SoCs

After a 2021/2022 product cycle that was a bit more interesting than Qualcomm perhaps would have liked, 2023 has been a far more straightforward year for the prolific SoC and cellular modem vendor. After releasing the first of their Gen 2 family of parts earlier this year with the flagship-class Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the company is preparing to iterate through the next step of its product stack with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. Aimed at what’s become Qualcomm’s traditional “premium” market segment, which focuses on flagship-level features with more modest performance and costs, for the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, Qualcomm is aiming to deliver a sizable performance boost to the platform.

Apple's A5X Floorplan

Apple's A5X SoC Today has been pretty exciting. Not only did we confirm the die size of Apple's A5X SoC (162.94mm^2) but we also found out that it's still built...

18 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/16/2012

Apple A5X Die Size Measured: 162.94mm^2, Samsung 45nm LP Confirmed

Contrary to what we thought yesterday based on visual estimation of the A5X die, Chipworks has (presumably) measured the actual die itself: 162.94mm^2. While the A5 was big, this...

46 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/16/2012

Apple's A5X Die (and Size?) Revealed

iFixit saved us all a whole lot of trouble and performed a teardown of the new iPad announced last week. The internals were mostly what we expected, down to...

45 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/15/2012

TI Brings OMAP 5 to MWC

A month ago we saw weeks old OMAP 5 silicon running at CES. Earlier this week we got a chance to see TI's OMAP 5 reference platform playing back...

10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/29/2012

The Portland Group Announces OpenCL Compiler for ST-Ericsson ARM-Based NovaThor SoCs

Amidst all the major hardware announcements at MWC2012 there are also some announcements coming out of the software side. The Portland Group (PGI) sent word this afternoon that their...

2 by Ryan Smith on 2/28/2012

Apple iPad 3 Event Scheduled For March 7th In San Francisco

It's not like we weren't expecting it, but Apple's now made it official. The event is scheduled for March 7th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in...

52 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 2/28/2012

ST-E Will Have FD-SOI Based U8540: 35% Lower Power, Much Higher Frequencies

There's a close relationship between process technology and performance/power consumption, and it's about to get even more important in mobile. We've already seen that with the transition to 40nm...

4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2012

ST-Ericsson's NovaThor L8540: 28nm Cortex A9 SoC with Integrated LTE

ST-E is currently laying out its strategy for the company going forward, having suffered a tremendous reduction in revenue as the mobile market has changed dramatically over the past...

5 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2012

Intel Continues Its Smartphone March: Lava & ZTE Partnerships Announced

Intel had two more announcements yesterday about its Atom smartphone progress. The first was a partnership with Lava, an Indian mobile handset manufacturer. The Lava Xolo X900, a rebranded...

2 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/28/2012

Intel Goes Higher & Lower End With Atom SoCs: Z2580 & Z2000 Announced at MWC

Intel had a few updates about its Android SoC strategy for us at MWC this week. The first is a spec revision. The Atom Z2460 we talked about in...

25 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/27/2012

Hands On With the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity

Earlier today we published the specs and a first look at ASUS' Transformer Pad Infinity, a 10.1-inch Android 4.0 tablet with a 1920 x 1200 Super IPS+ display. As...

12 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/27/2012

Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon S4 Pro: Krait with Adreno 320

Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon S4 Pro, a version of the MSM8960 with an Adreno 320 GPU instead of the Adreno 225 that is found in the initial shipping MSM8960...

14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/27/2012

Intel Demos Graphics Performance Analyzer 2012 for Android

One of Intel's advantages as it gets into the smartphone market is its extensive software experience, particularly when it comes to performance optimization and analysis. On Monday at GDC...

10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/26/2012

NVIDIA's Rebrands Tegra 3's vSMP as 4-PLUS-1

ARM Cortex A9 cores are relatively tiny and it's not too difficult to put a handful of them down on an SoC. NVIDIA did just that with its Tegra...

5 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/22/2012

ZTE Mimosa X: First Smartphone Powered by NVIDIA's Icera 450 Modem

In May of last year NVIDIA was on a roll. Hot off the release of the first Tegra 2 based phones, NVIDIA announced the intent to acquire baseband manufacturer...

4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/20/2012

Intel Demonstrates dual-core Atom SoC with Integrated WiFi Transceiver

This week is the annual International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) where chip companies from all walks of life present papers documenting everything from shipping architectures to future research projects...

9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/20/2012

AMD is Open to Integrating 3rd Party IP in Future SoCs

Don't expect AMD to go into much detail on this here at the Financial Analyst Day, but the slide above shows a definite step towards becoming a modern SoC...

2 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/2/2012

Snapdragon S4 “Krait” – MSM8960 GPU Benchmark Surfaces

A NenaMark 2 benchmark score for an unknown device based on Qualcomm’s upcoming 28nm Snapdragon S4 “Krait” MSM8960 SoC has just surfaced. The device seems to have 1.5Ghz CPU...

33 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 1/28/2012

Samsung Exynos 5250 Begins Sampling – Mass Production in Q2 2012

Back in November, Samsung announced its next generation Exynos 5250 SoC based on ARM’s Cortex-A15 architecture. Samsung confirmed today during its earnings call that the Exynos 5250 has begun...

32 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 1/27/2012

Why Thunderbolt Won't Come to the iPhone Anytime Soon

Before CES there was a bunch of silliness floating around about how Apple might bring Thunderbolt to the iPhone based on a creative interpretation of an Apple patent. Some...

14 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on 1/14/2012

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