Google announces new Chromebook with US $249 price tag

 

Ultrathin 11.6-incher, A15 Exynos 5 on board

Google has launched its newest version of its Samsung built, Chrome OS-based Chromebook

Built around an 11.6-inch screen, the new Chromebook is based on Samsung's Exynos 5 dual-core SoC, 2GB of memory and 16GB of flash storage. The new Chromebook weighs around 1.13kg (2.5 pounds) and is only 2cm (0.8 inch) thick at its thickest point, which easily puts it in the ultrathin category

As noted, the new Chromebook is based on Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual 5250 SoC, it's completely silent and does not have any moving parts, no cooling fans or mechanical drive. The rest of the specs include 2GB of RAM memory, 16GB of flash storage backed by 100GB of Google Drive storage free of charge for two years, 802.11abgn 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0 for connectivity, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, 1.5W stereo speakers, SD card slot, and, what Google calls, full-sized Chrome keyboard

The 11.6-inch screen has 1366x768 resolution and 200 nits of brightness, according to Google. The battery will be enough for over 6.5 hours, it boots under 10 seconds and resumes instantly. According to Google, the new Chromebook and its Samsung Exynos 5 can cope up with 1080p videos

As of today, the new Google/Samsung Chromebook will be available for pre-order from Amazon, Best Buy, PC World and other retailers and available from these retailers as well as Google Play store as of next week. The price is set at an impressive US $249 or £229 if you are in the UK

Patriot announces ultra-low power SODIMM memory

4 and 8GB modules at 1.35V

 

Patriot has announced a new line of ultra-low power SODIMM memory modules for notebooks

Working at just 1.35 Volts, the new ULP modules are optimized to provide extremely efficient performance at extremely low temperatures, according to Patriot Memory. These new SODIMM modules are built from a locked high quality build of materials and hand tested, thence they are backed by a limited lifetime warranty

As noted, the new ULP SODIMM memory modules will be available in 4 and 8GB capacity modules working at either 1333 or 1600MHz. Unfortunately, Patriot did not announce any latency info regarding these modules, but after a quick dig, it appears that the 1600MHz modules will be running at CL11 while the 1333MHz will be set at CL9.

The entire lineup should be available by late October, but the price has not been announced

Razer hosts Star Wars Blade notebook giveaway

One of a kind and looks good

Razer is hosting a sweepstakes with a custom-designed Star Wars: The Old Republic Razer Blade gaming notebook as the first prize

Although it is not different than a standard Razer Blade notebook in any other way than a cool design, it still looks pretty good and unique. Four other winners will receive a set of Star Wars: The Old Republic peripherals that include a gaming keyboard, mouse, headset and mouse pad while every entrant will receive a RazerStore coupon code for 20 percent off selected Star Wars: The Old Republic products and free shipping on orders over US $49.

You can find more details here

ADATA announces Premier Pro SP600 SSD

JMicron controller with 20nm-class MLC NAND

ADATA has rolled out a new line of affordable client SSDs, the Premier Pro SP600 series. To be available in capacities of up to 128GB, the new Premier Pro SP600 SSD lineup uses a JMicron controller paired up with 20nm-class MLC NAND chips

As noted, the Premier Pro SP600 is based on JMicron JMF661 controller paired up with 20nm-class MLC NAND flash and will provide up to 360MB/s of read and up to 130MB/s of write performance with maximum 4k random read and write set at up to 40,000 and 30,000 IOPS

It will be available in 32, 64 and 128GB capacities and packed in a 9.5mm thick 2.5-inch form factor. It comes with TRIM, NCQ and 40b/KB ECC features and uses a SATA 6Gbps interface

Since it is a part of ADATA's affordable lineup, the price is US $49.99 for the 32GB unit, US $69.99 for 64GB and US $99.99 for the top 128GB one

Raspberry Pi adds more RAM

Keeps the same price

The "best gift for your favorite nerd," also known as the Raspberry Pi, has received an update and will be now sold with 512MB of RAM

Despite the double amount of RAM on the so called Model B, the Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to keep the price at US $35. According to a recent blog update, Even Upton noted that the most common suggestion for the new more expensive "Model C" was more RAM, and added that

