Intel’s New Shopping Craze: Wireless Technologies For Smartphones

August 5, 2010

Remember the late 90′s, when Intel was throwing billions in its quest to become a telecommunication powerhouse, to finally write it all off?

Well, sounds that the chipmaker is at it again with the recent acquisitions of Infineon’s cellular and GPS technology as well as the assets of small 4G vendor Comsys.

Hopefully, the mastermind of Intel’s first telecom foray, Sean Maloney, might remember one or two things learned from his first failed attempt to build a communications empire!

As analyst Linley Gwennap writes it,

“Making it clear that money is no object in its quest to become a major player in the smartphone market, Intel plans to acquire the wireless operations of Infineon in a deal valued at more than $1.2 billion. Infineon’s cellular and GPS technology will complement Intel’s Atom processor and Wi-Fi expertise, allowing Intel to deliver a complete solution for the rapidly growing smartphone and tablet-computer markets.”

Infineon ranked fourth in cellular-baseband shipments last year with 10.7% unit share, according to a recent report from The Linley Group. Infineon is a major supplier to Apple, Nokia, and Samsung.

But “the German vendor lacks an application processor, however, making success in the smartphone market difficult, and it has struggled to sell its 3G baseband outside of Apple,” adds Linley.

The analyst adds that in a quieter but significant move, Comsys acquisitions brings a processor for WiMax phones and was working on converting that design to support LTE.

Intel’s secret goal (well not anymore!) is to merge Infineon and Comsys technologies to create its own 4G solution coupled to its Atom chip for smartphones.

“Intel is clearly focused on smartphones, leaving the future of Infineon’s popular 2G processors in doubt. This deal could end up helping vendors such as Broadcom, MediaTek, and ST-Ericsson, which could step into the breach with their own 2G processors. Conversely, the deal gives Intel the technology it needs to develop an integrated 3G-smartphone processor, allowing it to compete against vendors such as Qualcomm and Marvell,” says Linley.

First published in TechPulse 360.

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[Video] AMD Previews “Sexy” Notebooks In Fall Lineup

July 21, 2010

AMD's Notebook Line Up for the Back to School season looks sexyer than ever!

In a private event in San Francisco, Calif., yesterday, AMD showcased the Fall fashion lineup of notebooks and desktops based on its VISION technology; mostly dual-core machines with an integrated ATI graphics chips.

AMD designed the VISION programme to simplify the PC buying experience by making it easier for consumers to choose the right computer for them based on what they want to do with the product.

“It wasn’t so long ago that if you wanted to find notebook computer with an AMD processor they were all uniformally very plain – I would hesitate to say ugly but they were plain. But now, the system OEMs (like HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Acer…) have put much effort into designing really pretty boxes that have AMD processors as much as they have moved to have attractive designs around the Intel-based processors… It’s clear now that AMD is now equipped to compete non only the basis of their technology but also on the base of their OEMs design,” explains Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.

AMD’s Vision strategy found useful in retail PC shopping

“I think it [Vision] has worked. It’s made it easier for people to go into a store and figure out what kind of computer they want. And to calibrate their own needs with the system capabilities,” adds Brookwood who finds AMD Vision most successful in retail. “The salespeople don’t get a lot of training… and the Vision programme guides people into making smart choices and not under buying or over buying… and from that standpoint I think it [Vision] had simplified the purchasing process and taken some of the mystery about multi-core and discrete GPU out of the equation. And that’s basically good.”

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Analyst: AMD 12-Cores vs. Intel 6-Cores Server Chips

April 1, 2010

This week, AMD and Intel launched their latest generation of high-end server chips.

The AMD Opteron 6000 (Magny-Cours) is a set of 8- and 12-core processors for dual- and quad-CPU servers. Not to be outdone, Intel has introduced the 8-core processor Xeon 7500 (Westmere), that could be deployed in mammoth 256-processor configurations.

To help us understand the differences between these 2 competing family of chips, we asked Insight64 analyst, Nathan Brookwod to share his views on these latest chips.

In 2-socket configurations, AMD delivers better performance despite Intel’s faster cores

AMD Magny-Cours (now the Opteron 6100) for both two socket and four socket configurations.

