amd

AMD loses sizable market share to Intel in quarter

Advanced Micro Devices lost a considerable share of the chip market to Intel in the first quarter, as the latter rebounded easily from a chipset glitch, according to a report today from IHS iSuppli.

AMD accounted for 10.1 percent of global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter of this year, falling from the 11.8 percent share during from the same period last year and down from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the report.

AMD's loss was pretty much Intel's gain. Intel during the first three months of this year claimed 82.6 … Read more

Sony Vaio Z 13-inch shows up in Europe

Following a few leaks, Sony's new high-end Vaio Z laptop has been announced by the European arm of the Sony Vaio group, a few weeks ahead of its expected American debut.

The 13.3-inch laptop is slim and light, under 17mm thick, but still manages to pack in a full-voltage Intel Core i7 processor (paired with an SSD hard drive). The screen has a 1,600x900-pixel resolution, which is higher than most 13-inch laptops.

But the real interesting part of the new Vaio Z is its docking station. The vertically mounted Power Media Dock not only includes an optical drive and a rarely seen Intel Light Peak port, but also a fully functioning AMD Radeon graphics card, which can be used by the laptop when connected to the dock. Sony, in its European press release, says: … Read more

Intel's 'Haswell' chip in focus: Heads up Nvidia

A technical document posted recently on an Intel software blog drops some hints about its "Haswell" chip due in 2013. The upshot, watch your back Nvidia.

Here's what we already know about Haswell, per a conversation I had last month with Intel marketing chief Tom Kilroy: The mobile version of Haswell will be Intel's first system-on-a-chip designed for the mainstream laptop market, according to Kilroy.

A system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is the de rigueur design for smartphones and tablets. All of the system's core processing silicon--typically comprised of two or more separate chips in a PC--is … Read more

AMD quits benchmark group, implying Intel bias

Advanced Micro Devices has quit a PC industry consortium, implying the integrity of a widely used benchmark is biased toward Intel chips.

In a blog Wednesday, an AMD executive provided a long explanation about why AMD has quit the BAPCo industry consortium, which develops and distributes the SYSmark benchmark.

"Customers need clear and reliable measurements to understand the expected performance and value of their systems," Nigel Dessau, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD, said in a statement. "AMD does not believe SM2012 (SYSMark 2012) achieves this objective. Hence AMD cannot endorse or support SM2012 … Read more

Report: 80 million USB 3.0 devices in 2011

There should be little doubt that USB 3.0 technology has arrived on PCs after a report released today forecast that tens of millions of devices using the standard will ship in 2011.

"The primary story for USB in 2010 was the emergence of the SuperSpeed standard. 2011 should be a much bigger year for the technology, especially in mobile PCs," said market researcher In-Stat. "This has led In-Stat to forecast that nearly 80 million USB SuperSpeed-enabled devices will ship in 2011."

USB is one of the most widely used connection technologies in the world, found … Read more

AMD aims new chip at quad-core laptops

Advanced Micro Devices will bring quad-core processing and powerful graphics silicon to mainstream laptops, as it seeks to strike the right balance between the two computing paradigms.

On Tuesday, AMD is announcing the Fusion A-Series chips for mainstream consumer notebooks as well as desktops. AMD's Fusion technology puts all of a PC's computational power on one piece of silicon--what AMD calls an APU or accelerated processing unit. Chips will be offered with both two and four processor cores.

For quad-core systems, the trick is to reduce the power consumption of traditional desktop-class processing to levels that are usable … Read more

Toshiba announces new Satellite P700 laptop, smaller 17-inch Qosmio, both with 3D option

We've often commented on Toshiba Satellites becoming a confusing galaxy of letter-based lines that share similar looks. Today's announcement of the back-to-school Satellite P700 series should help in this regard, since it's effectively replacing the Satellite A660 and M640 lines, both of which we've reviewed in a variety of versions at CNET.

The P700 isn't anything truly new chassis-wise: it's available in 14-, 15-, and 17-inch variations, and share a Fusion X2 finish we've seen on many models. These laptops do, however, offer the newly announced AMD A6-3400M processor with discrete Radeon graphics, … Read more

AMD launches A-series processors, HP jumps on board

Following the recent leak of a 1.9GHz A8-3530MX CPU/GPU combo from chipmaker AMD, the company has now officially announced its new line of processors, the A-series. Though we're likely to still call them CPUs, these chips actually combine a traditional CPU and discrete-level GPU. AMD calls this combination of CPU and GPU an APU, or Accelerated Processing Unit. Formerly, the A-series was known under the code name Llano.

We've previously been impressed with the lower-end E-series CPU/GPU combo, most often seen in the form of the E-350 CPU/Radeon HD 6310 GPU found in 11-inch … Read more

Acer chides Microsoft over tablet maker restrictions

Microsoft is placing "troublesome" restrictions on hardware makers working on Windows 8 tablets, according to both Acer's president and its CEO.

Speaking yesterday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, Acer President Jim Wong said Microsoft had chosen five chip manufacturers--Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments--to provide processors for the next generation of Windows tablets, according to The Wall Street Journal. Taking it a step further, Microsoft then decided to limit each chipmaker to supplying chips to no more than two hardware makers, a move that Wong sees as restrictive.

"The industry does … Read more