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Posts Tagged ‘Chips’

Something ‘big’ coming from SanDisk, complete with cape

Something big is coming March 23rd, and like a good used car salesman, SanDisk has rolled out an inflatable superhero in its honor. What could it be? We honestly have no idea. SanDisk has already introduced 64GB SDXC cards and the G3 SSD, condensed commercial FM into sugary syrup with slotRadio, and generally exploited NAND in every way imaginable. The company’s not scheduled to introduce 128GB chips until 2011, and rewritable 3D flash is still years out. That said, SanDisk does have experience in the portable audio/video realm, and that notch on our wide, cape-wearing friend does look awfully familiar… Oh please, no, not another blasted tablet. We jest, of course, but what could a memory manufacturer possibly be planning that warrants such a teaser page?

[Thanks, Steve]

Something ‘big’ coming from SanDisk, complete with cape originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spawn Labs lets you play your console games on the run (video)

Call it Slingbox for games. Spawn Labs lets you take a console game and play it over the web on a laptop or a computer. As the Slingbox does with video, you can place shift your games and play them in high-definition on any computer, said David Wilson, chief executive at the Austin-based company. While the game is actually running on a console, you can interact with it and view it on a display on a far away laptop, as long as you have a broadband connection. You have to buy a $199 Spawn HD-720 box to make it work. Inside the box are digital signal processing chips that can take game images, convert them into video and play them on any computer screen. You interact with the game and send the signals back to the game console, which then sends the results of the interaction back to your screen. To play, you put a game in the console and leave it on. Then you can log into the Spawn Labs box from any machine and play it. Here’s our video interview with Wilson at his booth at the Game Developers Conference.

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AMD to finally take on netbook space with new Fusion chip… next year

We’ve always said AMD should go after the gaping hole between netbooks and thin-and-lights by releasing a low-power platform with solid graphics abilities, and it looks like the company’s finally coming around — AMD’s John Taylor just told us that the chipmaker will be releasing a netbook-class Fusion CPU / GPU hybrid codenamed “Ontario” with integrated DX11 graphics sometime next year. If Ontario sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it leaked in the past — it’s a part of the “Brazos” platform built around the low-power Bobcat core. Of course, AMD has been promising Fusion chips of all stripes for years now without a single shipping part, so saying that a Fusion chip will get it into the netbook game in 2011 is mildly amusing — while AMD’s definitely turned things around, it’s still incredibly late to the low-end party, and Intel’s solidly beaten it to the hybrid CPU / GPU punch with the Core 2010 and Pine Trail Atom chips. Add in the fact that NVIDIA’s Optimus-based Ion 2 chipset seemingly offers the extended battery life of Atom with the performance of a discrete GPU, and we’d say the market niche Ontario is designed to fill may not actually be so niche when it finally arrives. We’ll see what happens — a year is a long, long time.

[Image via OCWorkbench]

AMD to finally take on netbook space with new Fusion chip… next year originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI serves up Core i5 within 13-inch X-Slim X360 ultraportable

Those lowly Core 2 Duo chips already feel like a long forgotten memory, and frankly, that’s a-okay with us. MSI is helping its seductive X-Slim line get a taste of Intel’s Core 2010 lineup with a Core i5-520UM processor, which sits alongside up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 250GB / 320GB / 500GB hard drive, integrated graphics, a 13-inch (1,366 x 768 resolution) panel, HDMI / VGA outputs, a pair of USB 2.0 sockets, 4- or 8-cell battery and an SD / MMC card reader. There’s also built-in WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, twin speakers and a chassis that measures under 1-inch thick. Per usual, MSI is in no hurry to out pricing and release details, but we’ll be sure to keep an eye (or two) out for both.

MSI serves up Core i5 within 13-inch X-Slim X360 ultraportable originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it’s frying graphics cards

One of the discussions that arise anytime we bring up a new graphics card from ATI or NVIDIA is about which company has the better drivers. Well, this should help sway the argument a little bit. It would seem StarCraft II Beta players were among the first to notice low frame rates while using the latest drivers from NVIDIA, and further digging has uncovered that the automated fan-controlling part of said firmware was failing to act as intended. The result? Overheated chips, diminished performance, and in some extreme cases, death (of the GPU, we think the users will be okay). The totality of it is that you should avoid the 196.75 iteration like the plague, and NVIDIA has temporarily yanked the update while investigating the reported issues. Shame that the company hasn’t got any warnings up on its site to tell those who’ve installed the update but haven’t yet nuked their graphics card to roll back their drivers, but that’s what you’ve got us for, right?

[Thanks, Shockie]

NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it’s frying graphics cards originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SK Telecom shoves Android onto a SIM, we check it out

Continue reading SK Telecom shoves Android onto a SIM, we check it out

SK Telecom shoves Android onto a SIM, we check it out originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel said to be cooking up DDR3-lovin’ Atom N475 and Atom N455 CPUs
We’ve maintained that Intel’s range of Atom chips were simply too weak to really love and adore the way a slab of silicon should be, but that’s probably because of our infatuation with things like “overclocking” and “Core i7 Extremes.” Whatever the case, it’s beginning to look a wee bit better for the lineup, as Fudzilla has it that the company will be adding DDR3 memory support to the 1.83GHz N475 and 1.6GHz N455. Both of those chips are expected to maintain their current TDP ratings, and both are expected to launch in Q3 of this year. Nah, DDR3 compatibility won’t make your next netbook scream or anything, but when we’re talking Atoms, we’ll take all the baby steps we can get.

Intel said to be cooking up DDR3-lovin’ Atom N475 and Atom N455 CPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel and Micron start 25nm flash production; SSDs to get cheap, huge

Intel and Micron have a history of pushing the state-of-the-art in flash storage — their joint venture IMFT was responsible for the first sub-40nm NAND flash and bringing it to production — and it looks they’ve done it again: IMFT is now sampling two-bits-per-cell 25nm NAND, which will eventually push prices down and capacities up when volume production begins in Q2. We’ll have to see how pricing works out — 25nm is something like twice the storage density per dollar, so we’re hopeful — but at the very least Intel’s third-gen X25-M will come in 160GB, 320GB, and 600GB sizes when it launches in Q4 using these new chips. Yeah, we’re going to want one. AnandTech has the full breakdown, hit the read link for more.

Intel and Micron start 25nm flash production; SSDs to get cheap, huge originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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