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Will Chipmakers Make Cuts This Year?
Gartner is warning that worldwide wafer fab equipment spending is on pace to total $33 billion in 2012 which is a decline of 8.9 percent from 2011.
Gartner analysts warned that this is a sign of an industry in downturn and said the market will return to growth in 2013 with WFE spending projected to surpass $35.4 billion, a 7.4 percent increase from 2012. Bob Johnson, research vice president at Gartner said 2012 spending was strong at the beginning of the year, as foundries and other logic manufacturers ramped up sub-30-nm production.
Will More Win8 RT Hybrids Start Showing Up?
June 29, 2012 by admin
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Rumour has it that Nvidia has the best drivers and might be close to fine tuning its Windows RT platform, but we are sure Qualcomm and Texas Instruments aren’t far behind.
The Asus Transformer series has set a new trend by providing tablet users with a keyboard dock with some extra ports and an additional battery. This is definitely the way to go as you get the best of both worlds in a single package Windows 8 RT is finally bringing Microsoft in the ARM market and needless to say there will be many systems to be ready for launch.
Nvidia with Tegra, Texas Instruments with OMAP and Qualcomm with S4 are getting ready to embrace tablets as well as hybrid notebooks based on Windows 8 RT. The Asus Transformer 600 is just the first of many to come and there will be at least a few more similar designs to launch this year with Windows 8 RT, so we have no doubt that we will see quite a few convertible Windows tablets.
AMD, ARM And Others Form HSA Chip Foundation
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AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, Mediatek and Texas Instruments have signed up to create the Heterogeneous System Architecture Foundation (HSAF).
AMD has been pushing its vision for heterogeneous computing, where CPUs and GPUs can share system resources such as memory allowing developers to treat any processing core as a black box. Now the firm has managed to rope in ARM, Imagination Technologies, Mediatek and Texas Instruments to create the non-profit HSAF.
According to AMD, HSAF will try to define a hardware specification for developers to standardise upon, which should make development quicker and easier.
Phil Rogers, HSAF president and AMD corporate fellow said, “HSA [heterogeneous system architecture] moves the industry beyond the constraints of the legacy system architecture of the past 25-plus years that is now stifling software innovations. By aiming HSA squarely at the needs of the software developer, we have designed a common hardware platform for high performance, energy efficient solutions. HSA is unlocking a new realm of possibilities across PCs, smartphones, tablets and ultrathin notebooks, as well as the innovative supercomputers and cloud services that define the modern computing experience.”
AMD has scored something of a coup by getting big names such as ARM, Imagination and Texas Instruments to back its vision of a heterogeneous system architecture. Although the company has been struggling in outright performance terms against Intel, the idea of a combining CPU and GPU resources and making them appear as one to the application is something that will help it leverage its GPU compute capability against Intel.
Qualcomm Chip Issues Should End By December
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Qualcomm said it believes TSMC’s 28nm supply issues will continue until year end.
Qualcomm, which relies solely on TSMC for its 28nm chips, said it believes the supply of chips will improve, but the firm expects its 28nm supply not to be back to normal until the end of 2012.
Previously Qualcomm had poured scorn on TSMC by telling investors it is looking at rival wafer fabs to avoid supply issues in the future. Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs told Reuters once again that the firm is looking to other foundries for extra capacity, adding, “The goal is to get enough supply for everyone.”
TSMC’s 28nm process node has been tapped by a number of big name customers including AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, with the chip fab unable to meet demand. Since Qualcomm made the rare public admission that it wasn’t happy with the state of TSMC’s 28nm chip supply, the smart money has been on Globalfoundries picking up the slack, however nothing specific has been announced by either firm.
Qualcomm Updates The S4 Series
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chips are proving to be quite a coup for the company. They are faster than anything the competition has to offer, more power efficient and some versions include integrated LTE. The only problem is that Qualcomm is having trouble meeting demand.
Qualcomm announced four new S4 chip series aimed at wildly different market segments, all based on the very successful Krait architecture.
Snapdragon S4 Prime chips will target smart TVs and similar applications. The first Prime part is the MPQ8054, a 1.5GHz quad-core with Adreno 320 graphics. Qualcomm promises “leading” audio/video capabilities and low power consumption, although we are not sure efficiency very important in TVs.
Meanwhile Snapdragon S4 Pro parts sound like all-rounders. They also feature Adreno 320 graphics and the S4 Pro tier includes the APQ8064 quad-core and MSM8960T, the Pro version of MSM8960. Pro parts are likely to end up in tablets, hybrids and other “ultra-thin and sleek” devices.