This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently

The new Raspberry Pi boards with more RAM will need an updated firmware to take advantage of the memory increase. In case you missed it, Raspberry Pi recently got another firmware update that pushes the board to run at 1GHz, as opposed to  700MHz

More here

GoPro launches Hero3 cameras

Smaller, lighter and 4K-capable

 

GoPro has announced and officially launched its latest line of Hero cameras, the Hero 3 series. The new Hero3 will be available in three versions, Black, Silver and White, and bring some quite an impressive features packed in a body that is much smaller and lighter than its predecessors

According to GoPro, the entire lineup is up to 25 percent lighter and 30 percent smaller and all models will feature a built-in WiFi, sharper lens, better low-light performance, improved sound capture thanks to a new algorithm

The lineup kicks off with a flagship Hero3 Black model capable of capturing 4K video at 12fps, 2.7K video at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps. It can shoot up to 12MP photos at 30 photos per second in a Burst mode. As a flagship model, this one comes bundled with a WiFi remote that can control up to fifty GoPro cameras at up to 600 feet. It also comes with 1050mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery and can take microSD class 10 flash memory at up to 64GB of capacity

The Hero3 Silver peaks at 1080p at 30fps, shoots up to 11MP photos with 10 fps Burst and, of course, does not come with WiFi remote which can be bought separately. It also lacks "Pro Low-Light Performance" feature found on the Black model but has the same 1050mAh battery. As a part of Hero3 lineup, this one also comes packed in a Hero3 body and has built-in WiFi

The last is the Hero3 White model that can record up to 1080p at 30fps, can shoot up to 5MP photos at 3 photos per second in Burst mode, has the same 1050mAh battery, lacks the Protune Mode and some other features found on the Silver and Black model

The launch price is set at US $399.99 for the GoPro Hero3 Black model, US $299.99 for the Silver and US $199.99 for the White one. Although the price might sound a bit steep, you should check out the sample video below before trying to judge these little things

You can check out all three models over at the GoPro.com website

Asus outs affordable Windows 8 11-incher

Touch and Sandy for $549

Although Asus is trying to make a name for itself in the tablet space, it’s not ignoring more traditional markets

The company has shown off a rather interesting notebook with an 11.6-inch touchscreen and Windows 8 to boot. The Asus Q200E does not tick all the ultrabook boxes, as it’s 0.9 inches thick and does not feature SSD storage. However, it still weighs in at just 1.4kg and let’s face it, 0.9 inches does not sound too bad either

The Q200E is powered by a 1.4GHz Core i3 processor based on Sandy Bridge, it features 4GB of RAM and 500GB of traditional HDD storage. There’s also a USB 3.0 port on board and the price is $549. Pretty reasonable all things considered

More here

Spin your own chips

Spiders take on Intel

French boffins are working out ways to recruit spiders and some insects to build computer chips using silk

Physicist Nolwenn Huby of the Institut de Physique de Rennes in France said that spider silk is deal for use in electronic devices. Light can travel through a silk strand as easily as it does through a fibre optic cable. She said that her team were able to transmit laser light down a short strand of the silk on an integrated circuit chip. It worked exactly like glass fibre optic cables but it had four orders of magnitude more loss than the glass

Huby said that by giving the silk a coating it would have better transmission capabilities. She said that the spider silk could open the door to medical applications, such as silk fibers carrying light to places in the body for internal imaging. Because spider silk is incredibly thin — roughly five microns in diameter or 10 times thinner than a human hair – surgeons could perform diagnostic exams using very small openings in the body

Spider silk is harmless, so you can implant it and the body has no reaction to them.  Although some bodies have a bad reaction to spiders and require other bodies to pick them up in tissues and fling them outside

Xbox 360 holiday bundles coming

Microsoft to also cut $50 on these bundles

 

As is the norm, Microsoft will be offering a couple of holiday bundles this holiday season. In addition these two holiday bundles are getting slashed $50 off the price by Microsoft. From what our sources tell us, Microsoft is offering these same bundles to all retailers, but there will be some other console options out there, such as the Microsoft Halo 4 Limited Edition console, for example that will continue to carry the regular asking price

