February 6, 2012

• In Brief: Tensilica's HiFi 3 Sounds Good
  Tensilica has announced that its newest generation of audio DSP cores supports 32-bit precision and improves audio/voice codecs and enhancement software by 20-50% compared with the older HiFi EP.
  

January 30, 2012

• Editorial: Money Can Buy You Apps
  Many Android apps contain ARM machine code, presenting a challenge for competing architectures entering the mobile market. Intel is spending money to overcome this challenge; MIPS is focused on a China strategy.
  

• In Brief: Marvell Wins Google TV for ARM
  Marvell's new Armada 1500 media processor supersedes an Intel x86 chip in the second-generation Google TV reference platform-not exactly a surprise, because Intel withdrew from smart TVs last year.
  

January 23, 2012

• Analysts' Choice Award Winners
  The Linley Group recognizes the top processor products of 2011 in the categories of embedded processors, mobile processors, PC processors, server processors, and processor IP. We selected the winners on the basis of their performance, power, features, and cost. And the winners are...
  

• Best Processor Technology of 2011
  Our Analysts' Choice Award for Best Technology of 2011 goes to Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube. Other important technologies disclosed last year include Intel's tri-gate (FinFET) transistors, SuVolta's PowerShrink technology, and Venray's merged CPU-DRAM architecture.
  

• In Brief: Mindspeed to Acquire Picochip
  As the small-cell market begins to take off, Mindspeed has acquired femtocell specialist Picochip. The acquisition is a lifeline to the startup, which had accepted $110 million in venture funding, and it rounds out Mindspeed's portfolio of base-station processors.
  

January 16, 2012

• Medfield Gets It Right
  Intel's new Atom processor is the first x86 chip to meet the power requirements of smartphones. It delivers leading performance on some benchmarks and has been adopted by Motorola and other smartphone makers. Future versions will rapidly improve in performance per watt.
  

• Marvell Acquires Last NPU Startup
  Its acquisition of Xelerated, a network-processor vendor, will help Marvell maintain and expand its Ethernet business. The deal provides a minimal return to Xelerated's private investors. In the longer term, the acquisition will adversely affect Marvell's relationship with EZchip, another NPU vendor.
  

• Year In Review: ARM Reaches for PC/Server Market
  Even as it consolidates its lead in smartphones and tablets, ARM deployed new IP cores for the PC and server markets in 2011. Ceva and Tensilica competed in DSP IP, while Imagination took the performance lead for graphics IP.
  

January 9, 2012

• Year in Review: Hybrids Bud on Embedded Landscape
  Revisiting 2011, numerous developments affected the high-speed embedded market. The first 28nm processors were announced, AppliedMicro pinned its multicore hopes on ARM, Xilinx and Altera revealed their CPU-FPGA chips, and several companies sought to eliminate standalone processors from base stations.
  

• In Brief: Freescale i.MX6 Gets a Lite
  Already sampling its initial i.MX6 mobile processors, Freescale announced two new members of this family in a bid to target lower-cost systems. The new i.MX 6SoloLite and 6DualLite target e-readers and low-cost tablet computers.
  

January 2, 2012

• Year in Review: Mobile Processors Power Up
  Trying to deliver a more PC-like experience, application processors added more cores and more megahertz, resulting in a performance increase of more than 2.5x in 2011. The coming year will see more emphasis on reducing power and on integration to reduce system cost.
  

December 26, 2011

• Year in Review: PC Processors Get Cool Fusion
  In 2011, AMD and Intel brought capable graphics to the CPU die, ushering in a new level of integration and performance. Although the PC may be under attack by tablets, PC processors have never been more capable.
  

December 19, 2011

• Year in Review: Innovation Returns to Servers
  Looking back on 2011, we see cloud computing and high-performance computing drove market growth. Intel and AMD advanced mainstream server processors with new CPU designs and increasing integration. And the first ARM-based server processors rolled out, promising superior power efficiency.
  

