Microsoft continues tech innovations with new Xbox

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Microsoft continues tech innovations with new Xbox

With the launch of the Xbox One X today, Microsoft reclaims the title of highest performance gaming console on the market, taking it from Sony’s PlayStation brand. The PS4 Pro, released earlier in the year, was a modest upgrade in hardware and performance capability, but the Xbox One X, previously known as Project Scorpio, offers a more significant performance increase. This will allow for 4K support, better image quality in current and upcoming games, as well as a faster and smoother console experience.

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HP maintains PC market share leadership with innovative designs

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HP maintains PC market share leadership with innovative designs

Though pundits and analysts have called for the death of the PC market for years, it continues to drive forward. That doesn’t mean this is a market without change. The PC today is shifting more towards premium devices and products and away from the budget models that led to the growth of computers in the 2000s. Though all major PC manufacturers are attempting to take advantage of that premium trend, HP has been the front-runner for the last generation of systems, capitalizing to gain market share and take the top position, replacing Lenovo as the worldwide unit shipments leader for the first time in more than four years.

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Intel uses AMD graphics hardware in new notebook processor

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Intel uses AMD graphics hardware in new notebook processor

Today Intel announced a new product family for its 8th Generation Core family that combines a 35-watt processor and AMD Radeon graphics chip on a single package in order to create a new class of gaming notebook solution. It hasn’t been assigned a brand yet, that will likely occur with a formal announcement at CES this January. This announcement has significant impact because it solidifies a partnership between competitors AMD and Intel for a product in a space both compete in.

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Apple shared modem tech illegally, claims Qualcomm

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Apple shared modem tech illegally, claims Qualcomm

The long standing legal battle between Apple and processor and connectivity provider Qualcomm has taken another surprising turn this week. Qualcomm has filed a complaint against Apple in San Diego court alleging that Apple has breached its contract by not allowing for a security audit stemming from apparent lack of intellectual property protection by the Cupertino giant.

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ARM Introduces Mali-D71 Advanced Display Processor

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ARM Introduces Mali-D71 Advanced Display Processor

The new display processor is highly associated with the latest Mali GPU cores, but with enough work a 3rd party licensee could adapt it to another GPU architecture. This is obviously not the most efficient way of using this technology as it is regarded as a turnkey solution for the Mali GPU products. ARM has developed the software stack for both Andriod and Linux, and if needed it can develop Windows based drivers to fully leverage the features of this latest product. It is easily attached to 3rd party panel interfaces.

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Intel Optane Storage Performance and Implications on Testing Methodology

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Intel Optane Storage Performance and Implications on Testing Methodology

The new Intel Optane SSD 900p offers workstation and enthusiast consumers a new level of performance for storage. But offering incredibly fast response times and low latency puts a unique emphasis on storage testing methodology, system configuration, and software design. Our Optane white paper focuses on the impact and issues of legacy testing as well as the value of measuring low queue depth performance.

Download the Intel® Optane™ Storage Performance and Implications on Testing Methodology white paper here!

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AMD Completes 'Spectacular Year' with Ryzen Mobile

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AMD Completes 'Spectacular Year' with Ryzen Mobile

With the launch of Ryzen Mobile, a processor meant to compete with Intel’s 7th and 8th generation Core processors in ultrathin and 2-in-1 notebooks, AMD is completing what can only be called a revolutionary year for the company. “It truly is the culmination of a spectacular year of product launches,” claims Lisa Su, AMD CEO. Every quarter of 2017 has brought with it multiple significant product launches that have shifted and molded the company’s portfolio of products and IP into something very different than the AMD of recent history.

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Upcoming AMD Raven Ridge Ryzen APU Puts Pressure on Intel and NVIDIA for Notebooks

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Upcoming AMD Raven Ridge Ryzen APU Puts Pressure on Intel and NVIDIA for Notebooks

As the winter buying seasons ramps up, AMD is readying a major notebook processor release that will be competitive to for the first time Intel in nearly a decade. With recent leaks of upcoming configurations coming from major system builders like HP, and performance data that indicates a strong uplift compared to previous AMD offerings, the mobile AMD chip will force both Intel and NVIDIA to make adjustments to product lines and positioning.

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Intel Nervana AI Chip Takes on NVIDIA for Machine Learning

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Intel Nervana AI Chip Takes on NVIDIA for Machine Learning

In an attempt to regain relevance in the quickly growing artificial intelligence and machine learning markets, Intel has just announced a new product family called Nervana, centered on a completely unique architectural design. The Nervana Neural Network Processor, or NNP for short, is targeting data center and enterprise customers that want to accelerate AI training times while offering superior efficiency and lower power consumption.

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Western Digital Targets “Super 7” with new Hard Drive Technology

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Western Digital Targets “Super 7” with new Hard Drive Technology

Today at a reveal on its San Jose campus, storage company Western Digital revealed a new technology that enables growth and capacity increases in hard drive technology spanning into 2030 and beyond. This generational leap, called Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording, or MAMR, will provide enterprise and OEM customers with headroom for continued expansion of storage as the need for larger sources of data continues to grow while giving WDC a competitive advantage for multiple years.