In the two-socket world, AMD faces Westmere-EP (Xeon 5600), which has six cores and twelve threads. Westmere’s cores are faster than Magny-Cours’ cores. Westmere wins some single-threaded contests, but AMD can overwhelm them if it gets to fire up all its cores, or if memory bandwidth or capacity is an issue.

In 4-socket configurations, AMD wins in price but Intel can scale to 64-sockets!

In the four-socket world, AMD faces Nehalem-EX, aka Becton, which has eight cores and sixteen threads. Becton’s cores are faster than Magny-Cours’ cores, and Intel has more on-chip cache (24MB to AMD’s 12MB) but AMD has 12 cores to Intel’s 8, and AMD charges the same price for the chips in 2P and 4P systems, while Intel charges almost 2x the price (per chip) for Becton, compared with Westmere-EP. Magny-Cours will win some benchmarks against Becton, and lose some, but it will always be less expensive. Some customers will value Intel’s greater expandability (to 8, 16 and 64-socket arrangements) and others will be attracted to AMD’s lower price.

Can Itanium survive to latest performance onslaught?

Brookwood’s law (“It’s easier to measure price than performance”) will give AMD an advantage in the two-way and four-way segments, but Becton will have almost no competition (other than Itanium and Power 7) for the higher-end niche of the server market. It’s hard to see how Itanium can survive for long against this Xeon onslaught.

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[Video] Intel Confirms Launch Of “Westmere” Server Chip Mid-March, Details Cloud Security Functions

March 2, 2010

Intel server chip chief Kirk Skaugen confirmed the imminent release of the company's first 6-core chip since the ill-fated Dunnington

At a security event last night in San Francisco, Intel vice-president Kirk Skaugen confirmed the release date of Intel’s next-generation lineup of 32-nm Xeon server processors, including the first six-core Xeon chips since 2008 (Dunnington).

“In about 2 weeks it’s highly anticipated that we’ll be announcing this Westmere processor… When you buy that [chip], you should be able to get your return in about 5 months. But we’re probably most excited about – relative to just another crank of energy and performance – is the security features that are going into the processor,”told Skaugen to reporters during a media event hosted by security company RSA.

Scheduled in March 16, Intel will release a dozen dual-socket, 32nm Xeon processors as well a workstation version (Core i7) of the six-core chip.

“But what probably we’re most excited about – relative to another crank of energy and performance – is the [2] security features that are going into the processor,” added Skaugen.

The 2 new security features included in the Westmere line are:

  1. 7 new instructions call AES-NI, that will deliver encryption and decryption up to 9 times faster and up to 2 times more SSL functions than in the past;
  2. Trusted eXecution Technology (TXT) that is integrated in the processor, the chipset and Intel motherboards. “So for example, if you’re using VMotion to dynamically move a workload from a server to another, you want to set policies that say “I’m only going to move a workload to a server I know the secure root of trust has been verified… So, if I’m on a non trusted server I won’t be allowed to run [an application] on a trusted server, and vice-versa… all these kind of policies can be set up at the cloud level through the software that will be enabled on top of these new hardware,” said Skaugen.

Intel claims cloud domination

The Intel executive also provided reporters with some interesting statistics:

  1. a little under 40% of the world’s servers today are still single core;
  2. Xeon servers represent about 90% of the cloud infrastructure.

“With this new chip, everything that you know and love about Intel on energy efficiency, you’ll still get. So you can retire 15 single core servers and put in one Westmere server that is going to have the same performance, but you also going to get the trusted execution technology that can deliver that new secure root of trust,” concluded Skaugen.

Follows is a video excerpt of Skaugen comments:

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Analyst: Imagination Technologies Powers Apple A4 Graphics Engine, Tops Nvidia Tegra

January 29, 2010

The A4 is Apple's custom chip powering the iPad tablet

[Update] Analyst Jon Peddie just blogged more details about iPad’s internals.

Inside Apple’s upcoming iPad tablet lies a mysterious chip: the A4, with the “A” presumably referring to Apple and the number “4″ perhaps to 4-cores!