• Editorial: Qualcomm Eyes New Markets
  Qualcomm is no longer just a cellular vendor. After its acquisition of Atheros, the company has the technology portfolio and sales channels to expand into new consumer, enterprise, and industrial markets, and even into PCs and servers.
  

• In Brief: Samsung First With Cortex-A15
  Samsung sampled its dual-core Cortex-A15 processor, the Exynos 5250, before TI's more-publicized OMAP5. The 5250 promises big gains in CPU and graphics performance and will boost Samsung's high-end smartphones and tablets.
  

• In Brief: Changes in Chip Sales Leaders
  Although IC technology has advanced at a fantastic rate since 1985, the names and number of companies manufacturing semiconductors has also changed greatly. This article from IC Insights traces the changes to the top 10 semiconductor companies during this period.
  

December 12, 2011

• Snapdragons Proliferate in 28nm
  Qualcomm announced 14 new processors for 2012 that range from low-cost Cortex-A5 products to a quad-core processor using the company's next-generation Krait CPU. The company's rapid move to 28nm technology helps its Snapdragon S4 series deliver several competitive advantages.
  

December 5, 2011

• Freescale's Asymmetric SoCs
  Freescale's new asymmetric embedded MPUs (AeMPUs) will combine ARM Cortex-A5 cores with a Cortex-M4 digital signal controller. To this heterogeneous multicore design, Freescale is adding the features of a conventional microcontroller in a bid to replace two chips with one in embedded systems.
  

• In Brief: Sparc64 IXfx Burns Through FP Code
  Fujitsu and LSI have collaborated to develop a pro¬cessor for high-performance computing that features massive floating-point capabilities and I/O. The new Sparc64 IXfx doubles the number of cores, doubles the width of the FPU, and enlarges the Level 2 cache.
  

November 28, 2011

• Editorial: ARM Opens Server Front
  A series of recent announcements have made public a full frontal assault against Intel's highly profitable server-processor business, but as ARM attempts to beat x86, it is becoming more like x86.
  

• In Brief: ARM Pumps Up Mali-T658
  ARM's Mali-T658 is a follow-up to the first "Midgard" graphics core, the Mali-T604. The new T658 will provide up to eight unified-shader cores and four times the performance of its predecessor, putting it head-to-head against Imagination Technologies' PowerVR Series6.
  

• In Brief: Scott Gardner Joins The Linley Group
  Scott brings a wealth of technical, marketing, and executive experience to his roles as a senior editor for Microprocessor Report and senior analyst for The Linley Group. He will focus on mobile processors as well as CPU cores and other IP.
  

November 21, 2011

• AMD Bulldozer Products Roll Out
  The Bulldozer-based Opteron processors come to market just ahead of the Sandy Bridge-EP processors. Compared with the current Westmere-based Xeon processor, Opteron offers better performance on integer and floating-point benchmarks. For PCs, the FX processors also use the Bulldozer architecture but fall short on performance against Intel's E-1200.
  

• ARM Stretches to 64 Bits
  ARMv8 is a 64-bit instruction set designed to address the needs of the server market and take on the x86-64 architecture of AMD and Intel. It also includes an enhanced 32-bit mode for mobile and consumer applications.
  

• Nvidia Leads With Quad-Core AP
  Tegra 3 is the first application processor with four CPU cores, putting it into the CPU-performance lead among mobile processors. The chip also includes a much faster graphics unit, an improved video engine, and some unusual power-saving features.
  

November 14, 2011

• AppliedMicro Adds ARM for Servers
  PowerPC vendor AppliedMicro is developing a 64-bit ARM CPU as part of a complete server processor that will take on Intel's Xeon products. The company will also use this chip, which will scale to 32 cores, in the embedded multicore market.
  

• In Brief: TI's Affordable Cortex-A8 SoCs
  Texas Instruments' new Sitara AM335xx embedded processors are as powerful as the OMAP smartphone processors of only a few years ago. Starting at a mere $4.99, they integrate a 720MHz ARM Cortex-A8, 3D graphics, a display controller, a touchscreen controller, Gigabit Ethernet, cryptography acceleration, and USB.
  

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