sweeping changes in an effort to stay relevant in the mobile market.

The company, a joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, today announced a new strategic direction that will see the firm focus its efforts on a "complete system solution" for smartphones and tablets. The company will focus on delivering application processors, modems, connectivity solutions, and a host of other components to vendors looking to compete in the mobile space. In addition, ST-Ericsson said that it could license the technology it develops to third-parties.… Read more

7 myths about quad-core phones (Smartphones Unlocked)

Editors' note: This article originally posted on April 8, 2012, and was updated on December 19, 2012.

Open up your wallet today and there are no fewer than five smartphones you can buy running on quad-core processors. Seven months ago, there was one, the HTC One X, and only if you bought the international version, which lacked the 4G LTE speeds coveted by U.S. phone-buyers.

After CES next month, expect the number of announced quad-core devices to double as the core war continues to heat up.

By summer, you may turn up your nose at perfectly fast devices running … Read more

Early benchmarks for AT&T's HTC One X look promising

We're still waiting for AT&T to announce a release date and price for its HTC One X, but already some lucky users have put the device to the test.

Early benchmarks for the handset have arrived online and all indications are that this one is a winner. Indeed, if you're worried that the dual-core Snapdragon S4 wouldn't stand up to the Nvidia Tegra 3, these numbers might ease your mind a bit.

According to benchmarks posted online, AT&T's version of the One X outperforms the Galaxy Nexus in Quadrant and bests the … Read more

AMD unveils new chip for Web hosting

Advanced Micro Devices is hoping to please Web-hosting providers with a new platform for single socket, dedicated hosting.

The idea is to offer growing businesses more scalability with denser and more power-efficient environments. Customers should also have a seamless, "desktop-like" experience and infrastructure with server-class reliability and security.

Specifically, the new AMD Opteron 3200 Series processor is touted to offer a more efficient bang per buck as the enterprise-class platform is said to offer up to 60 percent better performance per dollar and use up to 19 percent less power per core.

The Opteron 3200 Series also falls … Read more

ARM looks to refrigerators, medical devices with new chip

With the smartphone and tablet markets firmly in its grasps, ARM Holdings is looking elsewhere to capitalize on its growth.

The chip designer yesterday announced its new ARM Cortex-M0+ processor. The chip is designed for intelligent sensors and smart control systems in a host of markets, including home appliances, medical monitoring, and motor-control devices.

The secret to the Cortex-M0+'s market appeal is its energy-efficiency, ARM says. The company is calling the chip "the world's most energy-efficient microprocessor," consuming just one-third of the energy of any 8- or 16-bit processor. However, ARM claims the processor can deliver … Read more

iOS word processing the Apple way

Pages for iOS may not be as sophisticated as other desktop word-processing apps, but it packs plenty of punch when you just want a way to produce nice-looking documents on the go. After only a few minutes playing around with the controls, we were able to create documents with stylized text, imported images, tables, and graphs, and make formatting changes on-the-fly, all using the touch-screen keyboard. The program comes with 16 Apple-designed templates to start from, including standard letters, letters with photos, resume layouts, project reports, and many more. With Apple's keyboard dock connected, Pages performed much like a … Read more