First, here’s what we know for sure about the A4, either from common sense and public comments by Apple:

  1. It’s a system-on-a-chip (SoC) which combines a low-power ARM-based CPU (supposedly the latest Cortex A9), a graphics processor (or GPU), and other circuitries like audio and video codecs.
  2. Runs at 1GHz;
  3. Fabricated by Samsung.

In many aspects, Apple’s custom silicon is comparable to next-generation ARM-based SoC mobile processors from Freescale (i.MX series), Marvell (Armada), Qualcomm (SnapDragon) and Nvidia (Tegra); all showed at CES a number of tablets and netbooks prototypes using their respective chips.

Intel has also entered the SoC market with its Moorestown chip, a shrink of the current Atom processor used in netbooks, which now integrates a CPU and GPU on the same die.

If there’s not much mystery left on the origin of the A4 CPU – aside from the number of cores – little is still known however of the internal design of the chip and its graphics capabilities.

In a blog post that was widely reprinted all over the Net, Brightside suggested that Apple used ARM’s Mali 50 design for its core GPU. However, graphics expert Jon Peddie, of Jon Peddie Research, disagrees.

“The Ipad is not using Mali,” told Peddie to TechPulse 360. “The graphics engine in iPad certainly do, spec-wise, rival Tegra, Snapdragon, or Armada. On a polygons/second, or a pixel fill-rate basis it is as good as any out there, maybe better. And if game play is the criteria, then the graphics engine has all the power needed to deliver a very satisfying, if not impressive experience.”

But for Peddie, the real question should be: how does the A4 chip compares on a polygons/second/watt basis?

“And here is where you (and competitors) will be surprised – it will be top of the class. We won’t have measured data probably until late summer when all the tablets, including HP’s Slate and MSI’s Tegra-based unit are out and available for testing. But based on what we know about the engines involved, the A4 should be the best of breed,” added Peddie who is coming out next week with a full report on the A4 chip.

Peddie just blogged more details on the A4′s graphics engine: it’s an Imagination Technologies [PowerVR] SGX 535 core that is already used in iPhones and iPod touches.

Earlier this month at CES, Imagination unveiled a successor to the 535 core – the 545 – with even more impressive graphics capabilities. No doubt that it will find its way in next-generation iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Apple and Intel are key stockholders in Imagination Technologies. According to the UK publicly-listed company, they respectively own 9.5% and 16% (according to the Guardian) of its shares.

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Video: Consumers Driving PC Market Growth, Intel says

December 17, 2009

Despite the recession, sales of consumer PCs grew in 2009. A trend expected to continue, at a double digit rate, through 2013

Intel has the consumer to thank for 2009 not being such a bad year after all.

“What we saw was a downdraft, especially on the commercial [PC] sector in 2009. But we actually saw unit volume growth for the consumer [PC] segment. That goes back to our point that PCs are really essential to the way we work and live and that the driver for the business in 2009 has been the consumer segment,” explains Intel vice-president Stephen Smith at a media briefing this morning in San Francisco.

Intel is now shipping in volume 32-nm chips of its Nehalem architecture (Core i3, i5 and i7) to OEMs; from 2 factories and plans to add 2 more next year. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company will show off desktops and laptops using its new Core i3 and i5 chips, as well as netbooks at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month.

“Looking forward, we see both the commercial and the consumer [segments] growing, with the consumer segment growing at a slightly faster rate in 2010… Again, if you step back 6 months ago, the idea that will would be talking about growth in the [consumer] segment in 2009 – and this is a double digit CAGR going forward – is a mindset people were questioning,” adds Smith.

Follows is a video excerpt of Smith’s pre-CES presentation.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Video: Nvidia Laughs At Intel’s Next Generation Netbook Platform “Pine Trail”

December 16, 2009

Nvidia's claims that Intel's next-generation netbook platform dubbed Pine Trail can't play Flash HD content or Blue-ray movies and mainstream games

At a meeting in San Francisco today, I sat down with Nvidia’s director of marketing David Ragones for an update on the company’s netbook solution, ION, unveiled a year ago.

Although ION is about a year old, Nvidia claims that last year’s ION is still 5 to 10 times faster than Intel’s next-generation netbook platform, dubbed Pine Trail and available in next year’s netbooks.

