CPU

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is actively designing several chips that will be made using 14nm FinFET process technology. The announcement from AMD indicates that the company will manufacture its new chips either at GlobalFoundries or Samsung Electronics, not at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing …

Advanced Micro Devices said on Tuesday that it will release new products that will help it to regain share on the markets of central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) starting in the second quarter 2015 and going into the second half of the year. The comments from …

Advanced Micro Devices said on Tuesday that it pins a lot of hopes on its code-named “Carrizo” accelerated processing units after posting a major decline in sales of microprocessors and graphics adapters for personal computers. According to AMD, the “Carrizo” APUs will finally help it to boost PC chip market …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has delayed volume production of chips using 16nm FinFET manufacturing technologies by several quarters. As a result, it now has to reconsider plans regarding production of semiconductors using 10nm FinFET fabrication process. Previously it was expected that the company will produce 10nm chips in late 2016, …

Rumour about Apple’s plan to develop its own microprocessors for its Macintosh laptops have been circulating for many years now, but at present Intel Corp.’s microprocessors provide considerably better performance than Apple’s ARM-based chips. Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel, believes that the company’s chips will continue to be …

Intel shipped 46 million application processors for tablets last year and became one of the largest suppliers of this kind of system-on-chips in the world. Although the company clearly exceeded its original tablet SoC sales goal in 2014, Intel set a rather cautious target for this year. “We set a …

Although Intel Corp. had to delay introduction of its code-named “Broadwell” central processing units by about a year because of poor yields, the world’s largest chipmaker has no plans to delay launch of its next-generation “Skylake” chips or slow-down its ramp up. The company will start volume shipments of its …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has confirmed that it is developing yet another version of its 16nm FinFET fabrication process. The new manufacturing technology will be used to make chips for ultra-low-power as well as high-performance applications. “We are also working on 16nm ULP technology development,” said Mark Liu, co-CEO of …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has clarified the timeframe when it intends to start mass production of chips using 16nm FinFET fabrication process. The world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors once again will delay 16nm FF volume production by a month or two to the third quarter of 2015. Back in …

The latest mobile application processors from MediaTek already offer performance comparable to that of mobile system-on-chips from companies like Qualcomm. Apparently, the company is working on two new SoCs that promise to offer truly unbeatable performance. Unfortunately, it is completely unclear whether the new APs will be used for mobile …

Confirmation just in on that third AMD exit, as the corporate web site gets updated to show the future line-up. KitGuru continues to be confused at the number and level of changes. Regardless of the reasons why any of these execs left AMD today, one thing is for certain – …

Quite an amazing day over at AMD HQ. News in that a statutory 8K filing has revealed that the company has just lost its heads of marketing and strategy. What is going on in Texas we wonder? From time to time a large organisation will see senior personnel come and …

Some shocking news into KitGuru HQ just now, says that AMD’s Senior Vice President and General Manager, John Byrne, will be leaving the company. What makes a top executive, with over 25 years’ experience in senior positions, leave a company like AMD? Byrne was promoted from Chief Sales Officer to …

Intel Corp. said it had begun to ship a new breed of system-on-chips for tablets. The new application processors promise to boost performance and cut-down power consumption of Intel’s chips for slates thanks to a new x86 micro-architecture, a new graphics processing unit as well as 14nm fabrication process. The …

Intel's announced it's new SoC (system-on-chip) for wearable devices today at CES. Scheduled for release in the second half of 2015 this tiny all in one system will be able to fit just about anywhere, with it being around the same size as your thumbnail. Intel have also revealed plans with several …

At CES in January 2014, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich told the audience some home truths about the origins of various goods that we take for granted in our every day lives. Specifically, minerals and the way they can be obtained from twisted governments that support conflict. Dr Carolyn Duran is in …

Although Nvidia Corp. decided not to use its custom ARMv8-compatible 64-bit “Denver” core inside its Tegra X1 system-on-chip, the company claims that it can use it inside other application processors. What is unclear is when and inside which application processors. “The reason we did not use Denver on Tegra X1 …

There's been a lot of talk about the next-generation of in-car infotainment systems in recent months, with both Google and Apple once again going head to head to see who can dominate with their respective Android Auto and CarPlay systems. However it may be Nvidia that really drives forward the …

A technology enthusiast has conducted the first benchmarks of Intel Core i7-5500U “Broadwell” processor’s integrated graphics engine and compared it to that of Intel Core i7-4510U “Haswell” processor. While the results are promising, they do not demonstrate any radical performance boosts. Intel Corp. has been gradually improving performance and capabilities …

GlobalFoundries, the world’s second largest contract manufacturer of chips, late on Tuesday denied existence of problems with the ramp up of production using 14nm fabrication process. According to the foundry, it specifically stockpiles manufacturing equipment at a warehouse so that to install it once the fab 8 facility becomes compatible …

Although GlobalFoundries has licensed 14nm FinFET manufacturing technology from Samsung Electronics back in May, 2014, it looks like the company may have to delay mass production using the fabrication process. According to a media report, the company has stopped installation of equipment required to make chips using 14nm FinFET technology. …

It is a well-known fact that owners of large datacenters, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp. and other, have very diverse requirements for servers and microprocessors inside their servers. In the recent years both Intel Corp. and AMD offered custom central processing units to large clients in order to …

Rackspace, one of the world’s largest web hosting and cloud companies, this week officially became a member of the OpenPower foundation, the organization that develops “open-source” servers powered by next-generation IBM Power microprocessors as well as chips based on the Power architecture. The move means that the company will reduce …

While non-standard fabrication processes are sometimes challenging and make it harder to re-use intellectual property across different product lineups, they are just what the doctor ordered when one needs to achieve certain goals. According to GlobalFoundries, the No. 2 contract maker of chips, many customized process technologies are gaining importance …

GlobalFoundries, the world’s second largest contract maker of semiconductors, plans to start volume production of chips using 14nm fabrication process in the first half of 2015, a little later than Samsung Electronics, but, possibly, earlier than Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The company does not reveal who will be the first …

One of the hottest topics of debate among KitGuru readers is the correct approach to installing a CPU cooler We took a test system consisting of a 3.9GHz Core i7-4770K CPU (stock clock speed), an ASRock Z87 Extreme4 motherboard, Sapphire R9 290 Trix graphics card, Samsung 840 EVO SSD and …

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday promoted Mario Silveira to lead worldwide consumer sales within the company's computing and graphics business unit. Mario Silveira, who is 40 years old, joined AMD in 2010 and most recently served as head of consumer go-to-market sales for the EMEA region. Mr. Silveira will report …

Samsung Electronics has begun volume production of semiconductors using 14nm FinFET fabrication process in accordance with its plans outlined earlier this year. The company does not disclose which chips it produces using its 14LPE (low-power early) manufacturing technology and for which companies. Kim Ki-nam, president of Samsung's semiconductor business and …

Advanced Micro Devices may not have a clear product roadmap for 2015, when it essentially will continue selling current-generation products and will not increase performance of its chips significantly. Nonetheless, the company pins many hopes on its 2016 lineup when it will have a number of new products that are …

Although Advanced Micro Devices has not revealed any details about its 2015 roadmap this year, the company continues to unveil pieces of the puzzle. Last week the firm implied that it will use 20nm fabrication process for select products, but on Tuesday AMD hinted that products made using 14nm and 16nm …