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The USA's latest trade legislation is more bad news for Huawei phones
The US Commerce Department has issued further crushing legislation against Huawei.
Light-emitting silicon overcomes a major obstacle to denser, faster chips
Light-emitting silicon nanowires are finally a reality, opening the door to a new wave of denser and faster chips.
Samsung's latest storage chip will make flagship smartphones faster
Samsung has started mass production on 512GB storage chips based on the new eUFS 3.1 standard. These are the chips already being used in the company's Galaxy S20 lineup, so it won't be long before we see them turning up in models from other brands, too. And it's big news because it means smartphones are about to get very noticeably faster.
Intel’s neuromorphic chip learns to ‘smell’ 10 hazardous chemicals
Of all the senses, scent is a particularly difficult one to teach AI, but that doesn't stop researchers from trying. Most recently, researchers from Intel and Cornell University trained a neuromorphic chip to learn and recognize the scents of 10 hazardous chemicals. In the future, the tech might enable "electronic noses" and robots to detect weapons, explosives, narcotics and even diseases.
Stanford researchers manage to put a particle accelerator on a silicon chip
In scientific pursuits, like the search for dark matter, researchers sometimes use high-power particle accelerators. But these giant machines are extremely expensive and only a handful of them exist, so teams must travel to places like the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, where Stanford University operates at two-mile-long particle accelerator. This may change, though. Researchers believe they have developed an alternative: a laser-driven particle accelerator that fits on a silicon chip.
Samsung says its new flagship processor is 20 percent faster
Samsung has unveiled a bunch of new chips that mean the next slate of smartphones are going to be faster, more efficient and have much improved battery lives. If you go for next year's flagship Samsung Galaxy, chances are it'll come with the newly-announced Exynos 990 processor, which according to the company is offers a 20 percent improvement in performance or a power efficiency gain of up to 20 percent.
OmniVision wins Guinness World Record for its tiny medical image sensor
OmniVision is the new holder of the Guinness World Record for the smallest commercially available image sensor. The tiny device (pictured above in a camera module next to a grain of pepper) measures just half a millimetre squared, and will have a significant impact on the medical imaging landscape.
Bosch will use tiny explosions to make EVs safer in a crash
Electric vehicles have obvious benefits, but they also pose new risks. In the event of a crash, there's a chance that damaged wiring could allow current to leak from the EV's battery into the metal frame, posing a risk to occupants, rescue workers and first responders. Electric vehicles automatically turn off when a crash is detected, but to go a step further, Bosch has created an explosive device that automatically cuts off the high-voltage battery.
Samsung's Exynos 980 chip is a processor and 5G modem in one
Samsung has announced the launch of the Exynos 980, the company's first mobile processor which combines a 5G modem and mobile application processor in a single chip. Until now, phones with Exynos have needed a second chip for 5G -- putting everything in one allows for more compact phone designs and better battery life.
AMD will share its graphics technology with Samsung
AMD stole the spotlight at Computex 2019, where it shared details on its third generation Ryzen CPUs and first Navi GPUs. But that's not the only big news AMD has in store. Today, the company announced a multi-year partnership with Samsung, in which AMD will license its Radeon graphics IP for use in Samsung smartphones and other mobile applications.
Sony built an IoT chip with a 60 mile range
Sony is quietly launching a chip that could change how e-bikes, cars, street lamps and all kinds of other connected devices can relay information. The module, when installed on any IoT object, will allow it send data to Sony's proprietary low-power wide area (LPWA) ELTRES network launching this fall. It can transmit up to about 60 miles and work in noisy urban environments on objects moving at high speeds, opening up a lot of new applications in security, monitoring, tracking and more.
Federal judge rules Qualcomm violated antitrust rules
Roughly five months after the Federal Trade Commission and Qualcomm entered the courtroom over charges that Qualcomm engaged in anti-competitive behavior, a federal judge has sided with the FTC. In a decision shared Tuesday night, US District Judge Lucy Koh stated that Qualcomm violated antitrust laws, The Wall Street Journal reports. In her decision, Koh said the company charged unreasonably high royalties for its patents and eliminated cell phone chip competitors.