The first holiday bundle package is the 4GB Kinect package. The 4GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle will include a flat black Xbox 360 console with 4GB of built-in flash memory, Kinect Adventures, Kinect Disneyland, as well as a single wireless controller and wired headset

The second holiday bundle includes the flat black Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive, one wireless controller, wired headset, Forza 4, and a download token for Skyrim. Users have to redeem the download token and download Skyrim to the hard drive which, of course, takes storage space

You can have either of these holiday bundles for $299, which is a $50 savings over the $349 regular price that we have been seeing regularly. According to what sources are telling us, Microsoft will not be cutting the price of the Xbox 360 4GB core package by $50 which is what many have been hoping for. In addition, the price cuts might only be temporary and could revert back to their original pricing as soon as February 1st

Android 4.1.2 OTA update rolls out

For Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S

Google has started the Android 4.1.2 update for Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S devices, but so far only GSM models will get the OTA update

Android 4.1.2 is a minor update. It’s just 15.1MB in size and it’s supposed to fix some stability issues and bugs, so don’t expect many new features. Practically the only noteworthy new feature is improved notifications functionality, as it allows users to expand notifications with one finger

In any case we’ll check it out as soon as we get it. Not because it’s interesting, but just to poke fun at our staffers who are still waiting for Jelly Bean for their non-Nexus devices

More GTA 5 info coming in December

Will be in Game Informer December Issue

 

It does not appear that Rockstar is going to make us wait for much longer to get a more detailed lowdown on Grand Theft Auto 5. Game Informer Editor-in-chief Andy McNamara announced on his Twitter feed that a GTA 5 blowout was coming for the December issue of Game Informer

The December issue that should arrive at some point in November will be one to watch for if you are a GTA fan. It is rumored that beyond the additional GTA 5 coverage that a projected release date of between March and May of 2013 will also be confirmed

ASRock Trinity ITX board up for preorder

HTPC builders’ wet dream

 

The world’s first FM2 socket ITX board is available for preorder in Britain. ASRock is the culprit and the FM2A75M is listed at 74 pounds, so we assume it will end up around the €99 mark on the continent

Mind you, although it’s tiny, the board is feature packed. Based on the A75 chipset,  it has two DDR3 slots, two external USB 3.0 ports, with two additional headers on the board. SATA 6Gbps support goes without saying, along with eSATA, LAN, 7.1 audio and PWM fan support

On the graphics side of things the board features VGA and HDMI outputs, but it also features a proper PCIe 2.0 x16 slot for discrete graphics, so it could easily be transformed into a small-form-factor gaming rig

Gigabyte's GTX 650 Ti OC revealed

Works at 1032MHz for the GPU

 

Ahead of launch, scheduled for today, Gigabyte's overclocked version of the new GTX 650 Ti graphics card has already popped up for pre-order

As it is the case with Gigabyte's 2GB version of the GTX 650 Ti graphics card, the GTX 650 Ti 1GB OC, or GV-N65TOC-1GI, will also use Gigabyte's recognizable Windforce cooler and feature the Ultra Durable 2 design with Ferrite Core Chokes, Low RDS MOSFET and all-solid capacitors

According to early details, the GPU ends up overclocked to 1032MHz which goes in line with what we heard earlier about decent overclocking capabilities of the GTX 650 Ti. Unfortunately, Gigabyte apparently decided to keep the memory at reference 5400MHz. It will also feature an HDMI, D-Sub and two DVI ports

As noted earlier, the new GV-N65TOC-1GI showed up for pre-order with a price tag set at €145,32.

