Displaying items by tag: Mobile Computing

In what should not have been a surprise to anyone, NVIDIA launched their own tablet today. This new tablet is part of their mobile gaming initiative and is a smart move considering some of the setbacks NVIDIA has had when dealing with the mobile industry.

AMD kicked an interesting product out the door today in the form of their Operton X-Series APU SoC. You might remember that the possibility of this APU was leaked a while ago by an inadvertent inclusion on a slide showing the Operton X logo. Everyone knew this was going to fold over into an x86 APU based SoC and the launch was just a matter of time. Now the lid is off and we can talk about the Opteron X (Kyoto) and where AMD sees this new product in their server business and in the market as a whole.

According to Display Search HTC intends to send to the market its first Windows tablet, and it will come with a 10.1" diagonal and supposedly 1080p resolution. While a manufacturer for HTC should be Pegatron, the screen would come from LG, which has a production process for matrix density of 218 pixels per inch (iPad has 264 ppi, while Samsung Galaxy tab 2 has 149 ppi) which would put the display somewhere in the middle of the offerings.

Originally this article was to be a stand alone item to show how the mobile world is catchin up to the desktop. However, now that we have the news of domains being seized that offered pirated versions of Mobile Apps it seems there is certainly a new push to secure this highly profitable sector in play. The company that produced the report (Arxan) is not associated with this push, but timing of the publication of the report is very interesting. So let's take a look at how sad the state of the mobile app market is in terms of securing apps from hacking.

The mobile world has exploded in much the same way that the PC world exploded back in the mid to late 90s. It was a time when everyone was selling cheap computers for the masses. Unfortunately the hardware and software that was being used by everyone was also very open to attack. The thought of malware protection, hardened operating systems and edge protection (in the form of a firewall) were still very new in the consumer market. These things were also still in their infancy in much of the corporate market. Now we are seeing the same thing happening in the mobile world. The introduction of the smart phone and the mobile “app” have created a new offshoot which is still very immature and which due to its rapid growth and perceived security has become a target for malware and piracy, just like the PC did in the 90s.

AMD has finally signed the predicted license deal with ARM to incorporate some of ARM’s technology into AMD’s APUs. This was a move that we saw coming back in Q3 of 2011. Around the time when Rory Reed took over the helm at AMD we anticipated the shift to mobile computing. It was Reed’s big push at Lenovo while he was there and we did not expect anything less from him at AMD.

Although we reported on this last year it seems that AMD is intent on reminding all of us about their new strategy. In comments to BloombergBusinessweek CEO Rory Read has made the comment that AMD will no longer compete head to head with Intel in the CPU market. This time Read qualifies his comment with a statement that is sure to be put in the same category of Bill Gates’ famous (although misattributed) “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

It looks like mobile is the way to go these days; well really it has been for some time. Back in 2009 or so nVidia saw that and turned their attention toward the mobile world by developing the Tegra SoC (System on Chip) at the time many people slammed them for dropping out of the chipset business and fans of their GPUs became annoyed that this new product was taking priority over development of faster and better products for their games. Now, after a rocky start and three generations into it (plus a design win that could put Tegra on the moon), no one is laughing at the tiny little chip any longer.

AMD has faced some rough time recently. After their ATi purchase back in 2006 AMD has had one poor leader after another. Under Hector Ruiz we ended up with the ill-fated $5.4 Billion buyout of ATi. This was a purchase that caused AMD to not have a profitable quarter for almost 5 years. In fact if AMD had not gotten a settlement from Intel in late 2010 they would still be operating in the red. Hector Ruiz was also responsible for the shedding of AMD’s foundries.  This split created Global Foundries and forced AMD as a CPU and GPU manufacturer into a Fabless state. They now have to pay to have their processors made by another company.

Have you ever wanted to grab a spot on your couch or bed and bring your notebook/netbook along with you? Personally I have not, but I know more than a few people that have (and often do) participate in this activity. These people all complain about the same things; the laptop is heavy, it gets hot, there is no room for a mouse.  There are options to get around this though. Most look like TV trays for meals or some other type of accessory that goes over your lap. Again, there are complaints about this. Thankfully Choiix (a division of Cooler Master) has another option for you. Choiix is a company that specializes in computer peripherals that a very “lifestyle” oriented.  So let’s take a look at the Choiix Comforter Lapdesk