Intel Admits ARM’s Method Is the Best One

During this year’s IDF event in San Francisco, California, Intel has clearly displayed the company’s new focus on mobile and low power technologies and computing solutions. Seeing just how bad its low power attempts behave in the face of ARM competition, Intel is now taking the British IP designer as an example. The company’s Chief Technological Officer, Mr. Justin Ratner had a conversation with journalists from TheInquirer.net and commented on the concept as follows: "The other kind of heterogeneity we have seen on the ARM side is general purpose processors but smaller, slower ones and larger, more powerful ones and moving the workloads around when there is more stuff to do - that is another area of interest for Intel. Obviously...

Read more »

The iOS 6 Maps App Is Not Working as Expected

Apple is going to have some trouble explaining why, in the iOS 6 Maps app, the town of Hagley in the U.K. is now called Dudley, or why there’s an incorrectly-placed airfield in Dublin, or why the Flyover view sometimes shows images of another dimension. These are just a few reports from several high-profile publications across the globe where early adopters of Apple’s iOS 6 operating system have discovered a faulty Maps application. For example, the Irish Times published a story according to which Apple's Maps app has incorrectly placed a new airfield in Dublin. Minister of Justice, Alan Shatter, actually took the time to write a letter to Apple, in which he said, “I know on occasion mistakes can be made and I am surprised...

Read more »

GlobalFoundries Starts 14nm-XM 3D FinFET Manufacturing

Intel’s 14nm Broadwell processor has already taped out at the company and is able to run Windows, but we were wondering if the rest of the semiconductor manufacturers are left behind at 28nm. Abu Dhabi company ATIC and its GlobalFoundries subsidiary don’t seem to be content with 28nm manufacturing and the Arabian funds have been put to good use. GlobalFoundries are already manufacturing 64-core processors as we reported here and also AMD's future Piledriver CPUs that we reported here. We knew that the foundry is hard at work in its 20nm manufacturing line, but today GlobalFoundries is announcing that its 14nm low-power manufacturing process is almost ready. Moreover, the company is ready with 3D FinFET transistors and...

Read more »

HTC Goes for Nokia’s Polycarbonate Design for Windows Phone 8

Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC Corporation will bring to the market at least two Windows Phone 8 handsets, both of which have been officially unveiled yesterday. Both the Windows Phone 8X and the 8S sport the same colorful, polycarbonate design as Nokia has packed its Lumia smartphones with, though they feature a variety of unique elements as well. You can have a look at the video embedded above to learn more on the design principles behind HTC’s Windows Phone 8 devices. According to some, the resemblance with Nokia’s handsets is too great. This YouTube user believes so – *though you should be warned of his use of explicit words. Not for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure. Of course, with the same UI on the display, Windows Phones do resemble a lot, but the choice...

Read more »

Intel to Officially Enable Better Overclocking in Haswell

Once Intel has moved to Sandy Bridge, the overclocking options that were available to the user were suddenly dramatically diminished. Ivy Bridge only brought worse results, but now the company seems to have decided to improve the situation for the mid-range enthusiasts. We were unpleasantly surprised by Intel’s decision to use low-quality thermal interface material (TIM) underneath the integrated heat spreader (IHS) on the new Ivy Bridge processors. This decision alone led to working temperatures that were at least 10 degrees Celsius higher than what could have been if the company had used a higher quality substance. The same low-quality compound is used on the company’s Xeon processors and this literally left us wondering...

Read more »

Spider 3.0 HDMI to USB 3.0 adapter, Support Up to 6 Monitors

It took a while until we managed to decipher the details, but the Spider 3.0 adapter from Area Powers Japan really is an HDMI to USB 3.0 adapter, not the opposite. Since video is now supported over the Universal Serial Bus 3.0 SuperSpeed interface, monitors connected through that interface, instead of HDMI, DVI or VGA, have begun to appear. We don't think there are enough of them to warrant special adapters, but Area Powers disagrees, having released an HDMI to USB 3.0 converter that ships with a DVI to HDMI adapter to boot. Capable of a top resolution of 2048 x 1152 pixels, the adapter can send video and audio to up to six monitors at once. Speaking of which, the product can both handle individual streams and spread the same...

Read more »

Compaq Pro 6305 Desktop System Powered by AMD Trinity APUs

AMD’s Trinity APUs are getting closer and closer to an official launch for the white box market, but they have already been available for the big system builders for quite a while now. Today HP is launching the Compaq Pro 6305 desktop system that’s powered by the new APUs. This is a mid- to low-end business solution with serious 3D graphics capabilities when compared with Intel’s HD4000 and if Intel’s HD2500 is the comparison term, AMD’s Trinity will certainly pleasantly surprise the buyer. The new systems are available in both a small form factor and a microtower, so the buyer has the choice for a space-saving footprint or the extra connectivity and expandability options of a traditional desktop. The mainboard has one...

Read more »

RIM BlackBerry 10 L-Series Device Teardown

Several months are expected to pass before Research In Motion makes its first BlackBerry 10 smartphones official, yet one of these devices has already got the teardown treatment. This is the same BlackBerry 10 L-series smartphone that has been spotted online lately, and which is expected to arrive on shelves in the first quarter of the next year. There are not too many new details provided on the hardware specifications of this device, but we can still make an idea of what it sports inside, courtesy of images posted on BisVn. The handset will be released as a full-touch smartphone, with the capacitive screen covering its entire front. RIM is working on QWERTY-enabled BlackBerry 10 smartphones as well, but they are said...

Read more »

Indian CERT Need 400,000 Experts to Address Cybersecurity Issues

In an interview with Business Standard, Gulshan Rai - the director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) – stated that in order to properly address cybersecurity issues, the country needed around 400,000 experts. “Currently, we have just about 32,000 skilled people. We need people to address aspects like technology procurement and legal issues, and train the police and the judiciary in understanding the cyber segment,” Rai said. He also revealed the fact that the attacks launched by cybercriminals against government websites had not only intensified, but their nature had also changed. More recently, attackers have focused on stealing information and using the compromised websites as a medium for other...

Read more »

AMD Prepares Sea, Volcanic and Pirates Islands GPUs Family

We've known of the Sea Islands GPU family for quite some time, and that the marketing name for graphics cards based on them will be Radeon HD 8000. We didn't actually know much about the chips that would come afterwards though. AMD decided, back in 2008-2009, to use Island names for the graphics processing units released over the next several years, until 2016. AMD's 7000 series, for example, is powered by Southern Islands GPUs (Tahiti, Pitcairn, and Cape Verde), while the 8000 boasts Sea Islands (we detailed the Oland and Oland Pro just three days ago). The Volcanic Islands will succeed Sea Islands in 2014, and they may be the most important of the Islands-themed chips. Whereas Oland brings architectural changes...

Read more »

Qualcomm Adreno 320 Beats Tegra 3 by 250% in GLBenchmark

Not many were expecting AMD’s old low-power Radeon technology to eventually beat Nvidia’s top performing Tegra 3. Qualcomm has worked really hard on their Adreno series of mobile iGPUs, but the customers still view them as the second best to Nvidia’s mobile GeForce. Once Qualcomm’s Adreno 320 hits the market this month, things are going to change quite dramatically. We know that Nvidia has no plans to release Tegra 4 this year and this means that, at least for the back-to-school season and the winter holydays, Qualcomm will actually have the most powerful mobile GPU on the market. Hardware experts at Anandtech.com have managed to test LG’s Optimus G phone, which is powered by Qualcomm’s APQ 8064 quad-core Krait mobile...

Read more »