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No LTE On IBM’s SoC Until 2014
Intel is working on integrated LTE modems for its upcoming SoC designs, but CEO Paul Otellini claims they will not be ready for prime time until 2014.
In a recent conference call Otellini was directly asked about Intel’s plans for LTE integration and said “higher levels of integration” are expected next year. He went on to say that the first Intel-based phones with LTE should launch in early 2014, in time for the Mobile World Congress.
Otellini said Intel’s wireless team, formerly a business unit of Infineon, is making good progress in LTE.
“We believe we have a very competitive solution. The Infineon team is known for not necessarily being first to market, but being really good at engineering a very solid solution and being cost effective and cost competitive and I think that they are doing a very good job with respect to this product,” said Otellini.
Is NFC Catching On?
January 10, 2013 by admin
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Near Field Communication (NFC) is steadily gaining adoption in the U.S. for sharing data and music among smartphones, but the technology faces years of slow growth as a replacement for physical wallets.
NFC will take a minimum of three more years to grab hold as a technology that enables so-called mobile wallets as a replacement for credit cards and cash in the U.S., according to a consensus of five analysts. And by “grab hold,” these analysts mean being used by only 10% of mobile phone users to make digital purchases.
Gartner analyst Avivah Litan predicts that NFC payments will hit the 10% threshold in 2015, compared to the process of SMS (texting) payments that is expected to represent 50% of mobile payment volume globally in that same year. “We’re still on the edge when it comes to NFC innovation,” Litan says. “It will take a decade before it’s mainstream across the globe.”
Dozens of new smartphones that run Android, BlackBerry and Windows, and that include an NFC chip, launched last year. But Apple notably did not put NFC in its new iPhone 5 when the phone launched in September. That move “surely had a significant detrimental impact on industry adoption of NFC,” Litan says, given Apple’s influence in the mobile market.
Apple justified the move by saying that consumers already could use its Passbook app, which shows barcodes on the display, instead of NFC. The barcodes contain information that can be scanned by optical readers to let users board planes and redeem movie tickets — tasks that Apple notes are “the kinds of things consumers need today.”
Some have criticized Apple for omitting NFC from the iPhone 5, which has led to a widespread reassessment of NFC’s immediate future, especially in the U.S.
Is Intel Really Catching ARM?
A new report suggests that Intel is close to matching ARM on power efficiency.
The study by Bernstein Research analysts said that the days of Intel being mocked because its power-hungry chips shortened the battery life of mobile devices could be over. Bernstein noted that the ARM camp has such a commanding lead in phones and tablets that Intel probably won’t make much of a dent in those markets for a couple of years — even with its energy-efficient chips.
But it said that both company’s chip types “are very close in terms of power efficiency and processing power.” It said that the fight between the ARM and Intel camps will heat up meaningfully as early as 2013, with likely damages on both sides and no winner. For its study, Bernstein compared Intel’s chip in a Motorola RAZR phone and a RAZR phone with an ARM chip. It also compared both chips in similar tablets outfitted with the Windows 8.
The bad news in the report for Intel was that ARM’s chips have become more powerful, making them “a very compelling choice” for consumers looking for low-end notebooks.
Intel Details 22nm SoC
Thanks to a long spate of bad luck over at AMD, Intel now finds itself in a rather safe market lead, at least in high-end and server markets. However, in the low-end and mobile, Intel has a lot of catching up to do.
ARM still dominates the mobile market and Intel is looking to take on the British chip designer with new 22nm SoCs of its own. Intel outlined its SoC strategy at the 2012 International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco the other day.
The cunning plan involves 3D tri gate transistors and Intel’s 22nm fabrication process, or in other words it is a brute force approach. Intel can afford to integrate the latest tech in cheep and cheerful 22nm Atoms, thus making them more competitive in terms of power efficiency.
Since Intel leads the way with new manufacturing processes it already has roughly a year of experience with 22nm chips, while ARM partners rely on 28nm, 32nm and more often than not, 40nm processes. Intel’s next generation SoCs will also benefit from other off-the-shelf Intel tech, such as 3D tri-gate transistors.
