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ARM Profits On The Rise
ARM has reported good second quarter financial results, with profit rising by 23 per cent to $102.97 million.
ARM has been riding high in the public consciousness thanks to firms such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia pushing its chip architecture into smartphones and tablets. The firm announced it managed to take in $209.78 millio in revenue during the second quarter, a 15 per cent increase from the same period last year, while net income rose even faster by 23 per cent to $102.97 million.
ARM said two billion chips using the firm’s various design models were shipped during the quarter, which represented a nine per cent increase from last year. The firm revealed that its core money making operation, processor royalties, rose by 14 per cent.
Warren East, CEO of ARM said, “ARM’s royalty revenues continued to outperform the overall semiconductor industry as our customers gained market share within existing markets and launched products which are taking ARM technology into new markets.
“This quarter we have seen multiple market leaders announce exciting new products including computers and servers from Dell and Microsoft, and embedded applications from Freescale and Toshiba. In addition, ARM and TSMC announced a partnership to optimise next generation ARM processors and physical IP and TSMC’s FinFET process technology.”
Is Samsung Pursuing The Server Market?
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It is certain that Korean electronics giant Samsung will soon be entering the server chip market.
Reports are coming in that the company has been picking up key server personnel from Intel and AMD. Samsung has been focused on developing ARM chips and stayed clear of the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD.
But the companies latest hires seem to indicate that might change.
Samsung’s latest recruits include veterans of the chip business like Jim Mergard, Frank Helms, who is a Fusion APU architect, Brad Burgess who designed the Bobcat APU and Patrick Patla (VP of AMD’s server business). Patla was behind the success of the Opteron chip set and has done well using the x86-server system.
Hitachi Bringing New Xeon Servers To Market
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Hitachi Data Systems announced that it will expand its family of blade and rack server products for the enterprise market. The forthcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will be based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 family.
Roberto Basilio, vice president, Infrastructure Platforms Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems said that by leveraging the new Intel Xeon processor E5 family, upcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will feature faster performance, higher density and greater energy efficiency. The servers are being designed for converged data centres. They come pre-configured and optimised for leading applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010, SAP HANA and solutions with VMware.
He said that the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family provides exceptional energy efficiency, increased security, flexible performance and the opportunity for streamlining customer’s data centres. The current range of Hitachi Compute Systems consists of two blade server product lines, Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 and Hitachi Compute Blade 320, both of which are intended for high performance, high availability applications. The portfolio also includes a family of rack-optimised servers, Hitachi Compute Rack, that are the foundation for dedicated, packaged solutions such as the company’s award-winning object store, Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).
Is Intel Ready For The USB 3.0 Standard?
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The USB Implementers Forum has ruled that the Ivy Bridge 7 Series Chipset and other Intel chipsets have achieved USB 3.0 certification. USB 3.0 delivers up to 10 times the data transfer rate of USB 2.0, as well as improved power efficiency. Intel’s Ivy Bridge will ship in Windows PCs in the April and will be the first to have USB 3.0 as a standard feature for the first time. USB 3.0 has been seen on laptops and desktops from AMD or NEC.
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Will Samsung Release A Quad-Core Processor?
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Samsung is reportedly developing a new quad-core chip that will power its next generation Galaxy series flagship smartphone.
According to androidandme.com, the Korean giant is preparing a new 32nm quad-core chip, the Exynos 4412. The new chip is based on the A9 architecture and it will run at speeds of up to 1.5GHz. Moreover, Samsung went for ARM Mali-400 graphics in the current Exynos 4210, so there is a good chance the new chip will include next generation Mali-604 graphics.
In terms of performance, the new chip could be a rather impressive beast. Compared to Nvidia’s Tegra 3, the Exynos could squeeze out a bit more performance per watt, thanks to its superior manufacturing process. On the graphics front, it could also sneak ahead of both Tegra 3 and Apple’s A5, with the SGX 543MP2 graphics core. The new chip should debut in early 2012 if all goes well.
Interestingly, Samsung has been keen to embrace processors and graphics solutions from a number of companies in the past. Even now, the company is selling a rather awkward mix of phones and tablets based on Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments chips. Basically Samsung is in bed with everyone, but it is obviously taking mobile chip development seriously and we could see some if not all third-party suppliers phased out sometime in the future.
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Intel Gives Details On Their Xeon E5 Processors
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Intel finally gave more details at the supercomputing conference SC2011 about its upcoming Xeon E5 processors and been showing off its Knights Corner many integrated core (MIC) solution.
We don’t expect to see the new Xeons until the first half of 2012, but Intel has has been shipping the new chips to “a small number of cloud and HPC customers” since September. The E5 family has the same core as the 3960X which Intel launched this week. So far though Intel does not seem to be keen to ramp up any mass production. Some of this might have something to do with problems in production which were rumoured earlier this year. However early benchmarks indicate that it could be a winner.