Apple and Google spend more on patents than innovation

You probably were not expecting this

 

It seems that Apple's patent war with Samsung really has killed off innovation after all. According to the New York Times the market place for new ideas has been corrupted by software patents used as destructive weapons

According to a Stanford University more than $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years. Last year spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and buying up patents exceeded spending on research and development of new products. Academics say that some aspects of the patent system, like protections for pharmaceuticals, often function smoothly, but do not appear to be working for the tech industry

Richard Posner, a federal appellate judge who has helped shape patent law said that there is real chaos in the IT patent field and the standards for granting patents are too loose. While there have been patent trolls, one of the reasons the patent war has become such common place is thanks to Apple

The Times, which normally acts as Apple's unpaid press office, said that senior executives made a deliberate decision over the last decade, after Apple was a victim of patent attacks, to use patents as leverage against competitors to the iPhone, the company’s biggest source of profits

Apple has filed multiple suits against three companies HTC, Samsung and Motorola Mobility Apple’s claims which include ownership of minor elements like rounded square icons and of more fundamental smartphone technologies competitors will have to change they way they design phones. HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others have filed numerous suits of their own, also trying to claim ownership of market-changing technologies

When asked by the Times why it was spending so much money on patents and not as much on R&D, Apple said that the company needed to protect its inventions. It claimed that legal action in a patent dispute, is only as a last resort. Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, said patent battles had not slowed innovation at the company, but acknowledged that some aspects of the battles had kind of gotten crazy

More here

Samsung ATIV Tab up for preorder in Blighty

Great spec, terrible pricing

A couple of British retailers are taking preorders for Samsung’s first Windows RT tablet, the 10-inch ATIV Tab

The ATIV features a very nice spec indeed, a dual-core Snapdragon APQ8060A at 1.5GHz backed by Adreno 305 graphics, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It’s a Wifi only affair, but other than that is feature packed: micro HDMI, micro-SD, 10.1-inch 1366x768 screen, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and a 1.9-megapixel front facing unit. To top it all off, it has an 8200mAh power pack and measures 265.8x168.1x8.9mm. It’s pretty light, too, and it tips the scales at 570g

Now for some bad news. The asking price is a whopping 550 pounds, which will easily buy you a similarly spec’d iPad with a Retina screen to boot. It’s worth noting that we still don’t know the official price and the ATIV could end up a bit cheaper once it hits retail, but we wouldn’t bet on it. It will probably still be a lot pricier than comparable Android tablets and maybe even some iPad SKUs

Nvidia GTX 650 Ti is decent overclocker

Expect factory OCed cards to go well over 1GHz

 

We have been told that the GTX 650 Ti is quite an overclocker and at least some, if not all, partners will release a factory overclocked graphics card based on this GPU

According to our sources, the new GTX 650 Ti graphics card will easily go well over 1000MHz for the GPU. The new GTX 650 Ti might lack the GPU Boost feature but at least it will be able to get a decent factory overclock

As we wrote earlier, the GTX 650 Ti is based on the 28nm GK106 GPU and features 768 CUDA cores. It will be available in both 1 and 2GB versions but the precise price still remains a mystery. According to early reviews, it ends up a bit slower than the HD 7850, at least on its reference 928MHz GPU clock

The factory overclocked cards might tip the scales into GTX 650 Ti favor, but these cards also end up more expensive, so we will leave the final judgement when we see some official reviews tomorrow. For now, it looks like Nvidia will have a hard time to sell this graphics card, especially with AMD's recently promised price cuts

Foxconn workers go on strike

For two hours at least

Foxconn has confirmed that its workers at its Zhengzhou factory in China actually held a two-hour strike. According to Chinese news agency Securities Times 300 to 400 employees were involved in a strike last Friday

Foxconn said that the dispute was solved after two hours with no impact to the Zhengzhou factory's production. Labour unions are communicating with the protesters and the case was considered closed. According to one worker the strike was to protest against the company's neglect of employees' needs and the high-pressure work environment. The strike ended peacefully, the employee added

China Labor Watch said Foxconn forced its employees to work during the holidays and raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills

In September, a riot broke out at Foxconn's Taiyuan facilities which was said to be caused by thousands of workers fighting against Foxconn security and armed police. This strike apparently was peaceful

Geforce GTX 650 Ti benchmarked

Slower than HD 7850

 

Although they look a bit strange, we now have some of the early benchmark results of the GTX 650 Ti