S4 Plus parts are geared towards the traditional mobile market, smartphones and tablets, ranging from the low-end to the high-end. Processors in the S4 Plus tier include MSM8960, APQ8060A, MSM8660A, MSM8260A, APQ8030, MSM8930, MSM8630, MSM8230, MSM8627 and MSM8227.
Global Semiconductors On the Rise
Global semiconductor revenue is expected to rise at faster and force bigger chipmakers to acquire smaller rivals to increase their market share, according to bean counters at research outfit IDC.
In an industry report, IDC predicts that revenue may expand by between six percent and seven percent this year. Global semiconductor sales rose 3.7 percent to $301 billion in 2011, as orders for chips used in wireless devices offset declining revenue for computing-related chips, IDC said.
But it thinks all this will coase nergers and acquisitions among chipmakers will continue. Already Qualcomm bought Atheros and Texas Instruments took over National Semiconductor. But IDC thinks that industry consolidation may allow bigger chipmakers to offer products that are used in a wider range of applications.
New Chip To Cut Cost Of LTE Smartphones
February 22, 2012 by admin
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Chip manufacturer Renesas Mobile has unveiled the MP5232, a processor that will allow vendors to build LTE (Long Term Evolution)smartphones with a price tag between $150 and $300, the company said Wednesday.
The big advantage of the 1.5GHz dual-core processor is that it is a single-chip product that can do both 3G and LTE, eliminating the need to use separate chipsets for the two technologies. A more integrated device results in a cheaper product that takes up less space and uses less power, according to Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media.
The cost is important, because for LTE to take off, there is a need for smartphones that cost less than current products, according to Renesas.
In addition to smartphones, the MP5232 can also be used to power tablets, said Renesas.
One of the challenges of developing chipsets for LTE is the plethora of frequencies used. Renesas hasn’t specified which bands the MP5232 can handle, but says it is designed to support all major operators and their respective requirements.
Windows Phone 7 Roadmap Leaked?
January 6, 2012 by admin
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A purported Microsoft slide showing the 2012 Windows Phone roadmap seems to indicate that we could see the next major update by mid-2012.
The Tango update is scheduled for the second quarter of 2012, but it won’t be aimed at high-end phones. Instead, Tango is supposed to bring Windows Phone to dirt cheap devices, or “products with the best prices” as Microsoft calls them. This seems to indicate that it will be even better at resource management than Mango, which is already far ahead of iOS and Android in terms of its OS footprint.
The big new, of course, is Apollo. The new OS is scheduled to appear in Q4 and it should enable Microsoft to offer competitive superphones. Currently Windows Phone devices max out at WVGA resolutions and single-core Qualcomm chips. Apollo could change all this and pave the way for dual-core designs with high resolution screens, probably 720p.
Is Qualcomm A Threat To Intel?
Intel tried to do gaming graphics cards and it failed, but when it comes to CPUs for desktop and notebooks, it is currently dominating the market. Even the graphics used in Intel’s latest integrated CPUs these days are quite decent for multimedia and even some basic gaming.
Still, Intel is now shifting its focus and it sees Qualcomm as its main competitor in years to come. We heard this from high ranked sources from within Intel who believe that Qualcomm is the only ARM company that has it all, and Intel wants to take it on.
Intel is carefully watching Nvidia and Texas Instruments, again two strong ARM players, but it still thinks Qualcomm has better time to market, more customers and a much stronger portfolio.
Intel should start shipping Medfield just in time for Windows 8, and in case you’ve missed it, Medfield is a SoC (System on Chip) platform that should find its place to a few tablets and probably even some phones next year. Since Intel is trying to speed development up and put as much pressure on ARM players as possible, its next generation SoC will also come before the end of 2012, and it will use the advanced 22nm process, something we won’t see in ARM chips next year.
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The FCC Gives AT&T The OK
December 28, 2011 by admin
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T’s US$1.9 billion buying of spectrum from Qualcomm on Thursday, allowing the carrier to salvage one ambitious deal to acquire more spectrum, after squashing its planned merger with T-Mobile USA.
AT&T announced its plan to buy the Qualcomm spectrum last December, a few months before it revealed the much larger proposal to merge with T-Mobile for $39 billion. It said both were motivated by the need for more radio spectrum to increase the coverage and capacity of its LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network. AT&T withdrew the T-Mobile plan on Monday after the FCC, the Department of Justice and others said it was not in the public interest.
With the Qualcomm purchase, AT&T will get 6MHz of spectrum across the country in the coveted 700MHz band, as well as another 6MHz of spectrum in five major metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the FCC’s order released Thursday. Those five markets represent about 70 million potential subscribers. The carrier has said it plans to use it as a supplemental downlink for its LTE network, allowing for faster and more consistent mobile data service.
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