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ARM Has Explosive Quarter
ARM is kicking but this quarter by reporting another yet another quarter yesterday, their sales were up 26 percent year-over-year.
The revenues for ARM hit $191 million, with a profit of about $35.5 million. Unfortunately, the bad currency exchange rates reduced the profit to $20.3 million.
Analysts are estimating that about 1.85 billion ARM-licensed chips were manufactured this quarter and global shipments are expected to surpass 8 billion units by the end of the year, making ARM a part of the billion dollar club.
The sales were driven by the strong demand for smartphones and tablets which ARM owns a considerable share of the market since many manufacturers use their processors like the Cortex.
FTC Singles Out Google’s Chrome
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Liebowitz this week singled out Google for not adopting “Do Not Track,” the privacy feature that allows consumers the ability to opt out of online tracking by Web sites and marketing entities.
In an interview Monday with Politico, Liebowitz called out Google for not supporting Do Not Track in its Chrome browser.
Noting that Do Not Track had gathered momentum, Liebowitz said, “Apple just announced they’re going to put it in their Safari browser. So that gives you Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla. Really the only holdout — the only company that hasn’t evolved as much as we would like on this — is Google.”
Do Not Track has been promoted by the FTC and by privacy advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as the best way to help consumers protect their privacy.
The technology requires sites and advertisers to recognize incoming requests from browsers as an opt-out demand by the user. The information is transmitted as part of the HTTP header.
As Liebowitz said, Microsoft and Mozilla have added Do Not Track header support to their Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) and Firefox 4 browsers. While Apple hasn’t confirmed that the next version of Safari will include Do Not Track, developers have reported finding the feature in early editions bundled with Mac OS X 10.7, aka “Lion,” the upgrade slated to ship this summer.
Verizon May Not Carry The PlayBook
April 22, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Verizon Wireless is still evaluating whether or not it will carry the PlayBook tablet computer from Research In Motion, the biggest U.S. mobile operator stated on Wednesday.
While BlackBerry maker RIM had said it expected Verizon Wireless to be one of its distribution partners for PlayBook, the company said it has yet to make such a determination.
“We’re still evaluating the BlackBerry Playbook and have not made a determination as to whether we’re going to distribute it,” Verizon Wireless Spokeswoman Brenda Raney said.
The comment came the day after PlayBook debuted at North American electronics retailers.
2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
April 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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According to Asian sources, Samsung is apparently developing an ARM based 2GHz dual-core processor. The smartphone is expected to be the first on the market next year about of the Samsung’s Exynos line.
Apparently, this news was leaked from an executive at Samsung who also said the company intends to offer the new processors on its competitors to put on their smartphones and tablets. Samsung is also claiming that the processor will offer PC performance. Our question is what will the performance be based upon?
Intel’s 22nm MIC To Debut Soon
Word on the street is that Intel may debut their first Many Integrated Core (MIC) using its upcoming 22nm process technology and expects to have more than 100 developer sites for MIC by the end of 2011.
Intel’s MIC micro-architecture is expected to be used for highly parallel applications in the high end computing arena such as scientific exploration and research and weather modelling. Just like its competitors such as AMD’s FireStream or Nvidia’s Tesla, Intel is not fond of MIC replacing processors.
During his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Intel’s Kirk Skaugen, VP of Architecture and GM said that compatibility with x86 will give MIC certain advantages. Kirk also went on to say that MIC would act like a co-processor where you can use the same compilers, the same tools, and the same VTunesthat power.
Windows 8 Coming To Arm
Yesterday Microsoft said they have their next iteration of the Windows OS running on a 1GHz ARM processor. If you remember earlier this year Microsoft stated that they were working hard to introduce a version of their Windows OS for the ever increasing popularity ARM architecture.
While Microsoft takes a breather from the x86 architectures to focus on ARM; the calculated move gives Microsoft access to hardware running Nvidia’s Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragons, and Samsung Hummingbirds which may help Windows grow even more. Therefore, it appears that the tranquil relationship between Microsoft and Intel aka Wintel alliance, is starting to show cracks.
Intel Z68 Chipset Coming
Sources in the tech industry are claiming that the Z68 chipset from Intel is scheduled to debut on May 8th.
The Z68 is specifically designed for high-end Sandy Bridge processors since it is equipped with additional features that are apparently absent on current P67 and H67 boards.
The Z68 is said to have improved overclocking performance, in addition to support for RST SSD caching and a slew of extra enhancements geared towards the high-end markets.
HTC Profits Rise, Lead By Android Popularity
April 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net, Smartphones
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Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp said first-quarter profit almost tripled, beating forecasts, driven by strong demand for its mobile devices, especially those running on Google’s Android operating system.
The company, which has just overtaken industry giant Nokia in terms of market capitalization, said on Friday that first-quarter net profit was $511 million.
“That its first quarter would be above expectations was well foreseen, Q1 seasonality was better than expected,” said Bonnie Chang, an analyst at Yuanta Securities in Hong Kong.
“For the second quarter everyone is expecting revenue sequential growth in the high teens to 20 percent, shipments will be strong and average selling prices are holding up pretty well.”
Growing demand for phones running on Google’s Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies such as HTC and Samsung Electronics who are betting on the platform.
The smartphone market is likely to grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, according to research firm Gartner.
Intel Outs New Processors
Intel is not letting their Sandy Bridge design go to waste. They will soon release a series of Xeon server chips based on the 32nm Sandy Bridge core.The new chips have a maximum capacity of 10 cores, with hyper-threading and they are expected to deliver a 40 percent performance increase over the previous Xeon 7500 series.
Intel’s Next CPU Faster Than Sandy Bridge
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We hear that Intel is already in discussion with its partners about the 22nm Ivy Bridge CPU, and the talks cover the chips performance. The 22nm processor supposedly offers more performance with a similar thermal design.
Intel is informing its buddies to expect a 20 percent performance increase over Sandy Bridge, which is about the same gain that Sandy Bridge had over Nehalem based CPUs. Keep in mind this is an optical shrink of the existing 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture. Intel traditionally takes a very safe process when it moves from one manufacturing process to another. The 22nm Ivy Bridge comes with the new architecture and will debut in time to take on Bulldozer and Llano from AMD.