Chip Design Journal

Chip Design on Ulitzer Intel, which just got its ass whooped by the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly smothering GPU competition and for looking like it’s gonna move its CPU monopoly into the GPU market, announced its first big Atom chip rev on Monday. It integrates graphics directly into the single- and dual-core Pine Trail Atom CPU, an x86 first. The design is supposed to tickle the widget’s performance and usher in smaller, more energy efficient netbooks along with a new batch of cheap entry-level desktop PCs including ultra-small designs (figure a less than 1-litre chassis), fanless designs and all-in-one designs. Intel says gadgets based on the new N450 chip and its companion NM10 Express Tiger Point chipset are due out from major OEMs in the next few weeks. The onslaught should start at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas early next month. Intel h... (more)

Intel Market Share Up a Snip

Intel Virtualization Journal This may not be the best time to mention this – given New York’s antitrust suit – but Intel’s share of PC processors was up marginally year-over-year in Q3 from 81.2% to 81.5% according to Mercury Research and AMD gained a tenth of point year-over-year to 17.8%, but lost 0.7% sequentially. Between the two of them they’ve got 99.3% of the market. Via’s got what’s left over. Mercury figures 90 million-100 million PC chips went out the collective door, a third-quarter record despite the economy. Mobile chips were up 22%. Over 2,200 Delegates Present at... (more)

On2 Technologies Releases First VP6 Hardware Video Decoder

On2 Technologies announced that it has released its new flagship hardware video decoder design, the Hantro(TM) 9190. The 9190 is the tenth generation of the Hantro line of decoders, which are deployed in hundreds of millions of chips worldwide. The 9190 design supports video playback up to full HD (1080p) resolution at 60 frames per second (fps) in multiple formats including On2 VP6 for Adobe Flash Player and Sun JavaFX, DivX 3, 4, 5, 6, H.264, H.263, Sorenson Spark, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1/WMV9 and RealVideo 8, 9 & 10, as well as up to 66 megapixel JPEG still images. "We ... (more)

EC Cuts Deal with Rambus

Chip Design Journal  The European Commission has come to terms with Rambus, which has pledged to put a cap on the royalties it charges for its DRAM patents in exchange for the regulator dropping its monopoly abuse investigation without a fine. Rambus currently charges 3.5%. From now on royalties on earlier chip standards will go to zilch and later ones just 1.5%, according to the Wall Street Journal. Rambus has spent a lot on lawyer to persuade regulators on both sides of the pond it didn’t commit patent ambush by getting its IP written into standards without disclosing it held... (more)

Nehalem Goes Mainstream

Intel’s Lynnfield chips, the widgets meant to drive its newfangled Nehalem architecture into the mainstream, arrived on Tuesday. The new dumbed-down 45nm arrivals include three quad-core desktop devices officially designated the Core i5 750, i7 860 and i7 870 clocking 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz and 2.93GHz respectively and priced, respectively, at $196, $284 and $562 in quantity, the 800-series i7 being cheaper than the existing carriage trade i7 900-series, which starts at ~$280. The difference between the 800-series and the 900-series rests with the width of the built-in memory interface ... (more)