AMD Unveils Mobile Chips
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Imageon boosts DVD resolution, and new Geode conserves power.
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Google&#39;s Android software platform for mobile phones&#160;is coming to life in Barcelona with a number of chip manufacturers showing it running on prototype or proof-of-concept phones at the Mobile World Congress on Monday.Freescale, Marvell, NEC Electronics, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments all had Android on show. Most of them expect to see Android phones based on their chips on the market in the second half of this year.The hardware ranged from bulky development boards with daughter cards sticking out at unlikely angles to more compact devices small enough to slip into your pocket. All were built around chips containing processor cores designed by Arm, a British fabless semiconductor company.One of the most polished prototypes is on the Texas Instruments stand -- although TI representatives insisted that it&#39;s just an example of how a finished product could look as the company only makes chips, leaving the development of phones to its customers. &quot;We don&#39;t do plastic,&quot; one said.TI actually had Android running on two different devices. One was based on its OMAP850, a single-chip device containing an application processor for Android and a baseband processor for controlling the phone&#39;s radio interface. The other contained TI&#39;s OMAP3430 multimedia application processor, capable of decoding high-definition television signals at a resolution of 720p. It requires a separate baseband processor, and is designed for high-end multimedia phones.Developing software for a new phone typically takes 14 to 18 months, said Ramesh Iyer, mobile Internet device product manager at TI. &quot;Android cuts that dramatically. It&#39;s a disruptor,&quot; he said.Google is shaking the market in other ways, Iyer said. &quot;Android is a single stack. You don&#39;t have to go looking for third-party solutions. Suddenly, they have defragmented the whole Linux ecosystem into one building block,&quot; he said.Android is entering an already crowded market for mobile phone software: To see how crowded, you only had to look at the NEC stand, where four prototypes containing its Medity2 processor were packed onto a narrow table. One was running Symbian OS, one Windows Mobile, one Android on top of Wind River Linux, and the last was running the same Wind River Linux but with a different application layer based on software from Trolltech and Esmertec.NEC staff expressed surprise at the level of interest in Android, saying they expected more attention for the completed phones based on the Medity2 at the next table. Manufactured for NTT DoCoMo, those phones contained the version of Linux promoted by the LiMo Foundation.The two systems are not necessarily in competition, though. With Android&#39;s focus on the application layer and Limo&#39;s work on the middleware, the underlying services needed to link applications to the Linux kernel, the two can be complementary, NEC staff said.Marvell took the prize for the most secretive Android demonstrations, refusing to allow photographs and declining even to say on which of its communications processors the software was running. The company showed a compact handset running the Android interface with a bare minimum of applications and a more complete installation playing video and browsing the Web on a bulky development board. Shrinking that down to a pocket-sized device will not take long, staff said. In fact, they had one ready -- just not loaded with the Android software.Android&#39;s Linux roots are likely to encourage the development of a wave of new handset applications, said Marvell&#39;s marketing director Vish Deshmane.&quot;You will see a lot more software to run on devices from people who want to exploit the commonality with desktop systems. It&#39;s going to be a boon for the 3G world because more applications means more data traffic, so operators will be happy,&quot; he said.Over at Freescale Semiconductor, staff showed Google Maps zooming in on the center of Barcelona on a development board built around Freescale&#39;s i.MX31 processor. This processor is not intended for mobile phones at all, and is more at home in GPS&#160;terminals or media players such as Toshiba&#39;s Gigabit and Microsoft&#39;s Zune.Qualcomm&#39;s demonstration of its 7201 combined baseband and application processor sparkled, but did not exploit the chip&#39;s full potential. The spinning globe of Android&#39;s Global Time application turned smoothly even without the assistance of the 3D graphics hardware acceleration, for which the drivers are not yet ready, said Rob Woodford.Android phones based on the chip will go on sale in the second half of this year, Woodford said -- but U.S. readers should contain their excitement: the Qualcomm display was overshadowed by a card warning that&#160;it may be prohibited from shipping the products on show to the U.S.&#160;because of a Dec. 31 court injunction obtained by chip rival Broadcom in a patent infringement case.The Mobile World Congress runs through Thursday at the Fira de Barcelona showground.
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Advanced Micro Devices plans to demonstrate its version of a new approach to processor design, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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US chipmaker AMD on Monday introduced a faster mobile chip, Athlon 64 processor 3000+, for thin and light notebook computers. The new chip enables a powerful 32-bit computing
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Chipmaker announces new chipset and reference design for consumer devices and PCs.
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AMD&#39;s latest Mobile AMD Sempron 3000+ is set to go head to head with Intel&#39;s high-end Centrino CPUs. The AMD processor offers Enhanced Virus Protection designed to prevent the spread of malicious viruses when
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Blog: AMD announces its quad core server chips will ship in August
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2GHz chip is the highest performing processor in AMD's family of low-power Mobile AMD Athlon 64 products.
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AMD (Quote, Chart) expanded its portfolio of mobile Athlon chips in its quest to debunk Intel&#39;s Centrino dominance, the company said Monday.
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Blog: Intel adds a mobile processor to its Extreme Edition lineup.
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A handful of chip makers showed Monday how a mobile device running Google Inc.'s Android operating system might look.