ARM display chip design could lead to better stand-alone VR
Now that stand-alone virtual reality has become more of a... reality, ARM wants to eliminate some of the technology's remaining headaches. It's launching a new display chip design, the Mali-D77, that aims to both fix visual artifacts and improve performance. It can reduce motion sickness by re-projecting scenes (to adjust for the headset's position) and correcting lens artifacts like distortion and chromatic aberration. Your VR headset might also last longer on battery power -- ARM expects a 12 percent power savings and a 40 percent drop in bandwidth.
Intel is trying to sell its smartphone-modem business
Intel is looking to sell its smartphone-modem business, now that it's officially out of the race for 5G chipsets, The Wall Street Journal reports. In fact, Apple considered acquiring part of Intel's modem ventures in talks that began last summer, but that deal stopped short just as Apple and Qualcomm reached a settlement in a contentious patent-royalty legal dispute. By the end of that court battle, Apple and Qualcomm had signed a multi-year chipset-supply deal -- which meant Intel was out.
Samsung invests in logic chip R&D to take on Qualcomm and TSMC
Samsung's chip division is its most lucrative, but memory chip prices are falling and the company's overall operating profits are slipping. In response, Samsung just announced a $116 billion investment in non-memory chip R&D and production infrastructure. Some see that as a move to sell chips to other companies and take on competitors like Qualcomm, Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC).
Samsung unveils the highest-capacity smartphone DRAM yet
Samsung has unveiled the highest-capacity smartphone DRAM chip yet, a 12GB LPDDR4X package that will give premium smartphones more memory than the average laptop. The chip will be ideal for complex multi-camera devices and folding smartphones with high-resolution screens. "With more smartphones adopting more features, Samsung has seen increasing demand for higher-capacity DRAM chips from phone makers," the company said.
Intel's 5G modems won't be in phones until 2020
Intel has said that while it will send out sample versions of its 5G modems to its clients this year, the chips won't be in phones before 2020. Apple uses Intel modems in its iPhones, so the timeline suggests we might not see a 5G iPhone until next year, which falls in line with previous reports.
Intel's Lakefield stacks desktop and Atom cores on a ‘3D’ chip
Intel led its CES press conference today by announcing a lineup of no less than six new 9th-gen processors, but it's looking towards a future beyond these chips, too. The company shed some light on a platform that's still in development, codename Lakefield, which is expected to go into production in 2019. It's a hybrid design featuring a primary 10nm Sunny Cove core, complemented by four 10nm Atom cores. We assume it'll operate like many mobile chips do already, with different cores handling different tasks based on how resource-intensive they are, maximizing efficiency and power.
Tile partners with chip makers to bring stuff-finding power to everything
Tile's Bluetooth trackers have been a godsend for forgetful types. Many a lost wallet or set of keys have been located using the Tile Platform, which last year expanded beyond a mobile app to voice and video controls. The company had also previously announced partnerships with a number of companies, including Bose and Samsonite, to help you keep tabs on other things, too. Now, the company has revealed it's teaming up with major BLE (Bluetooth low energy) chip companies, so Tile's stuff-finding power could feasibly be integrated into almost anything.
Samsung's first Exynos Auto chip is coming to future Audi cars
Samsung's first Exynos chip for cars will power Audi's upgraded in-vehicle infotainment system starting in 2021, the company announced today. The Exynos Auto V9 is based on 8-nanometer (nm) process tech and comes complete with eight ARM Cortex-A76 cores, offering a max speed of 2.1 GHz. As a result, Samsung is promising premium audio features, multi-screen capabilities (with support for up to six displays and 12 camera connections). In addition, the Exynos Auto packs an ARM Mali G76 GPU, HiFi 4 audio digital signal processor and an intelligent neural processing unit.