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NVIDIA AI Hardware Launch Cements Autonomous Driving Leadership

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NVIDIA AI Hardware Launch Cements Autonomous Driving Leadership

Already a leader in mindshare around artificial intelligence and self-driving technology, NVIDIA announced at its GPU Technology Conference a new platform it promises will power fully autonomous vehicles. The Drive PX Pegasus is a high performance system that combines ARM-based processing cores with two yet-to-be-announced graphics chips offering as much as 10x better performance than the previous best offering from the company. Though sampling and shipping won’t start until the second half of 2018, NVIDIA has already announced a partnership with Deutsche Post DHL and ZF to bring delivery trucks with full autonomy to roads in 2019.

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Microsoft Moves Connectivity Future with 4G LTE-enabled Surface Pro

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Microsoft Moves Connectivity Future with 4G LTE-enabled Surface Pro

At the company’s Ignite conference in Orlando this week, Microsoft officially announced the upcoming Surface Pro flagship tablet PC with support for 4G LTE cellular connectivity, using the same networks that power today’s most popular smartphones. Shipping on December 1st, the Surface Pro LTE will bring always-on connectivity support to the Surface for the first time in several generations, with upgraded software support and improved connection speeds.

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AMD could be a perfect fit for custom Tesla autonomous driving processor

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AMD could be a perfect fit for custom Tesla autonomous driving processor

Reports from CNBC started circulating that AMD and Tesla are working together to build a custom processor for Tesla’s autonomous Autopilot in its cars. This would reduce the reliance on NVIDIA GPU technology and would give Tesla more verticality in its product stack. CNBC claims that Tesla is far enough along on this implementation that it has samples back from AMD for evaluation.

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Apple A11 Processor in iPhone 8 and X Shows Value of Custom Silicon

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Apple A11 Processor in iPhone 8 and X Shows Value of Custom Silicon

Apple announced the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X yesterday and the majority of the discussion will center around the high prices of the flagship models, the design and integration of the edge to edge screen, and remaining concerns about availability of the $999 version. But this generation of iPhone also brings with it a significant shift in the silicon design that powers Apple’s smartphones. With both the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, the company is using in-house designed processors nearly exclusively.

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AMD is gaining ground on Intel faster than analysts had thought

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AMD is gaining ground on Intel faster than analysts had thought

Sales of AMD’s new Ryzen processor for consumer PCs may be gaining more ground than many investors and market analysts have been predicting. One of the bigger hardware resellers in Europe, Germany’s MindFactory, an online and physical retailer, makes sales data public and it has been compiled to show the changes in unit sales and revenue comparing AMD to Intel. Starting with March of this year, the launch of the first AMD Ryzen processors, the shift at this retailer has been astonishing.

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New AMD Ryzen Pro brings competition and performance to commercial PC markets due for a refresh

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New AMD Ryzen Pro brings competition and performance to commercial PC markets due for a refresh

Back in late June, AMD announced a commercial version of the Ryzen product family. The Ryzen Pro series of processors levies the success of the Zen architecture and the Ryzen consumer products in hopes to make in-roads on the enormous market opportunity that commercial and managed enterprise desktop sales offer. The top three PC OEMs are on-board with AMD for the first time, bringing an air of credibility that previous commercial products lacked.

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Nvidia and AMD are deluged with orders for PC graphics cards

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Nvidia and AMD are deluged with orders for PC graphics cards

For the first time in nearly a decade, the sales of PC graphics add-in cards rose in the second quarter. Add-in cards are the discrete, high performance graphics solutions for PCs that are typically used by gamers, workstations, rendering farms, and enterprise segments that need high performance graphics capability. Based on data from Jon Peddie Research, add-in card sales rose by 30.9% sequentially and more 34.9% year over year.

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Intel increases laptop performance to prepare for coming fight with AMD, Qualcomm

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Intel increases laptop performance to prepare for coming fight with AMD, Qualcomm

Intel is taking an aggressive stance with this release, doubling the processor core count from two to four, essentially doubling the amount of computing that each processor will be able to perform in the power restraints of the laptop segment. Because a notebook has to operate with limited power consumption and heat creation to stay inside a standard form factor, balancing performance and power draw is of critical importance. Intel is placing a bet with the 8th Generation Core products that the added processing capability will be used more effectively by software going forward, and that it can offer that capability without sacrificing the vital performance of higher clock rates needed by today’s applications and operating systems.

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Apple might be a money maker, but it’s behind the curve on almost all of its products

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Apple might be a money maker, but it’s behind the curve on almost all of its products

Today however, the Apple that sells phones, tablets, notebooks, desktop PCs, software, and services often times takes a back seat to competitors when it comes to hardware integration. When a company has the market share and audience of this scope it can be difficult to make sweeping changes in as it risks alienating a subset of consumers. The side effect is a product line that is further behind competing solutions than ever before.

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