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At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Qualcomm offered a sneak peek of its concept for an ultramobile PC for the largely untapped market where it will meet Intel head on.Qualcomm for the first time demonstrated a prototype of a device reminiscent of Nokia&#39;s N800. Qualcomm calls it a pocketable computer because &quot;if you can&#39;t carry it in your pocket, you can&#39;t carry it with you,&quot; said Sanjay Jha, chief operating officer and president of Qualcomm&#39;s CDMA Technologies Group. The device, which has a slide-out keyboard, runs Windows Mobile, and has HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), GPS (Global Positioning Service), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.The screen is 800 pixels wide so that most Web sites designed for PCs render nicely, Jha said. That means users could view the regular YouTube.com site, rather than a version of the site designed for mobile phones, he said.The prototype runs on the 7201 chip, a new chip released recently by Qualcomm, but the design is intended to showcase&#160;Qualcomm&#39;s new Snapdragon line of chips. Those chips are now being sampled by hardware vendors, with initial commercial devices expected out this year, he said.Despite the slow take-off of such devices that sit between notebooks and phones -- such as the Samsung Q that runs on Microsoft&#39;s Windows-based ultra-mobile PC platform -- Jha said other factors are finally falling into place to increase their appeal. Faster wireless networks, better processors that require less power and in the near future, the openness of mobile networks and billing plans should increase demand and sales, he said.Still, Qualcomm doesn&#39;t expect that this category of device will approach the widespread adoption of mobile phones. He figures that smartphones make up about 200 million of the entire 1.3 billion handsets on the market. &quot;I think it&#39;s possible to envision a device that sells in that ballpark volume,&quot; Jha said.The chip maker will face Intel in this market, which is also introducing chips for devices that are smaller than laptops but bigger than cell phones. In fact,&#160;Apple is rumored to be developing an ultra-mobile PC product&#160;based on Intel&#39;s processors.&quot;We come at this problem from an understanding of wireless,&quot; Jha said. &quot;Intel comes at it from an understanding of computing. We both bring different things to the table. Time will tell how our vision works versus Intel&#39;s direction.&quot;The companies are also making different bets in terms of wireless network compatibility. &quot;We&#39;re working on WiMax as well but our priority is clearly 3G,&quot; Jha said. Intel, a big backer of WiMax, has said that it may&#160;build WiMax into Menlow, its platform for ultramobile devices, for release some time this year.Nokia&#39;s N800 devices fit into a similar category between a phone and a notebook. Despite the fact that Nokia and Qualcomm are in a bitter licensing dispute, Jha praised the N800, saying it sold more initially than Nokia expected. Nokia has typically declined to reveal sales figures for the devices.Qualcomm doesn&#39;t envision that Snapdragon will only be used in &quot;pocketable computing&quot; devices, the company&#39;s preferred term for what are commonly called ultra-mobile PCs. The chips could be used in navigation devices with wireless connectivity to deliver traffic information to users. Gaming devices, dedicated Internet devices or gadgets like Amazon&#39;s digital book-reader Kindle could also use the chips, Jha said.
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AMD will implement the strained silicon manufacturing technique on its upcoming 90-nanometer processors as well as 130-nanometer processors.
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Beefier batteries and multicore chips aim to make Intel's future mobiles more like desktops.
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Intel is displaying four new ultramobile PCs designed around its Menlow chips at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including highly anticipated devices from Lenovo and Toshiba.The Lenovo device runs a Linux OS from Chinese developer Red Flag Software and boasts a 4.8-inch touch screen, an onboard camera and other features. It also has what appears to be a phone dialing pad on the right side, but there were no Lenovo personnel around at Intel&#39;s CES booth to talk about the product, nor any spec sheets detailing features of the device.Intel personnel at a booth detailing its&#160;Menlow chips&#160;called the Lenovo device and two others &quot;Mobile Internet Devices,&quot; saying that their smaller screen sizes and use of the Linux OS make them different from ultramobile PCs, a category created by Microsoft. However, many companies have come up with new terms for small, mobile PC designs these days, and the new names given to them are becoming confusing.The devices all work with a wireless broadband Internet protocol called WiMax.Toshiba and Clarion, both Japanese companies, also showed off small handheld PCs with touch screens. The Clarion device runs a Red Flag Linux OS, while Toshiba&#39;s handheld has Microsoft Windows Vista.A portable PC designed by Taiwan&#39;s Gigabyte Technology was also displayed at the booth.Earlier this year, Intel launched the Mobile Internet Device Innovation Alliance in an attempt to solve engineering troubles associated with creating small devices able to connect to the Internet. A number of companies joined the alliance, and several are expected to launch handheld PCs using Menlow microprocessors in the first half of 2008.In October, Intel offered a glimpse of six other devices designed by alliance members and based on Menlow. Five of them were designed by Taiwanese companies: Asustek Computer, BenQ, Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Inventec. The final device shown was from Finland&#39;s Elektrobit.Menlow is the code name given to a set of chips that Intel is developing for ultramobile PCs and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), due out next year. Menlow will include a new low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, and a chip set code-named Poulsbo.One of the key aims of the chip package is to extend battery life in the small PCs now coming out. Many of the ultramobile PCs, Mobile Internet Devices, and other handheld PCs that have launched so far boast hefty price tags of as much as $1000, yet offer little to users that a laptop can&#39;t do better. Relatively short battery life on most of the initial devices and the lack of widespread wireless broadband Internet have also contributed to disappointing sales of the much-hyped gadgets.Companies developing ultramobile PCs and similar small handheld PCs hope longer battery life of six to eight hours, the ability to connect to the Internet wirelessly from just about anywhere, and features found on smartphones such as digital cameras and music players will entice more people to try them out.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has demonstrated the company&#39;s first dual-core microprocessors at its Austin, Texas, office, the company said Tuesday.
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Chip-making technique to fuel AMD64, PowerPC, 'Cell' production