“Intel hasn’t closed the gap. So they’re now coming out with their next-generation but the media performance is still relatively poor”, says Ragones.

And we’ll have more on Pine Trail tomorrow after a media briefing Intel is hosting, also in downtown San Francisco (yes that’s the week!), where the chipmaker will probably show some Pine Trail equipped netbooks and hopefully some performance numbers.

Until then, we’ll have to take Nvidia’s words for it.

Despite positioning ION at the premium segment of the netbook market ($399 and above), Nvidia claims that as much as 100 netbook models equipped with its graphics chip.

“ION energises the Intel Atom processor. It’s perfect if what you want to do is view HD content, play mainstream games and do simple image and video editing tasks”, adds Ragones that used the Sims video game to prove his point. “Sims 3 is the number 1 top selling game in the world, and this is a game you can only run on an ION netbook.”

Follows a video excerpts of my conversation with Ragones.

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DEMOfall 56 Presenters Revealed

September 19, 2009

This year, there will be only 56 DEMOfall demonstrators, down from 72 last year.

No doubt DEMOfall 2009 will be a much smaller event, which explains why the conference actually ends early, in the afternoon of the second day. A disappointment, for those – like me! – that got used to DEMO’s farewell dinner when the final DEMOgods awards are being distributed.

The presenting companies are:

  1. 80legs; Houston, TX;
  2. Anaplan, Inc.; Redwood City, CA;
  3. Answers Corp.; New York, NY;
  4. Armorize Technologies, Inc.; Santa Clara, CA;
  5. Article One Partners, LLC; New York, NY;
  6. Burt AB; Gothenburg, Sweden; www.burtcorp.com
  7. CallSpark!, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.callspark.com
  8. Cazoodle, Champaign, IL; www.cazoodle.com
  9. Cortera, Inc., Boca Raton, FL; www.cortera.com
  10. Digitrad Communications, Paris, France; www.organip.com
  11. dotSyntax, LLC; Rochester, NY; http://www.digsby.com
  12. Emo Labs, Inc., Waltham, MA; www.emolabs.com
  13. Enthusem.com; Tampa, FL; http://www.enthusem.com
  14. ePulze; Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; www.epulze.net
  15. Faculte; San Bruno, CA; www.faculte.com
  16. Freeddom Tecnologia e Servicos S/A; Sao Paulo, Brazil; www.freeddom.com
  17. Fuze Box, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.fuzebox.com
  18. Glam Media, Inc.; Brisbane, CA; www.glammedia.com
  19. Gogrok Technology Corp.; Alhambra, CA; www.gogrok.com
  20. Hand Eye Technologies, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.handeyetech.com
  21. Hashwork; New York, NY; www.hashwork.com
  22. Hevva, LLC; Madison, WI; www.localdirt.com
  23. Hewlett-Packard Co.; Cupertino, CA; www.hp.com
  24. I.ndigo, LLC; Sao Paulo, Brazil; www.i.ndigo.com.br
  25. Intelius, Inc.; Bellevue, WA ; www.intelius.com
  26. Kryon Systems, Ltd.; Tel Aviv, Israel; www.kryonsystems.com
  27. LeapFILE, Inc.; Newark, CA; www.leapfile.com
  28. Liaise, Inc.; Sunnyvale, CA ; www.liaise.com
  29. Lunchster, LLC; San Francisco, CA; www.lunchster.com
  30. Micello, Inc.; Sunnyvale, CA; www.micello.com
  31. MicroAssist, Inc.; Austin, TX; www.ethicsed.com
  32. MoLo Rewards, Inc.; Sanford, FL; www.molorewards.com
  33. MyOwnRealEstate.com Corp.; San Jose, CA; www.myownrealestate.com
  34. MyVocal Holdings, Inc.; Paris, France; www.myvocal.com
  35. NativeTung, LLC.; Los Angeles, CA; www.nativetung.com
  36. Piryx, Inc.; Austin, TX ; www.piryx.com
  37. Point of Wealth Systems, Inc.; Portland, OR; www.thepowr.com
  38. Rseven Mobile, Inc.; Dublin, CA; www.rseven.com
  39. RumbaFish Technologies, Inc.; Palo Alto, CA ; www.rumbafish.com
  40. Scientific Media, Inc.; New York, NY; www.dotgo.com
  41. Symform, Inc.; Seattle, WA; www.symform.com
  42. Third Iris Corp.; Campbell, CA; www.viaas.com
  43. TotalTrainer, LLC; Laguna Niguel, CA ; www.gototaltrainer.com
  44. Traackr, Inc.; Boston, MA; http://traackr.com
  45. TravelTrac, LLC; Irvine, CA ; http://www.traveltrac.com
  46. TuneWiki, Inc.; Milpitas, CA ; www.tunewiki.com
  47. Tungle Corp.; Montreal, Canada; http://www.tungle.com
  48. Twirl TV, LLC; Los Altos Hills, CA; www.twirltv.com
  49. VicMan Software, Inc.; Alexandria, VA; http://pho.to/
  50. Waze, Inc.; Ra’anana, Israel; www.waze.com
  51. Webroot; Boulder, CO; www.webroot.com
  52. Weels Corp.; Milton, MA; www.weelscorp.com
  53. WhoDoYouKnowAt, LLC; Dallas, TX; www.whodoyouknowat.com
  54. YiqYaq, LLC; Redwood City, CA; http://radioweave.com
  55. Zorap, Inc.; Falmouth, ME; www.zorap.com
  56. Zuora; Redwood City, CA; www.zuora.com

