eight-core
Latest
Motorola's metal body Moto M launches with ho-hum specs
Motorola has just launched the 5.5-inch mid-range Moto M by way of its listing on Tmall (China's equivalent of Amazon). The Moto lineup always garners a lot of interest, thanks to previous stellar models like the Moto G and Moto X Pure Edition. However, the latest model is a bit disappointing. It does have a splash-proof metal unibody and brand new rear fingerprint sensor, but at $295, it's specifications are wanting next to rival devices.
Huawei's Richard Yu confirms 8-core chip for 2H 2013, teases super slim P series phone for MWC
We never thought our day could get any better after Huawei's Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu became available again for our CES stage interview (there was originally a "last minute urgent conflict"), but our man was also kind enough to share a couple more scoops with us. First of all, Huawei will be joining Samsung at the octa-core Cortex-A15 party in the second half of this year, and given what Yu's told us earlier this week, our guess is that this will either be the HiSilicon K3V3 or a sister chipset, again manufactured by TSMC. The second scoop of the day was delivered fresh off the stage after the interview. Yu told us exclusively that at MWC next month, Huawei will be unveiling a super slim follow-up to the current P series Android phones. We asked if it'll be even thinner than 6.45mm (the thickness of the Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra announced at CES), and Yu said yes. The exec added that the new phone will have a beautiful metallic body as well. Exciting times, right?
AMD FX-8350 review roundup: enthusiasts still won't be totally enthused
Now that AMD's fresh new FX processors based on the Piledriver architecture are out in the wild, the specialist hardware sites have seen fit to benchmark the top-lining FX-8350. Overall, the group feels that AMD has at least closed the gap a bit on Intel's Core juggernaut with a much better FX offering this time around, but overall the desktop CPU landscape remains unchanged -- with Intel still firmly at the top of the heap. Compared to its last-gen Bulldozer chips, "in every way, today's FX-8350 is better," according to Tom's Hardware: cheaper, up to 15 percent faster and more energy efficient. Still, while the new CPUs represent AMD's desktop high-end, they only stack up against Intel's mid-range Core i5 family, and even against that line-up they only edge ahead in heavily threaded testing. But if you "look beyond those specific (multithreaded) applications, Intel can pull away with a significant lead" due to its superior design, says Anantech. As for power consumption, unfortunately "the FX-8350 isn't even the same class of product as the Ivy Bridge Core i5 processors on this front," claims The Tech Report. Despite all that, Hot Hardware still sees several niches that AMD could fill with the new chips, as they'll provide "an easy upgrade path for existing AMD owners and more flexibility for overclocking, due to its unlocked multipliers." That means if you already have a Socket-AM3+ motherboard, you'll be able to do a cheap upgrade by swapping in the new CPU, and punching up the clock cycles might close the performance gap enjoyed by the Core i5. Finally, AMD also saw fit to bring the new chip in at a "very attractive" $195 by Hexus' reckoning, a much lower price than an earlier leak suggested. Despite that, however, the site says that AMD's flagship FX processor still "cannot tick as many desirable checkboxes as the competing Intel Core i5 chips." Feel free to scope all the sources below to make your own conclusions. Read - Tom's Hardware Read - Hot Hardware Read - AnandTech Read - Hexus Read - The Tech Report
AMD updates its FX processors: 8-core chip has 4GHz base clock, '15 percent' more oomph, $195 price tag
If you get the impression that AMD is diverting its energy away from traditional CPUs and towards APUs and fresher PC form factors such as all-in-ones, then you're certainly right -- but you're also slightly ahead of the game. The company promises there's a still a good few years of life left in its CPU-only chips and the AM3+ socket, and it's putting today's announcement forward as evidence. As of now, last year's eight-core FX-8150 has been superseded on retailers' shelves by the FX-8350, which notches the stock clock speed up to 4GHz, or 4.2GHz on turbo (alas with no obvious sign of that resonant mesh we once heard about). The full stack (codenamed 'Vishera') includes eight-, six- and four-core options, all based on the new Piledriver architecture which -- when combined with these higher clock speeds -- promises an overall performance uplift of around 15 percent versus the old Bulldozer cores. To be fair though, those Bulldozers weren't so snappy to begin with, and besides, the most significant performance claims with this upgrade relate to multi-threaded applications and a few gaming titles like Skyrim and Civ 5. Judging from the slide deck below, gains in other areas of performance may be lower -- perhaps in the region of seven percent -- so as usual we're going to roundup a bunch of reviews later today before we jump to any conclusions. If it turns out that stock performance alone isn't enough to sell these chips, then potential buyers still ought to check out FX's pricing relative to Intel -- not least because, as is typical, AMD sells overclockable chips at no extra charge. The top-end FX-8350 will hit the market at $195, which is not only cheaper than some earlier leaks suggested, but also $40 cheaper than an unlocked Core i5-3570K that has a lower clock speed and a smaller L3 cache -- although the relative performance of these two chips remains to be independently tested. Meanwhile, the entry-level quad-core FX-4300 will virtually match the price of a locked i3-2120 at $122, but can be readily overclocked to 5GHz with water-cooling. AMD is also making a few claims based on the cost of multiple components in a rig: for example, that you can spend $372 on an FX-8350 and Radeon HD 7850 combo that delivers a 25 to 70 percent gaming advantage over a similarly priced Core i5 3570K with a GeForce GTX 650 Ti. Again, stay tuned for our roundup and we'll figure out just how compelling this really is.
ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics
The current flagship for ARM's mobile graphics technology is undoubtedly the Galaxy S III, which contains a quad-core Mali 400 GPU and delivers some wild benchmark scores. By the end of this year though, we should see a whole new generation of Malis -- not just a Mali 450 for mid-range handsets, but also the quad-core T604 and the eight-core T658, which are based on ARM's Midgard architecture and are taking forever to come to market. Now, to whet our appetites even further, ARM has just added three more variants of the chip to its roster, which can almost be considered the next-next-generation: the quad-core T624, and the T628 and T678, which are both scalable up to eight cores. The trio's headline feature is that they promise to deliver at least 50 percent more performance with the same silicon area and power draw, with the explicit aim of delivering "console-class gaming," 4K and even 8K video workloads, as well as buttery 60fps user interfaces in phones, tablets and smart TVs. The premium T678 is aimed at tablets specifically, and in addition to allowing up to eight cores also doubles the number of math-crunching ALUs per core, which means that its compute performance (measured in gigaflops) is actually quadrupled compared to the T624. However, there's one other, subtler change which could turn out to be equally important -- read on for more.
AMD FX processor brings eight cores to battle, we go eyes-on (video)
AMD fans have endured a long wait for this, while being reduced to spectators as Intel spews out an ever-increasing horde of Sandy Bridge variants and builds up the hype around its next-gen Ivy Bridge architecture. But the new FX series of processors is finally here and will be available to buy in the next few days, with the top-end FX-8150 priced at $245 in exchange for eight cores, a 3.6GHz base clock speed and easy over-clocking to 4.8GHz using the packaged Overdrive software. Your AM3+ motherboard is crying out for the upgrade, but don't succumb until you've clicked past the break -- we've got details of the full range and pricing, our initial impressions and an eyes-on video that includes a detailed chat with the guys from AMD.
AMD Llano quad-core APUs and Zambezi octa-core CPUs get priced, the former listed inside an HP dv6
Don't mistake the relative quietness from AMD on the APU front for inactivity. Ever since announcing the first shipment of its Llano Accelerated Processing Unit in April, the company's been working behind the scenes to ramp up availability to OEMs, and somewhere along the supply chain a gracious soul has been found who's leaked the bulk pricing for those chips. The new quad-core A Series processors start off at $110 for an A6-3450 and max out at $170 for an A8-3550P, but there's also mention of octa-core FX processors, which will weigh in at $320 a piece and reputedly compete with Intel's 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K. The latter are built around AMD's Bulldozer modules (wherein one module counts for two cores) and look to be the manifestation of the company's Zambezi CPUs, which could come without an integrated graphics processor as is available on the Llano and the rest of AMD's Fusion line. Just to whet appetites further, we've also come across an HP dv6 on an obscure German retail site, offering a 1.6GHz A6-3410MX APU, 6GB of RAM, and a most reasonable €590 price. There's obviously no promised delivery date, but this should be the first of many such appearances in the coming days as we build up towards Computex 2011. Something tells us AMD won't be holding back when the Taipei electronics show gets started. [Thanks, Shashwat and Vygantas]
Intel plans to stuff more than 8 cores, extra speed into 2011 server chips
Yeah yeah, "more cores and faster speeds," you've heard it all before right? That'd be our reaction too if we weren't talking about the successor to the Nehalem-Ex, Intel's most gruesomely overpowered chip to date. Launched under the Xeon 7500 branding in March, it represents Intel's single biggest generational leap so far, and with its eight cores, sixteen threads, and 24MB of shared onboard cache, you could probably see why. Time waits for no CPU though, and Intel's planned 32nm Westmere-Ex successor will move things forward with an unspecified increase in both core count (speculated to be jumping up to 12) and operating frequencies, while keeping within the same power envelope. Given the current 2.26GHz default speed and 2.66GHz Turbo Boost option of the 7500, that means we're probably looking at a 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz 12-core, hyper-threaded processor, scheduled to land at some point next year. Time to make some apps that can use all that parallel processing power, nay?
Sun looses 'world's fastest chip' -- the 1.4GHz Niagara 2
In a bold and presumably calculated statement, Sun Microsystems has proclaimed that its newfangled Niagara 2 is "the world's fastest multi-core commodity chip." Clocking in at 1.4GHz, this eight-core chip also boasts 64 threads, eight lanes of PCI Express I/O, and four memory controllers, all of which will supposedly boost server performance beyond anything we're currently seeing. Reportedly, the aforementioned claim was based on a "pair of record-setting SPEC benchmark results," but we still think that's a bit dodgy to base such a remark on. Nevertheless, Sun is suggesting that this CPU will "consume less power and do more work per clock tick than its rivals," and isn't shying away from taking on the likes of Intel, IBM, and AMD. Eh, we'll stick with our 8.18GHz Pentium 4.[Via The Register]
Apple Store UK leaks 8-core Mac Pro
An 8-core Mac Pro wouldn't exactly be the surprise of the century -- it would've made sense for Apple to launch such a beast back last year when such rumors first emerged, and so much more so now -- but we can't help crack a grin when air-tight Apple leaks a product release onto its very own online store. Apple Store UK had just such a snafu today, advertising Mac Pros complete with "quad-core or 8-core processing power." Apple has since revised the page, and we're sure we won't hear a peep from the company about the release until it's good and truly ready, but there's pretty much no denying that 8-core Intel action is due any day now for big spendin' power users.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