According to 3DMark 11 results posted over at WCFTech.com, the GTX 650 Ti scores X1489 in 3DMark "xtreme" preset and P4689 in "performance" preset. These results put the GTX 650 Ti ahead of the HD 6870 but slower than the HD 7850. Of course, 3DMark 11 is far from the actual, real-world, performance, so we will wait for some game benchmarks before we make a final verdict about the upcoming GTX 650 Ti

In addition to the early benchmark figures, the leak includes a full GPU-Z screenshot of the card confirming the 768 CUDA cores, 128-bit memory interface and the 928MHz reference GPU clock that we wrote about yesterday

The only thing that does look strange on the screenshot is the actual memory clock which should be set at 5400MHz rather than the 6008MHz, but as we said, we will see at least a couple of factory overclocked graphics cards based on this GPU and it simply could be the choice of some partner to go with faster clocked memory

As we wrote yesterday, Nvidia still did not give the final price of the GTX 650 Ti to its partners and the recent HD 7850 price cut will certainly put a lot of pressure on this card. The new GTX 650 Ti is currently scheduled to officially launch on 9th of October

You can check out the GPU-Z and benchmark screenshots here

AMD Radeon graphics cards get another price cut

Partners behind it this time

Some of AMD's Radeon graphics cards, or to be precise, the Radeon HD 7850 and Radeon HD 7770 have recently received yet another price cut

This price cut can be considered AMD's response to recent introduction of Nvidia graphics cards in the sub-$200 price range. The AMD Radeon HD 7850 1GB has been dropped down to US $159 (after rebate) while the 2GB version will be selling for US $189.

In addition to the Radeon HD 7850, the Radeon HD 7770 also got the new US $119 suggested retail price which will make the market positioning of the upcoming GTX 650 Ti much more difficult

According to a post over at the XBitlabs.com, the new price cuts do not come directly from AMD but rather partners themselves. Although AMD did issue a statement that this price cut is aimed at holiday gaming season and value/performance market, it is quite clear that they simply want to make the life of Nvidia partners just a tad bit harder

You can check out more here

Intel Z87 Haswell chipset has all 6Gbs SATA

No legacy connectors and no PCI

 

Intel recently announced the  Z77 chipset, a top of the line chipset designed to complement high-end Ivy Bridge parts like the Core i7 3770K, which sounds like a match made in heaven

Or a match made in Taiwan Ed

The successor needed for Haswell processors or the fourth generation Core processors as some like to call them is simply called Z87. The interesting thing about the Z87 is that this chipset has all six SATA connectors supporting SATA 6Gb/sec while the current Z87 has two SATA 6Gb/sec while the remaining four are SATA 3Gb/sec

Another thing that disappeared with the Z77 chipset is native PCI support and the owners of the ancient PCI devices will have to give up on them

It’s not all great in the Intel 2013 chipset future, as we have noticed that Intel failed to mention support for PCIe 3.0 in its current roadmap, despite the fact that it has more PCIe 2.0 channels and general bandwidth available

One can argue that PCIe 3.0 won’t change a lot in performance but this is something that remains to be seen on some future graphics cards

AMD Richland uses FM2 socket

But D4 chipset supports FM2+ too

 

Back in June we mentioned that AMD’s upcoming D4 Bolton chipset does come with FM2+ support but back then we were lacking some details

It turns out that Bolton D4 is just a new version of the A85X chipset that will have better support for Richland processors. AMD has already officially confirmed that Trinity refresh in 2013 comes in the new 28nm process and we found out that the current schedule for Richland processor is late Q2 2013 launch

We also heard from AMD that the FM2 infrastructure is here to stay and that the future processor including FM2 based Richland will work in FM2 boards. It remains unclear if Richland qualifies as a FM2+ processor that simply works in all FM2 motherboards

The long-term strategy is to stick with the same socket for a longer than just one generation, as this was always a side of AMD that many fans appreciated

The Bolton D3 chipset will also support both FM2 and FM2+ parts and comes without four USB 3.0 connectors but it allows cheaper motherboard to hit the market

You should not have any doubts, Windows 8 will work just fine on Trinity and Richland and they are pretty nice processors in their respective price ranges

