New Intel chip heading to tablets

Intel said today it is shipping a new processor slated for tablets from Lenovo and Fujitsu among others, as the world's largest chipmaker tries to blunt an onslaught of designs based on competing silicon from ARM.

The Atom Z670 processor delivers improved video playback--up to 1080p--and longer battery life than previous Z series Atom chips, according to Intel. The chip will also allow smaller, thinner tablet designs owing to a 60 percent reduction in the size of the "die," or the raw piece of silicon that contains the integrated circuits.

In addition to Lenovo and Fujitsu, other … Read more

Why no lines for the Motorola Xoom? Take 2

Readers had a lot to say about the Motorola Xoom, the Apple iPad, and their respective degrees of success in response to an April 2 post last titled "Why no one lines up for the Motorola Xoom."

To repeat the premise. The success of Apple's iPad is ratcheting up the pressure on executive boards at PC and device makers. Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci was, by all appearances, pushed out because, among other reasons, he believed Acer wasn't responding quickly enough to the tablet phenomenon. A perspective at odds apparently with Acer's chairman, J.T. Wang. (… Read more

Xoom's status fades against iPad at retailers

Retailers are unwittingly positioning the Motorola Xoom as a me-too tablet, as if competing against the Apple brand isn't hard enough already.

This week it was reported that Motorola sold an estimated 100,000 Xoom tablets. Not an impressive number when compared with the iPad 2, which sold about 500,000 units in its first weekend of sales.

And retailers seem to be abetting this trend, however unintentional that may be. It's become quickly apparent at retailers that Motorola and other tablet makers like Samsung are falling into the me-too category. Best Buy's Web site makes this … Read more

Why no one lines up for the Motorola Xoom

A couple of prominent chief executives were shown the door recently because of their take on the tablet market. But the executive boards doing the firing should be careful what they wish for.

This week Acer's CEO, Gianfranco Lanci, was let go because, among other reasons, he believed Acer wasn't responding quickly enough to the tablet phenomenon. And earlier this year the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices resigned because, conversely, he was too unenthusiastic about the tablet market.

"This market is about growth," Richard Shim, an analyst at market researcher DisplaySearch, said in a phone interview, … Read more

Verizon iPhone packs 'world mode' chip, revamped antenna

Teardowns of Apple's Verizon iPhone 4 reveal a Qualcomm "world mode" chip and redesigned antenna, among other modifications to the heretofore AT&T-only phone.

Both iFixit and UBM TechInsights have taken apart the phone exposing more than a few non-trivial changes.

Foremost of these changes is the Qualcomm MDM6600 chip--a first for an Apple phone. That is the same chip that's being used in the Droid Pro world phone, which enables the Droid to support both CDMA and GSM. But, for now, that capability in the iPhone remains a latent, untapped potential.

Other Verizon iPhone … Read more

Report: iPad 2 to use fast graphics chip

The iPad 2 will sport powerful, new graphics hardware, along with a higher-resolution display, according to a report.

That graphics chip would be Imagination's SGX543, according to Apple Insider.

If this rumor is on the money, it is, indeed, a potent graphics technology. Imagination describes the POWERVR SGX543MP as allowing "up to 16 cores...in a high-performance, multiprocessor graphics solution without performance or silicon area compromises." This graphics tech would be used in conjunction with a dual-core ARM processor, as CNET previously reported.

And Apple's next-gen iPhone 5 would also feature this chip design--the so-called Apple … Read more

Intel CEO: How we will compete with ARM

Intel CEO Paul Otellini today spelled out how his company will compete with the burgeoning ARM chip ecosystem, which has taken the lead in tablet designs, during the chipmaker's fourth-quarter earnings conference call.

In the call, Otellini was quick to address tablets, a market currently centered on Apple's iPad, which runs on Apple's flavor of the ARM processor design. Motorola, RIM, and Samsung have also based their tablet products on power-efficient ARM processors. He discussed a few ways Intel could ultimately prevail in the tablet and smartphone markets.

Operating system three-fer: "In 2011, you will also … Read more

CES: ARM CEO on Microsoft, tech's rise (Q&A)

LAS VEGAS--The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show may be remembered as marking the year that a small U.K. chip designer began to eclipse the largest chipmaker in the world--that would be Intel, of course.

Warren East, chief executive of ARM, sat down with CNET for a few minutes at CES on Thursday to discuss some of the seismic events that took place at CES centered on ARM.

A flurry of big announcements put the ARM chip architecture front and center this year. Those include Microsoft's intention to move its next major release of Windows to ARM, Nvidia's plans … Read more

Intel exec at CES: Microsoft's tablet OS too long in coming

LAS VEGAS--Intel has urged Microsoft to tailor Windows for smaller devices, to no avail, an executive from the chipmaker said at the Consumer Electronics Show.

"Hey, we tried to get [Microsoft] to do a tablet OS (operating system) for a long time. Us, and others like Dell," said Tom Kilroy, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Sales and Marketing Group, speaking to CNET at an Intel function last night.

Microsoft said this week at CES that its next major release of Windows will run on power-efficient processors from ARM--an Intel rival. This "port&… Read more