SoCs

During the opening keynote delivered by AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su at Computex 2024, AMD finally lifted the lid on their highly-anticipated Zen 5 microarchitecture. The backbone for the next couple of years of everything CPU at AMD, the company unveiled their plans to bring Zen 5 in the consumer market, announcing both their next-generation mobile and desktop products at the same time. With a tight schedule that will see both platforms launch within weeks of each other, today AMD is taking their first step with the launch of the Ryzen AI 300 series – codenamed Strix Point – their new Zen 5-powered mobile SoC. The latest and greatest from AMD, the Strix Point brings significant architectural improvements across AMD's entire IP portfolio. Headlining the...

ARM's Mali-T658 GPU in 2013, Up to 10x Faster than Mali-400

ARM's licensed CPU cores dominate the mobile space. This year the core of choice for high-end smartphones and tablets is ARM's Cortex A9 and late next year it'll be...

21 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Launched: Architecture Revealed

Originally announced in February of this year at MWC, NVIDIA is finally officially launching its next-generation SoC. Previously known under the code name Kal-El, the official name is Tegra...

94 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011

AppliedMicro Announces 64-bit ARM Based X-Gene SoCs

AppliedMicro has released specifications of their upcoming X-Gene SoC (Server-on-a-Chip this time, not System). AppliedMicro X-Gene Specifications Architecture ARMv8 Cores From 2 to up to 128 Frequency Up to 3GHz Process TSMC 40/28nm Power Usage Up to 2W per core Above...

23 by Kristian Vättö on 10/28/2011

Samsung Focus S & Flash: Official Images, 1.4GHz Mango Devices Shipping This Fall

The one area Microsoft hasn't touched while upgrading Windows Phone has been the SoC requirements. The platform launched with 65nm Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs featuring the quite-slow Adreno 200 GPU...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2011

ARM's Cortex A7: Bringing Cheaper Dual-Core & More Power Efficient High-End Devices

How do you keep increasing performance in a power constrained environment like a smartphone without decreasing battery life? You can design more efficient microarchitectures, but at some point you’ll...

77 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2011

ARM & Cadence Tape Out 20nm Cortex A15 Test Chip

Although we won't see the first ARM Cortex A15 based designs until the second half of next year, and even then only on 28/32nm processes, ARM and design tools...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/18/2011

iPhone 4S Preliminary Benchmarks: ~800MHz A5, Slightly Slower GPU than iPad 2, Still Very Fast

Apple's ability to control the entire information chain, down to the point of limiting leaks, appears to be gradually slipping as it grows as a company. Case in point...

217 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 10/11/2011

Intel Focuses on Tablets, Winds Down Digital Home Group

Intel's Digital Home Group (DHG) is responsible for the consumer electronics versions of the Atom SoC family. Last year we saw the launch of the Boxee Box and Google...

7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/10/2011

Qualcomm's New Snapdragon S4: MSM8960 & Krait Architecture Explored

Let's recap the current smartphone/tablet SoC landscape. Everything shipping today is built on a 4x-nm process, built either at Global Foundries, Samsung, TSMC or UMC. Next year we'll see...

108 by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/7/2011

Samsung Talks About 32nm 1.5GHz Exynos SoC

In our Galaxy S 2 review we highlighted an extremely unique aspect of Samsung's latest: its Exynos 4210 SoC. The 4210 features two ARM Cortex A9 cores running at...

14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/29/2011

Kal-El Has Five Cores, Not Four: NVIDIA Reveals the Companion Core

Last week NVIDIA provided an update on its Tegra SoC roadmap. Kal-El, its third generation SoC (likely to launch as Tegra 3) has been delayed by a couple of...

74 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/20/2011

There Will Be Two 32nm Atom SoCs in 2012: Medfield and One Other

Intel did a good job of showing off what it promises to deliver with Medfield at IDF: a reasonably looking smartphone and tablet built around the platform. As a...

7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/17/2011

The Updated Tegra Roadmap: Kal-El+ in 2012, Wayne in Late 2012/Early 2013

Last week we confirmed NVIDIA would be introducing a Tegra SoC with integrated Icera baseband called Grey, but we got the timeframe down. Above you'll see the updated Tegra...

7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/12/2011

NVIDIA Announces "Grey", First Tegra SoC with Integrated Baseband Due in 2012

Four months ago NVIDIA announced the acquisition of Icera, a baseband solution provider. Icera's technology didn't make it into any smartphones but it did have some success in the...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/9/2011

Qualcomm's March into the Gaming Market

We've mentioned before that the next-generation of mobile, particularly tablet, SoCs are supposed to give us performance equal to or greater than current generation gaming consoles (e.g. Xbox 360...

8 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/3/2011

Qualcomm's Updated Brand: Introducing Snapdragon S1, S2, S3 & S4 Processors

All microprocessor companies struggle with the same basic marketing problem: how do you explain to the average consumer why one part is faster than another without saying cache, GHz...

25 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/3/2011

Windows 8 on AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm & TI: Let the Race Begin

I'm in the audience of Microsoft's Partner Preview for Computex 2011, basically an event to give a sneak peak of the future of Windows to press and MS partners...

32 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/1/2011

NVIDIA's Kal-El Glowball Shows off Dynamic Lighting & Quad-Core Physics on a Tablet

I've warned both Qualcomm and TI that the danger they have to face in the SoC space going forward isn't just NVIDIA engineering, but NVIDIA marketing. Although too aggressive...

53 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/29/2011

Intel's Silvermont: A New Atom Architecture

Brooke Crothers broke a very important story today - he published the name Silvermont. Atom's first incarnation came to us in 2008 as a Pentium-like dual-issue in-order microprocessor. The...

53 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/12/2011

NVIDIA to Acquire Icera, Adds Software Baseband to its Portfolio

Late last year Intel announced the intention to acquire Infineon’s Wireless Solutions business, highlighting an important trend in the application processor space: those determined to lead in the smartphone/tablet...

18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/9/2011

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now