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Will Cortex A7 Accelerate Android?
Texas Instruments (TI) said ARM’s heterogeneous ‘Big.little’ architecture helps it accelerate Google’s Android operating system.
TI, which designs the popular range of OMAP system-on-chip (SoC) processors found in many smartphones told The INQUIRER that ARM’s newly unveiled Big.little architecture will help improve overall performance of the Android operating system.
Avner Goren, GM of OMAP Strategy at TI told The INQUIRER that ARM’s Big.little architecture, which uses Cortex A7 and Cortex A15 cores, addresses a different need than that of multi-core processors made up of identical cores.
Goren said, “We have been using heterogeneous multi-cores since 2002, we always had an ARM CPU coupled to accelerators for video, graphics, DSPs, image processing. This [Big.little] doesn’t change anything in this idea. On the contrary, it builds on this concept and it is another dimension. None of what was held here changes what we are doing in the rest of the system.”
Goren continued by saying that Big.little is a natural progression from the multi-core, accelerator-aided processors of yesteryear. “What we have held today doesn’t change the fact I would continue doing accelerators, DSPs, video accelerators and use [Cortex] M3s inside, but it changes what I’m doing on the high-level Android side.”
When ARM’s multi-core processors tipped up at Mobile World Congress earlier this year firms were banging on about it would be a golden age of power efficiency due to being able to run multiple cores at lower frequencies. Now less than a year later and with dual-core smartphones still having relatively poor battery life, it looks like that strategy has gone for a Burton. Goren admits that homogenous multi-core architectures do have a problem.
“Multicores give you scalability in a range, performance goes up and down within this range based on how many cores are active and what is the voltage level for these cores. On the other hand it has a floor, this floor is when you have one core running at the lowest voltage. What we have identified is a need for general processing power, meaning running Android, even at a lower [power] level,” said Goren.
Goren said ARM’s A7 processor will allow TI to ramp up the Cortex A15 core without hurting the ‘idle’ performance of the more frequently used Cortex A7 core.
AMD Ships One Million Llano Processors
It appears that AMD has successfully managed to ship one million Llano chips in the second quarter, which is weeks ahead of the official launch.
AMD released the news during its earnings conference call. Where interim CEO Thomas Seifert said demand for Llano was strong. “We expect Llano ramp to outpace the Brazos ramp,” he noted.
If you look back at AMD’s Brazos launch, they managed to ship around one million units ahead of its scheduled launch, in the fourth quarter of 2010. Conversely, introducing Llano will be a bit more challenging, because AMD is planning to offer many varieties of mobile and desktop SKUs; including affordable dual- and triple-core processors. Therefore, Llano is expected to outpace Brazos very soon. AMD also made mention in their earnings call that total APU shipments for the quarter hit seven million. That said, so 6 million of them were Brazos processors.
It is believed that AMD Llano chip will take 50 percent of their total CPU shipments by the end of the year. In the first quarter of 2012, the Llano is expected to garner over 60 percent of their shipments.
AMD A75 Motherboards Economically Priced
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It appears that AMD’s A75 motherboards have finally started to hit the streets. Furthermore, we were truly shocked to see these MB’s economically priced for about $60.00.
Do not get too over excited in reference to the pricing because this gets you a decent A75 micro-ATX motherboard with up to four USB 3.0 ports and six SATA 6Gbps ports matched with a FM1 socket. It’s also worth pointing out that you will not get these same features like USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps on a comparable Intel platform in the same price range; you’d pay more.
We noticed that online retailer Newegg.com has an AMD motherboard selling for $59.99 after the rebate; otherwise it will cost $72.99. We expect the more serious computer geeks to opt for more muscle in regards to their motherboards; so they can whet their appetite for a good A75 for about $150.00.
Gigabyte Debuts New Motherboards
July 14, 2011 by admin
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Gigabyte just announced their new slate of motherboards that will support AMD’s A75 series chipsets and the latest AMD A-Series APUs or Llano. The new A75 based motherboards are said to offer DIY PC builders and developers a higher level of 3D and multimedia performance that is scalable and said to offer the best value upgrade path imaginable.
Gigabyte’s VP of Service and Marketing Henry Kao is quoted as saying that the new boards were new and exciting as AMD new APU’s were “ground breaking” APU technology. As well as bringing AMD A-Series technology to DIY users who demand excellent gaming and multimedia performance on a budget, these motherboards also offer a compelling upgrade path that includes Dual Graphics configurations.
The A75 motherboards from Gigabyte feature an AMD A75 ‘Hudson’ chipset supporting the latest 32 nanometer AMD A-Series APUs. That said, these chips are the first ever to combine a DX11-capable, high performance graphics processor with the option of a dual or quad core CPU on one silicon die, offering a 3D gaming and multimedia experience which is similar to a discrete graphics configuration.