Tag Archives: processors

IBM nanosheets promise better speed and battery life for next

IBM Research has developed new chipmaking technology it says will advance processors to the next level of circuitry miniaturization, performance improvement and power efficiency. But to make this real, it’ll have to find manufacturing partners to bring the tech to market. The new manufacturing technology, featuring components called nanosheets, increases chip performance 45% or reduces …

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Intel investing $3.5B in New Mexico fab upgrade, boosting US chipmaking

Intel on Monday announced a $3.5 billion upgrade to a chip manufacturing plant in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, that will boost a processor stacking technology called Foveros. That spending, combined with $20 billion to build two new facilities in Arizona, is part of a major effort by Intel to rejuvenate its manufacturing. The chipmaker on Sunday confirmed the upgrade plan, …

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Apple’s M2 chip has reportedly entered mass production

The M1 processor’s reign as Apple’s flagship chip may be nearing its end. The company’s next big processor, likely called the M2, entered into mass production this month, Nikkei Asia reports. The report, which cites unnamed “sources familiar with the matter,” says that shipments of the new processors could “begin as early as July for use in MacBooks that are …

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Google supercharges YouTube with a custom video chip

To keep YouTube humming, Google has developed a custom chip to keep YouTube called Argos that’s designed to deliver the best video quality and keep you from blowing through your broadband or mobile monthly data caps. Thousands of the chips are running in Google data centers right now, Google revealed to CNET in an exclusive interview. If you upload a …

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Nvidia’s Grace AI chip leaves Intel processors behind

Nvidia has a new chip in the works for boosting artificial intelligence and other high-performance computing work: Grace, a design slated to arrive in mammoth supercomputers in 2023. Instead of accelerating conventional Intel-powered servers, though, the design includes its own built-in Arm processors. Nvidia’s current brainiest chip, the A100, is typically yoked to Intel Xeon processors. Nvidia chips do the …

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Arm’s new chip architecture boosts security, speed for billions of processors

Arm, whose chip technology reaches every smartphone and just about every corner of the computing industry, announced a new processor architecture Tuesday designed to significantly improve security and performance. The architecture, called Armv9, should make its way into an estimated 300 billion processors starting this year through the next decade, the UK company said. Armv9, a successor to the Armv8 …

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Photoshop on Apple M1 MacBook 50% faster than on Intel models, Adobe says

Adobe on Wednesday released Photoshop for Apple’s M1-based Macs, a key software package for the new family of computers, and it runs 50% faster than on Intel-powered equivalent laptops. “Our internal tests show a wide range of features running an average of 1.5x the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems,” Photoshop Product Manager Pam Clark said in a blog …

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Intel’s Thunderbolt pushes into mainstream as faster alternative to USB

Thunderbolt, Intel’s super-speedy connection technology, isn’t widely used. But that may change in the coming year, as more computer makers incorporate the USB competitor into their new models. Intel has hoped Thunderbolt, which debuted in 2011 on Apple’s 2011 MacBook Pro, would become commonplace for computer users. A year later, the chipmaker forecast that “most PCs” would have Thunderbolt by …

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From PS5 to Ford F

The biggest news in the automotive industry right now isn’t new electric vehicles or Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s latest comments. It’s a major semiconductor shortage that’s hurting automakers across the globe. Because Ford, General Motors, Toyota and others can’t get certain electronic components they need, they’re cutting production on vehicles like the Ford F-150. And it’s not just cars. There …

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Lenovo’s stable of ThinkPad laptops include latest Intel, AMD chips starting at $689

Lenovo ThinkPads rule the business laptop market and, although the company’s premium ThinkPad X1 models get all the attention, your IT department is more likely to give you something from its X, T, L or P series of laptops. That’s nothing to sniff at, though, as the PC-maker announced today that all those lineups are getting refreshed models with 11th-gen …

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