processors

Intel's new Ivy Bridge processors have been benchmarked by enthusiast site Anandtech.

The blog reported earlier this week that while Ivy Bridge's CPU performance offers only a marginal improvement over its predecessor, Sandy Bridge, it shines on the graphics side.

According to Anandtech, current Sandy Bridge processor users will only find a 5 percent to 15 percent increase in CPU performance with the upcoming Ivy Bridge chips. The focus in Ivy Bridge, however, seemed to be placed on the GPU, which saw improvement to the tune of 20 percent to 50 percent in the blog's testing.

That … Read more

Though not yet out, the new iPad has already won over a healthy chunk of current iPad owners.

A full 42 percent of existing iPad owners said they'll buy the iPad 3, aka iPad HD, when it's released, according to a recent PriceGrabber survey. Among all the people surveyed by the site, 22 percent already own a tablet, and out of those, 52 percent own an iPad.

Conducted between February 23 and March 2, PriceGrabber's survey reached from 1,829 online shoppers in the U.S.

Of the current iPad owners who plan to buy the new … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Intel launched its E5 family of Xeon processors today, a tremendously important product line for the chipmaker that brings new performance to Intel-based servers and workstations.

The E5 line now comes in two varieties, Intel announced at a launch event here at the CeBIT tech show. First is the E5-2600 series for the mainstay of the server market, systems with two processor sockets. Second is the E5-1600 series chiefly for single-socket workstations.

The Xeon chips are a very important part of Intel's business. For one thing, servers are a growing market because of cloud computing, Internet businesses, and … Read more

The demands placed on smartphones by marathon sessions of texting, streaming video, and surfing the Web require that they have blazing-fast processors while, at the same time, be able to disburse the heat these processors generate. A team of engineers is proposing something of a counterintuitive model to designing smartphones in the future--one that has processors alternately powering up and then cooling down, more like sprinters than long-distance runners.

Heat dissipation has become a major limitation to the computational power of processors used in smartphones, where there is no room for a fan or other type of cooling system. Only … Read more

Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor will be making an appearance on a host of mobile devices this year, and when that happens, it will no longer come with its clumsy architecture branding.

The chipmaker announced yesterday that it has ditched "variable symmetric multiprocessing," "companion core," and even "ninja core," to describe Tegra 3's architecture. Nvidia will now describe it as the "4-Plus-1" architecture.

"The reason is that, the more popular this technology became, the more our customers wanted a name for it that's unique and descriptive," Nvidia wrote … Read more

A sturdy food processor on a kitchen counter makes for an impressive sight.

The large base has a weighty appeal and gives off a sense of efficiency. If the size doesn't impress you, the blades-in-waiting and protruding feeding tube will. And yet, even though these standard kitchen appliances look like they can handle any task, sometimes they are just too big and bulky.

Offering a nimbler approach to the prep work, the Cuisinart CSB-80 Smart Stick PowerTrio High-Torque Hand Blender packs a lot of versatility into one effective unit. The 400-watt stick motor attaches to a variety of accessories, … Read more

The popularity of Apple's iPad and iPhone is driving the shift of chip spending to wireless from computers, according to IHS-iSuppli.

Global spending by the world's top device makers on chips for wireless products amounted to $58.6 billion in 2011, up 14.5 percent from $51.2 billion in 2010, according to IHS iSuppli. As a result, spending for computers was topped by wireless, which became the world's largest semiconductor spending segment for device makers--aka, OEMs or original equipment manufacturers--in 2011.

Though this is not the first time wireless spending has exceeded that of computer-related spending (… Read more

ARM can thank the booming smartphone and tablet market for its solid fourth-quarter performance.

With its chips popping up in the iPhone and an array of other mobile devices, the U.K.-based company saw its pretax profit surge 45 percent to 69 million pounds ($108 million), while its sales rose 21 percent to $217 million.

But it's actually the royalties that provided the biggest boost. The company takes home a royalty for every ARM-based product sold along with a license to use its technology, notes the Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

As a result, fourth-quarter royalty sales grew … Read more

On Wednesday, President Obama is due to visit an Intel plant in Arizona. Here's why.

Obama aims to highlight manufacturing in America--one of the State of the Union's themes--and it's hard to find a better example of that than the world's leading chipmaker. Intel is now one of America's foremost manufacturers, boasting some of the most sophisticated manufacturing facilities in the world, many of them sprinkled throughout the U.S. 

Its development fabs (fabrication plants) in Oregon are the most cutting-edge of its leading-edge factories and have already received one presidential visit, in February … Read more