Xbox Music looks like a go

Will offer subscription & ad-based model

 

In what might be viewed as a preemptive strike against others, Microsoft is rumored to be poised to launch its own Xbox Music streaming service on October 26th (if our sources are accurate). The service is targeted at users already using Spotify as its primary audience

According to rumors, the service will run across all Microsoft platforms, including Windows 8, Windows Phone and, of course, Xbox 360. Xbox 360 users will likely receive it as part of the upcoming dashboard update that is now rumored to arrive starting the third week of October. It is rumored that Microsoft will be adding support for both iOS and Android devices in the near future, but it will not be ready for launch day

The service will offer both a subscription and an ad-based revenue model. Subscribers will, of course, stream ad-free. The service is also said to offer storage for music and play lists in the cloud using Microsoft’s Sky Drive. Initial rumors suggested that the service would also offer music downloading, like iTunes, but that seems to be a goal for down the road; the initial focus will be streaming to start with. Zune users will be migrated over to the new platform

Rumors have also suggested that Apple is preparing a streaming offering of its own to be released in the near future. However, it was initially thought that the announcement would have come during the iPhone 5 launch where the company also announced new iPods, but Apple remained silent. It is difficult to say how much impact Microsoft will have in this space, but with it being on Xbox 360, that is something that you have to admit gives Microsoft an advantage

Sony backing away from 3D for right now

Just does not seem relevant to gamers at this time

 

Sony has pushed hard to get more gamers to embrace 3D for video gaming on the PlayStation 3.

 To that end, Sony is backing away from the emphasis they had placed on it in the past

When asked about why they think gamers are not embracing 3D, it would seem that wearing the 3D glasses is a lot of the problem. The next generation of 3D should see more models where glasses are not required, and this might help 3D to gain some traction; but at this point it seems that it is not something that gamers are finding valuable

The fact that the PlayStation 3 supports 3D is really the important part. On the Blu-ray movie side of things, acceptance has struggled. It would seem while consumers are not flocking to it, the lack of 3D Blu-ray titles as well as 3D programming have not helped matters much. Again, consumers say that the 3D glasses are a big reason they are not interested

Still, Sony as well as many analysts we have spoken with, think there is some place for it in the future, but right now no one is really sure where that is or is going to be

Windows 8 users prefer Windows 7

Gentlemen prefer blondes

 

A poll of those using Windows 8 say that they would rather be using Windows 7.

According to Forumswindows8.com, a Windows 8 help and support site, asked more than 50,000 Windows 8 users what they disliked and liked about the software and found that 53 percent liked Windows 7. More than 25 per cent said that Windows 8 was their favourite version with the fast boot and shut down feature being the most popular feature

This was closely followed by easy installation with 50 percent and Internet Explorer 10 came in third with 35 percent of the vote. Only 22 percent thought Metro UI was their most-liked feature. The biggest concern was price, with 35 percent believing that this could be improved. While it is possible to upgrade to Windows 8 for just $39.99, but without promotional prices, the cost is around $199.99. Another 25 percent feared incompatibility

There was some good news for Microsoft from the survey though, as the Windows 8-based Microsoft Surface was more popular than Android tablets and the iPad. Around 35 percent of respondents said the Surface would be their tablet of choice

Notch not interested in Windows 8

Microsoft offers to help get it certified

Notch Persson has let Microsoft know that they should stop trying to ruin the PC as an open platform, and to that end he has rejected Microsoft’s offer of help in getting Minecraft certified for Windows 8. Via Twitter, he announced the Email he received from Microsoft and his response to them

Persson has spoken out against Windows 8; and his belief is that Microsoft could lock down Windows 8, which would be very bad for indie games and competition in general. Persson claims he would rather that Minecraft not run on Windows 8, rather than to play along

Rovio rolls out Bad Piggies for iOS, Android

Four legs good, two legs bad

 

Angry Birds maker Rovio has rolled out Bad Piggies, a twist on the legendary Angry Birds franchise from a four legged perspective

Earlier this year Rovio introduced Amazing Alex, an interesting physics puzzle game that failed to repeat the success of Angry Birds. Bad Piggies should be different, as they piggyback on the success of the original franchise, pardon the pun

