Will Qualcomm Buy AMD?

This wild rumor is not completely without merit, as Qualcomm did acquire a piece of AMD, or AMD’s handheld graphics business to be precise, and it would not be too surprising to see Qualcomm after the whole company sometime in the future.

Samsung on the other hand is not an entirely impossible choice, but at this point it won’t be acquiring AMD either.

It looks like market players want to see the acceptance of Windows RT that will finally prove how important ARM processors really are and knowing AMD, the worst is behind them, as 2012 was the year of many chances, cancelation and anything but good execution for them.

Meanwhile Qualcomm is doing great in the ARM market, although its Snapdragon S4 line suffers from insufficient 28nm production, but due to its on-chip LTE implementation the chips are sought after, especially in the United States market.

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Artificial Photosynthesis Developed

Panasonic said on Monday it has created a new system for artificial photosynthesis that can remove carbon dioxide from the air almost as well as plants do, as part of the company’s entry into an industry-wide trend toward greener tech.

The company said its system uses nitride semiconductors, which are widely used in LEDs (light-emitting diodes) to convert light to energy, and a metal catalyst to convert carbon dioxide and water to formic acid, which is widely used in dyes, leather production and as a preservative.

Carbon dioxide is a major pollutant and considered to be a main cause of the “greenhouse effect,” which most climate scientists believe causes global warming.

Panasonic has struggled with its traditional electronics business and has made eco-friendly products and practices the key element in its turnaround plan. The company is hoping to leverage its large rechargeable battery and solar businesses, while joining the industry in embracing technologies that are friendlier to the environment. The issue is an important one with customers, as demonstrated by the the outcry earlier this month when Apple was forced to rejoin a green standards program when clients complained about its earlier withdrawal.

Panasonic said the system can convert carbon dioxide and water to formic acid with an efficiency of 0.2 percent in laboratory conditions, which is similar to the conversion rate for green plants. The efficiency refers to the portion of the incoming light energy stored in materials produced during the process.

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Qualcomm Chip Issues Should End By December

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.

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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.

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Samsung Plans To Go Low-End

Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s top television maker, has seen TV sales firming up so far this year and plans to launch cheaper TVs, as demand for lower-end models increase, the head of its TV business said on Wednesday.

Demand for lower-end TVs has been increasing in recent months as major South Korean retailers such as E-Mart Co introduced flat-screen models that are as much as 40 percent cheaper through alliances with small local manufacturers.

“As long as there’s demand, we’re open to get into that segment,” Kim Hyun-suk, executive vice president of Samsung’s visual display division, told reporters.

“We’ve been preparing to introduce cheap models and have been studying to optimize production costs and retail prices. Those (cheap) models will be ready for sale in one or two months.”

Samsung, the most profitable TV maker, also introduced on Wednesday its highest-end premium set that it hopes will help boost profitability, as a fragile global economy threatens to sap demand growth this year after no growth in 2010.

The ES8000 model has voice, motion and face recognition functions, as well as 3D and Internet-enabled capabilities. The models, available in sizes of between 46 and 65 inches, will go on sale from this weekend in South Korea before a global launch in March.

Kim said Samsung’s TV sales so far this year have been stronger than a year ago and demand from China remained solid.

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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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Intel, Samsung Behind New Phone OS

Two Linux software groups have decided to collaborate, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in partnerships with Intel and Samsung Electronics.

However, analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle to attract wider developer and manufacturer support to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems in a market dominated by Apple and Google’s Linux-based Android.

Even industry majors Nokia and Hewlett-Packard have canceled their mobile platforms this year.

“The best hope for them is that big operators get worried by Android’s increasing smartphone dominance and decide to consciously switch their allegiances to rival platforms to restrict Google’s huge influence over the mobile market,” said analyst Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics.

LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation said the new Tizen platform is an open-source, standards-based software platform that supports multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle ‘infotainment’ systems.

The initial release is planned for the first quarter of 2012, enabling the first devices using Tizen to come to market in mid-2012, the two groups said.

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EBS Coming To Your Smartphone

In the event of local and/or nationwide disasters, wireless carriers will soon begin alerting the public by sending emergency SMS text messages to mobile phones.

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless have all agreed to a participate in this new Emergency Broadcast System alert method. It  will initially be rolled  out in New York and Washington, D.C., later this year, and nationwide next year, in April at the earliest.

The emergency text messages will cover public safety threats, Amber Alerts for missing children, and messages from the president, the New York Times reports. Messages will be free for customers, who can opt out of them all except the presidential messages.

We don’t expect the alerts to be frequent,” Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told the Times. “They will be reserved for when they are truly needed, for tornadoes or for disasters like 9/11.”

Genachowski said the emergency texts will look different from ordinary messages, making them more difficult for hackers to infiltrate or fake. They’ll probably appear directly on the screen, along with a special vibration or other signal. No word on how closely they’ll resemble the tone and color bars of the current Emergency Broadcast System for televisions, or whether users can expect “this is a test” messages on a regular basis.

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Panasonic May Boot 40,000 People

Analysts are speculating that Panasonic is planning to cut approximately 40,000 jobs over a couple of years.

Reuters is stating that Panasonic is being forced to take such drastic measures in its restructuring plans in its struggle to cut operating costs.  That said Panasonic is facing stiff competition from other Asian consumer electronics companies in Korea and China and has seen its profits dwindle over the year.

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Intel Developing Thunderbolt Technology

A new interconnect technology being developed by Intel could be ready for market by 2015 and will be able to move data between computers at up to five times the speed of its recently launched Thunderbolt technology, an Intel researcher said earlier this week.

The new technology uses silicon photonics, which combines silicon components with optical networking, to transfer data at up to 50 gigabits per second over distances of up to 100 meters, said Jeff Demain, strategy director of circuits and system research at Intel Labs, at a company event in New York.

Intel expects the technology to be ready for use in PCs, tablets, smartphones, televisions and other products by 2015, Demain said. As well as being faster than today’s interconnect technologies, it’s expected to lower costs because the components will be built using existing silicon manufacturing processes.

The technology could possibly be used in TVs and set-top boxes to carry video streams at much higher definition than those available today. Image resolution is likely to quadruple by the middle of the decade, when successors to 1080p have arrived, and that will mean more data has to be pushed to the TV.

It should also enable faster data transfers between smartphones, tablets, PCs and peripherals such as external storage drives.

The technology still has a way to go, but Intel showed its progress at the event in New York Wednesday. It showed what it said were working prototypes of the silicon chips used to transmit and receive the laser signals.

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