Did Hackers Attack Water System?
November 28, 2011 by admin
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Federal investigators are investigating a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility’s water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system.
The November 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks.
The attackers obtained access to the network of a water utility in a rural community west of the state capital Springfield with credentials stolen from a company that makes software used to control industrial systems, according to the account obtained by Weiss. It did not explain the motive of the attackers.
He said that the same group may have attacked other industrial targets or be planning strikes using credentials stolen from the same software maker.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examining the matter, said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.
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Sony Buys Out Ericsson In Joint Venture
November 1, 2011 by admin
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Sony has bought Ericsson’s stake in its mobile phone venture for $1.47 billion.
Sony Ericsson was the merger of two ailing phone makers back in 2001 and while some would question how strong the firm is now against its rivals, Sony has decided to buy out Ericsson’s stake by paying the firm around 41.47 billion. The move will result in Sony Ericsson, presumably renamed without the Ericcson suffix, becoming part of Sony’s operations and most importantly bringing its patent portfolio.
Both Sony and Ericsson have agreed to the deal, but said that the last 10 years worth of work was time well spent. Back in 2001 when the Sony Ericsson joint venture was announced both firms’ handset divisions were losing money, and while Sony Ericsson’s financials have never been superb, it has reported profits. The firm also claimed that its Android smartphones account for 11 per cent of the smartphone market.
Sony Ericsson has cited Google’s Android operating system as the reason for its success in the smartphone market. While the company doesn’t have any killer smartphones, its Xperia range certainly hasn’t embarrassed itself against competing smartphones built by HTC and Samsung.
Flaw in Intel’s 320 Series SSD Confirmed
July 22, 2011 by admin
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There had been talk on the Internet in reference to the nasty bug discovered and reported on Intel’s support forums regarding the data loss on its recently released 320-series SSDs and today, Intel has finally and officially confirmed it.
The users have mentioned that under power failures, the drive reverts back to 8MB capacity and thus looses all the data stored on the drive. According to preliminary reports the drive tries to reconnect with the SATA port rather than to go for a proper shutdown.
Intel Is Still The Market Leader
Reports now show that Intel shipped 44 percent more Microprocessors than Samsung and Intel’s overall shipments grew 25 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile Samsung’s first quarter microprocessor grew by 15 percent. The report also noted that Toshiba and TSMC came in a respectful 3rd and 4t with 10 and 18 percent of year over year growth respectively. Texas Instruments came in 5th barely edging out Renesas which appears to be closing the gap on TI.
Super mobile chipmaker Qualcomm was 10th and showed a 22 percent growth year-over-year; while AMD ranked 12th, with 2 percent growth. One would have thought that AMD would have been one of the top five manufacturers.
Unfortunately Nvidia and Sony ended up at the bottom with ended up at the bottom with six and 14 percent drop in sales, respectively.
New Atom Architecture In The Making
Word on the street is that Intel is in the process of developing an entirely new Atom architecture based on its 3D transistor technology they announced last week. This new architecture should enable more power efficiency on the chip.
The new processor is being called Silvermont and the Atom will encompass a system-on-chip design, similar to Intel’s Z760 Atom or ARM’s processors. Silvermont is being designed on Intel’s 22nm process and harness the power of Intel’s 3D transistor technology that has yet to be tested.
Tablet Users Are Dropping Laptops
According to Neilsen people who have owned laptops and now use tablets as a PC device are ditching them like hotcakes. Under the study conducted around 77 percent of tablet owners are now using their device in the same capacity as they used their laptop computers. This strange because there are many applications or functions that a tablet is not able to process or handle.
One third of the tablet owners also admitted that they find themselves using their desktops even less since they acquired a tablet PC. Furthermore, thirty percent of those surveyed who own both a laptop and desktop who owned a laptop find themselves using their tablet more. A small percentage (2) of those Neilsen interviewed said they had stopped using their laptop computer altogether.