Soon to Ship: Intel Atom Oak Trail

It’s been a while since we reported on Intel Atom Oak Trail chips as the production has been delayed. A whole new wave of low powered processors is now ready to be released by Intel. These chips are designed mainly for tablets and mobile devices that are ultra portable. The first one up is the [...]

Three Arrandale 32nm to hit the market on 3rd January

Intel has in mind to launch 3 processors based on Arrandale Core i5 and Core i7 next year in the month of January. The cheapest of all Core i5 520M to have two cores and four threads at a base frequency of 2.4GHz which will support Turbo Mode and can run even faster. It will have 3MB of cache and to be retailed at $225.
While the second is Core i5 540M with two cores, four threads, supporting the Turbo Mode. It features 3MB of L2 cache, a 2.53GHz frequency to be retailed for $257.

While the last is Core i7 620M which has two cores and four thread. This one features 4MB of cache and is clocked at a base frequency of 2.66GHz. This one supports Turbo Mode. To be retailed for $332 in quantities of 1,000,
All the chips have TDP ratings (including the graphics core) ending at 35W.

ATI Redwood and Cedar to be in market in Q1

ATI to unveil two new chips and three new cards by Q1 2010. The Redwood XT which is a 40nm DX11 chip for mainstream market which is expected to rule over 4770 and 4670, while second one will rule over 4650 in the mainstream market called as Redwood or PRO.

The 4550, 4350 as well as 3450 cards will be seen in the Q1 2010, and will be recognized as sub-Cedar part of the value market. There are chances that Cedar might be branded as Radeon HD 55×0 / 53×0, which totally depends upon performance and nonetheless it is ATI’s marketing decision.

Broadcom single-chip WiFi/Bluetooth combo approved by netbook makers

Broadcom’s new all-in-one chip, which features both WiFi and Bluetooth radio on a single chip has been selected by the various netbook/notebook vendors. This includes the big guys like Acer, ASUS and Lenovo.

This chip will help the manufactures and vendors to lower the cost of their netbooks as-well-as notebooks as they won’t have to buy separate chips and will help them to conserve space on the already cramped logicboards.

Broadcom’s triple combo which includes three radio, WiFi, Bluetooth and FM has been selected by HTC, Acer, Qisda and Foxconn to lower the price of their upcoming models.

Atom N470 (1.83GHz) to be launched in Q1 2010

Intel’s next generation processor for netbooks AKA Intel Pine Trail/Pine View will make its debut next year. Now, we have come to know that Atom N470 processor, a pineview CPU that runs at 1.83GHz clock speed is coming in Q1 2010.

Please note that this is still a single-core processor and we will wait for quite some time for Intel to announce dual core processors for its netbooks. The CPU itself has 6.5W TPD which is more than double more compared to N270 1.6GHz Atom, but you have to remember that Atom N470 has 200MHz IGP integrated and the TDP is now calculated for both chips

Qualcomm betting a lot on Smartbooks – says future is very bright for Smartbook

Qualcomm is giving its best endeavor to increase its sales and thinks that computers in the future will be just like Mobile Phones. By computers, they mean Smartbooks which are basically netbooks running Android, Google Chrome OS or Linux.

Most of the upcoming Smartbooks will be using ARM processors, precisely Qualcomm ARM-based CPUs.

Consumers want computers that will run all day on one battery charge, don’t need to be switched off and are always receiving data, said Jacobs, whose company is the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips.

According to Qualcomm, people do not want to carry a bulky laptop and its charger all day with them. They want a device that can run all day and remain connected too. More than 12 companies have decided to use the Snapdragon’s chip, which runs at 1GHz clock speed. The future is surely very exciting and we are waiting for the Snapdragon-based netbooks AKA Smartbooks to hit the market

Bad SONY! – BLOCKS Virtual XP mode in Windows 7

It may shock you but, its true! The Sony Vaio laptops are not designed to run Window’s 7′s much boasted Windows XP virtual mode. Also the laptops are shipping with BIOS with which Virtualization cannot be done. Sony hasn’t made any clarification regarding whether, they will enable this feature in coming future or not.

According to Sony Insider, the company commented on this by saying that “Its engineers and QA people were very concerned that enabling VT would expose our systems to malicious code that could go very in the Operating System structure of the PC and completely disable it”, a official of the company.

Many misconceptions and confusion are crawling within the people that Sony’s advertising is not at all clear about the whether the Vaio machines are unable to work with a core feature of the Core 2 Duo chips they ship with. As a result of which, many people have now asked for a refund.

I am personally looking forward to do this feature as it would let me to run some of the apps that run only in Windows XP. If SONY does not come with a solution, then they are bound to loose certain number of consumers (including me)

Z550 Atom processor reaches 2.0GHz

Information about two Z-series Atom processors was leaked today. One is 1.2GHz processor (Z515), which is extremely power-frugal and consumes just 1.4W when running at full power and as-little-as 0.65W when scaled back to 800MHz clock speed. However, with all these fancy low number, you will have to bear with slower 400MHz system bus and a 100MHz slower graphics core.

The second Atom is the first one to achive 2GHz clock speed (Z550). Interestingly, it still consumes 2.4W of power which is same as consumed by the 1.86GHz version.

The Z515 will be targeted at the low-powered MIDs and low-cost netbooks. Onviously, the Z550 will be targeted towards hi-end netbooks.