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56 Products To Launch At DEMOfall

September 18, 2009

Picture 7Ahead of DEMOfall’s debut next week, the conference organisers announced today that 56 never-seen-before products and/or concepts will be demonstrated  at the show.

A big drop though compared to the 72 that were shown at last year’s event.

Nevertheless, TechPulse360 will be reporting live from the show floor at DEMOfall in San Diego, Calif., with video interviews and of course… demos!

The products and concepts launching at DEMOfall 09 include (no specifics here yet because we are respecting embargoes that we signed with those companies):

  • A desktop application that allows consumers to organize and manage their IM, email and social network accounts from one single location;
  • An organic shopping search engine that connects shoppers with online deals from their favorite merchants;
  • An application that enables search and browsing of real time conversations in social networks;
  • An agrisourcing platform that lets individuals, businesses and distributors buy, sell and find local food in their areas;
  • A mobile application that lets online dating users identify the validity of who they are interacting with online via name, number or email address;
  • An internal Twitter application for businesses that helps enterprises stay connected with customers, partners and the public;
  • A video-conferencing tool that offers live collaboration for up to four people using rich media content over standard business networks; A private file system for enterprises that lets users create, open, edit, and manage files in the cloud directly from their desktop file explorer;
  • A mobile mapping application for public places like convention centers and college campuses, that will allow users to navigate these indoor spaces via their phone;
  • A language translation program that helps websites establish multi-language content channels to grow their businesses globally;
  • A software tool that identifies the most influential thought leaders online for any given market segment or topic;
  • An online commerce platform for media companies to manage their online and offline subscribers.

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Is Intel Having Trouble Filling IDF?

September 16, 2009
Intel is now offering free full-conference passes to attend IDF next week. A $1,600 value!

Intel is now giving away free full-conference passes to cheers its CEO at IDF next week. A $1,600 value!

UPDATE: Intel deactivated the promo code. Probably after friends and readers of TP360 flocked their sites, racking 10s of thousands of dollars in savings and a free Maroon 5 ticket!

That’s an offer you can’t refuse, even if you’re not in the chip business!

Intel is offering to attend “the biggest technology event of the year” – yes, it’s own Intel Developer Forum (or IDF) – that starts next Tuesday for… FREE, a $1,600 value!

“Simply use promo code GCPCEL3 to receive your complimentary full-conference pass. Register now.”

Not only will you attend “eye-opening keynotes,” “invaluable technical sessions,” “participate in inspiring technology tracks,” and “engage colleagues around the corner or around the world on the new IDF Community Map,” but also attend a live concert performance by Maroon 5, as well as breakfasts, lunches, cocktails, etc.

What’s not to like?

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