However, Bad Piggies also incorporates some elements from Amazing Alex, as it allows users to build various contraptions for the bacon team. It seems like an interesting concept and Rovio could have another hit on its hands, but it is still too early to say whether Bad Piggies will be a runaway success like Angry Birds

Apple's new A6 has triple-core GPU

PowerVR SGX543MP3 GPU inside

Anandtech managed to get their hands on first diffusion images of the new Apple A6 SoC provided by UBM TechInsights, which shows that Apple's A6 is actually a triple-core GPU solution rather than quad-core seen on the A5x in the new iPad

It has been known for quite some time that Apple is using a custom made 1GHz dual-core ARM CPU for its iPhone 5 but the actual GPU inside the SoC was still a mystery. In addition to a couple of details regarding the GPU and memory channels, the first diffusion images show an estimated die size of 95.04mm2 and reveal that Samsung is actually the manufacturer of this SoC

The most important detail revealed by the picture are the actual details about the GPU inside Apple's A6 SoC. It appears that Apple went for the PowerVR SGX543MP3 triple-core rather than the PowerVR SGX543MP4 seen in the A5x. The GPU is running at 266MHz. These specs are apparently enough for Apple to reach the previously announced double the graphics power of the A5 chip

You can check out more over at Anandtech.com

XFX declares war to a green plane

Red fighter can shoot it down

 

XFX was always known for its peculiar marketing strategies that are known to get a lot of attention, and the most recent one is definitely not an exception

The company came with a campaign where "XFX declares W.A.R" on inferior graphics cards. The "W.A.R" part stands for wreak and ruin while the basic idea is to tell XFX why you'd like to destroy your inferior non-AMD Graphics Card

The good news is that if you win, XFX will make you a proud owner of its R7970 graphics card. There is a catch though - if you get the XFX R7970, you will have to destroy your card

The competition is open for EU residents and you need to visit XFX's Facebook page, like it and enter your W.A.R related idea

You can find XFX Europe Facebook page here. You can get more rules and details here

Apple invents airport in Ireland

You can't buy that sort of accuracy

 

Apple's new replacement mapping system for iOS6 is such a joke that even the Job's Mob press office admits that it needs improving. In a desperate bid to purge Google from its Walled Garden of delights, Apple designed its own mapping software. Of course it tried to bill the software as better than Google's and although it was not able to give punters the same service, the Tame Apple Press agreed

However as the software began to be rolled out it appears that it is causing tremendous headaches. One of the best things is that it was unable to find Apple cathedrals, or shops as the rest of us call them. Now Irish justice minister Alan Shatter has announced that he was surprised at the discovery of an airfield in the middle of Dundrum, his constituency. The airport, which does not exist, comes up in the maps application of the latest iPhone and iPad operating systems

This is not your average, send an Apple fanboy driving over a cliff, which face it is a Darwinesque necessity. Someone at Apple HQ decided that Durham needed an Airport and stuck one in. Shatter said that a field in Durham has been designated as an airport

Clearly the designation is not only wrong but is dangerously misleading in that it could result in a pilot, unfamiliar with the area, in an emergency situation and without other available information, attempting a landing. Of course if a pilot is using an iPhone 5 in the cockpit instead of his navigation gear he probably should to crash into a field as a warning to others

Globalfoundries shifts gear

14nm coming in 2014

 

AMD spinoff Globalfoundries is speeding up development and it plans to offer 20nm chips in 2013 and 14nm in 2014.

The 14nm process is particularly interesting, and its official name is 14XM, or extreme mobility. It will use 3D FinFET transistors with planar technology from the 20nm process, allowing a faster transition. The company estimates that 14nm parts will offer a 20 to 55 percent performance advantage over 20nm chips. Battery life will be improved by 40 to 60 percent

Globalfoundries obviously hopes to expand collaboration with ARM partners and attract more business. TSMC and maybe even Intel will have a thing or two to say about GloFo’s plans, but it will be very interesting to see whether the company can seriously challenge TSMC at its own game