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Thursday, 15 December 2011 07:33

Mobile, it’s the new Black

motorola_droid_x1It 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.

Published in Editorials
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 00:11

Intel talking to Google about Android

untitledWell, well, well. Remember how we told you that AMD is providing direct hardware and engineering support for the Android-x86 project? Well now we are hearing that Intel is working on Android for x86 too. However, instead of working with the open source community and projects like Android-x86 they are in direct contact with Google.

Published in News
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 22:42

Is an x86 SoC AMD's next move?

Rory-01It looks like AMD might be taking a leaf out of HP’s book. According to a report from ZDNet Asia AMD will begin to shift its focus away from the desktop to the server side where the margins are much higher per unit. This latest news plays into some additional rumblings that AMD is getting out of the x86 market (which is not true at all). We have already told you that AMD is planning to shift its consumer line up toward the mobile market where AMD feels they have an advantage over Intel and the Atom.

Published in Leaks and Rumors
Wednesday, 12 October 2011 22:38

Intel Folds Digital TV Group into Tablet Division

Boxee-Box-by-D-LinkIt looks like Intel is getting out of the Digital Home… well in a manner of speaking. Intel’s Digital Home Group; the ones responsible for their Atom CE4100 SoC that made its way into the Boxee and Google TV is going to shift focus. They will be ending production of their Digital TV processor. Instead they will work on an IP set-top media processor and a few other related items.

This will also probably mean the death of the Boxee and Google TV as we know it. These products might not go away but they will not have the same Intel inside that they do now. Instead this group will now be rolled up inside Intel’s tablet team.  This is actually a very smart move on Intel’s part as they could use some new minds in their existing phone/tablet group especially since the tablet has moved from a productivity device to an entertainment product bringing in the DHG gang will only help.

It also gives Intel an opening into a future market that we have been looking at. There are several companies that are making hardware and software that can be run from inside Windows Home Server. These products will allow you to stream media wirelessly to a properly equipped device. Now I know some of you will say that this is not much more than a media extender but this is something more.

With these new products (we saw the first glimpses of this with SageTV) you can run multiple concurrent viewing streams to multiple devices. If you have a dual tuner TV card or multiple cards you can actually stream this media to multiple tablets. Imagine being able to watch cable TV on your tablet instead of having to buy a new TV. This is the type of thing we have been talking about. Although only speculation on our part at this time; the combining of the Digital TV group and the Tablet group seems to make quite a bit of sense when you consider these other products.  We plan on keeping an eye on this and see when and how things develop in the near future.

Source AnandTech

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Published in News
Tuesday, 06 September 2011 21:38

nVidia looking for the mobile market to grow

News_nvidia_sh2About two years ago, roughly the same time as the ZuneHD hit the market with the first Tegra inside, nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made a prediction of sorts. He stated that he envisioned a time when the GPU was not the bread and butter of nVidia. Instead he saw the mobile CPU and the SoC (system on chip) as the wave of the future. Of course he could not get away from his graphical legacy, so his vision also included an nVidia GPU (or two) along with the mobile CPU. At the time the press sort of overlooked the story. It was not that news worthy. After all the Tegra only had one well known design win (there were others but many never reached the market) the ZuneHD. Arguably it was (and still is) a great product, it just was marketed VERY poorly and was going head to head with the greatest show on Earth; the Apple marketing team.

Jump forward to today and we find the Tegra and the Tegra 2 in many devices. In fact one of the best-selling Android tablets on the market today has a Tegra 2 dual core SoC inside (for those of you that do not know it is the Galaxy Tab 10.1) this is followed by devices like the Asus EEE Pad Tansformer and others. They really have come a very long way in terms of the smartphone and tablet market.  Of course they still have Apple to contend with (and their legal and marketing teams) so the battle is not won just yet. However, what we are seeing is that Huang’s vision is coming to pass. nVidia just might find itself earning more than 50% of their income from the tiny SoC and not their high-end GPUs.  
Still the road ahead is not completely clear, nVidia will face competition in the form of Qualcom (which just bought BigFoot Networks), as well as Samsung and Even Apple (to a lesser degree) in this new market. As for Intel, Huang says they are not worried about them because the Atom is not an ARM CPU and is not even “speaking the same language”. He feels that the lower cost ARM based tablets will be more attractive to the consumer looking for a small and light system. With the advent of Windows 8 for ARM people will also gain the ability to move back and forth between ARM and x86 keeping things on almost the same platform.  This will help to bring the more “desktop centric” consumers into the fold especially with the prospect of a quad core ARM CPU running Windows 8 on the horizon.

It is when companies have to innovate to survive that some of the coolest things arise. I wonder what we will see from Tegra in near future and what lessons from Tegra will nVidia take to other departments to help improve them?

Source CNET

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Published in News
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