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Samsung, LG, and SKT hook up for chip design

by Chris Ziegler posted Jul 27th 2009 @ 1:33PM

There's a lot of Kumbaya going around in South Korea this morning with the announcement that Samsung and LG -- normally the most bitter of archrivals -- will start working together to develop the next generation of chips for digital TVs and phones. Also being pulled into the love fest is domestic carrier SK Telecom, South Korea's largest, who will be working specifically on designing wireless systems-on-chip for use in handsets. Interestingly, it seems Sammy will be left out of the loop on actual design; that'll be left to LG and others, while Samsung will be responsible for manufacturing and testing the goods. For its part, the government seems to like what it sees here -- it's pumping some 19.5 billion won (about $15.7 million) into the project, though there's no word on when we'll see the fruits of the labor in a retail product.

ARM promises dual-core Cortex A9-based smartphones next year

by Chris Ziegler posted Jun 16th 2009 @ 4:31AM

The world's two most visually engaging smartphones -- the iPhone and the Pre -- share very similar cores based on ARM's Cortex A8 architecture, and with the newer, more advanced Cortex A9 in the pipeline, you can't help but let your mind wander a bit as you envision what twice as much computational power could bring to a handset. The A9 employs more advanced instruction pipelining than its predecessor, but the biggest news has to be the fact that it can pack two or more cores -- and ARM fully expects dual-core A9-based phones to hit in 2010. Of course, power consumption is the biggest constraint when it comes to this category of device, and while the company says that peak drain will exceed that on today's crop of devices, average consumption will actually drop thanks largely to a move from 65nm to 45nm manufacturing processes. Add in 1080p video promised by TI's next-gen OMAP4 silicon wrapped around an A9 core, and you've basically got a home theater in your pocket that's ready to rock for a few hours on a charge. That and Snoop Dogg, of course.

Nokia N97 carrying over old processor?

by Chris Ziegler posted Dec 7th 2008 @ 5:11PM

You'd think that a phone promising to becoming Nokia's 2009 flagship would want some serious computational power under its shell, but the word on the street is that the N97 is actually going to carry over the same ARM 11 core used by its forebears. That might be a disappointment for anyone hoping that they'll be able to replace a MID, netbook, or eight-core Hollywood CGI workstation with an unsuspecting handset -- but if it's any consolation, other rumors suggest (thankfully, may we add) that the ARM 11 will be clocked higher than the E71, which comes in at 369MHz. For all we know, the processor specs haven't been finalized since they haven't shown up on Nokia's N97 site yet, so maybe we'll end up with 1GHz and seven minutes of battery life. Would be a productive seven minutes, wouldn't it?

[Via Slashgear and UMPCPortal]

TI launches chipset for entry level featurephones

by Chris Ziegler posted Nov 12th 2006 @ 6:16PM

As multimedia features typically associated with higher-end handsets -- music players, video cameras, 3D acceleration, and the like -- start to trickle down to the mainstream, chip suppliers are looking at ways to make the requisite chipsets mainstream, too. Enter TI's OMAPV1035 "eCosto" single-chip platform; with an ARM9 processor core, the 1035 will be manufactured using a 65nm process when it begins volume production in early 2008. Features include EDGE support (but no 3G in sight -- we question that logic for a multimedia chipset that isn't due for another year), 30 fps video streaming at resolutions up to 320 x 240, 3D gaming, and support for still cameras up to 3 megapixels. Just as long as we get an HSDPA version of this goodness, TI, we're with you one hundred percent.

Toshiba wants mobile version of Cell processor

by Chris Ziegler posted Oct 8th 2006 @ 11:39PM

If we can look for a moment beyond the Playstation 3's wallet-busting, shortage-creating, timeline-stretching ways, Toshiba would like us to envision a world where a wide variety of devices are powered by variants of the superconsole's Cell processor. Sony's obviously been eating up an overwhelming majority of the chip's publicity leading up to the PS3's launch, but Toshiba played (and continues to play) a major role in the Cell's development, and they're touting that a beefer 65-nanometer version of the chip will launch in 2007, a scaled back midrange version in 2008, and a mobile variant by 2010. No word on what sort of functionality is planned for the 2008 and 2010 models -- or just how scaled back they'll be -- but for Toshiba's sake, we wish them a smoother launch then the Cell-powered devices (ahem) we've seen thus far.

[Via Mobile Magazine]