August 30, 2010

• AMD Bulldozer Plows New Ground
  Bulldozer has a unique microarchitecture that fuses two CPUs together, sharing some blocks while maintaining separate instruction streams. AMD's new design includes other microarchitecture enhancements to help it compete against Intel's next-generation Sandy Bridge CPU.
  
  
• AMD's Bobcat Snarls at Atom
  AMD's new low-power x86 CPU core will challenge Intel's Atom in small notebook PCs and netbooks. By integrating a GPU on the same die with two CPUs, the first Bobcat chip will also be the first AMD Fusion processor when it ships later this year.

August 23, 2010

• Editorial: How to Blow $100M
  As if raising $50 million for a new startup wasn't tough enough: even that amount isn't enough to assure success. As recent failures have shown, investors and entrepreneurs are badly underestimating the cost of bringing a new chip to market.

August 13, 2010

• PowerPC Covers the Highs and Lows
  The PowerPC architecture has come a long way in the past 20 years, powering record-breaking supercomputers from IBM, FPGAs from Xilinx, and communications devices from Freescale, Applied Micro, and others. Unusually for a licensed CPU architecture, Power's development is managed by committee, with all licensees collaborating on its future development.

August 9, 2010

• Opteron 4100 Is Cool for Clouds
  AMD's new Opteron 4100 server processors are intended for data centers primarily concerned with performance per watt—particularly when providing cloud-computing services. The new processors offer better price/performance and performance per watt than similarly priced Intel Xeon server processors.

August 2, 2010

• Intel Shakes Up Cellular Market
  Intel's pending acquisition of Infineon's wireless business gives it cellular and connectivity technologies that are important in advancing Intel’s smartphone strategy. Intel has also acquired Comsys, a small 4G baseband company. These deals should help Intel sell Atom, but they could also help Broadcom, MediaTek, and ST-Ericsson gain share.
  
  
• Microsoft to Extend ARM
  Microsoft gains rights to design its own ARM-compatible CPU but provides no explanation. We speculate the company is designing an ASIC for a new game system.

July 26, 2010

• NetLogic Broadens XLP Family
  NetLogic is announcing nine new members in the XLP family of networking processors, which was formerly populated by only one chip: the eight-core XLP832. The new chips have one, two, four, or eight CPUs. They will greatly improve NetLogic's performance in control-plane applications without compromising data-plane performance.
  
  
• Editorial: The Race to the Bottom
  The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Some microprocessor companies are heading down-market, making headway by producing cheaper and slower devices instead of following their rivals in a race to the top.
  
  
• Cavium, Marvell, NetLogic Gain Share
  Sales of embedded processors fell 19% in 2009, but even in this down market, some vendors excelled. The communications market fared relatively well while storage sank.

July 19, 2010

• Two-Headed Snapdragon Takes Flight
  Qualcomm has sampled the first dual-CPU Snapdragon processor, the QSD8660. This product uses the company's own Scorpion CPU, a powerful superscalar ARM-compatible design. The highly integrated device targets high-end smartphones.
  
  
• Freescale Adds Intelligence to Sensors
  Freescale is embedding its venerable ColdFire CPU into sensor chips such as accelerometers, pressure sensors, gyroscopes, and magnetometers. Under the new Xtrinsic brand, these new smart sensors aim to assist embedded host processors.

• In Brief: Tears for Tier Logic
  FPGA startup Tier Logic has run out of money, apparently dooming its new three-dimensional programmable-logic technology to an early demise.

July 5, 2010

• Freescale P5 Raises QorIQ's I.Q.
  Freescale Semiconductor's latest QorIQ-family chips include a pair of 2.2GHz processors with a new 64-bit CPU, plus an integrated processor for control- and data-plane applications. The single-core P5010 and dual-core P5020 chips will bring 64-bit processing and memory addressing to Freescale's battle against competitors that offer 64-bit MIPS and x86 architectures.
  
  
• In Brief: AppliedMicro Sinks Titan-IC
  AppliedMicro will not productize its first dual-CPU processor, the 90nm APM83290, which was developed in conjunction with Intrinsity. Instead, the company will supply this processor only in sample quantities and later convert customers to a homegrown 40nm processor.

June 28, 2010

• Freescale Adopts ARM for MCUs
  Microcontroller giant Freescale is launching a new line of ARM-based chips, beginning the long process of replacing its aging ColdFire MCUs. At the same time, ColdFire chips and a new nonvolatile-memory technology show that company is busy on multiple fronts.
  
  
• Editorial: RISC Versus CISC Redux
  RISC-versus-CISC 2.0 isn’t just more of the same. This time, it’s a two-way battle and the territories are different.

June 21, 2010

• New Processors Target Data Centers
  Data centers need lower-power server processors to reduce their electricity bills. Some companies are designing ARM-compatible processors to address this problem; others are turning to Intel's Atom processor. This competition could cause trouble for Xeon.
  
  
• Plurality Gets Ambitious with 256 CPUs
  Israeli startup Plurality has designed a 256-CPU multicore processor for acceleration of parallel algorithms in networking, imaging, and cloud computing. The unusual design starts with the SPARC architecture and a single instruction cache. Sample chips, due late this year, will demonstrate whether the concept works.


• In Brief: ARM Unaffected by Virage Acquisition
  Synopsys is buying supplier of semiconductor intellectual property Virage Logic, gaining memory IP as well as other technology, including ARC CPUs. We believe the deal is motivated foremost by Synopsys’s drive to grow its business, which has been only about 10% of its revenue. The impact on the competitive landscape for CPUs will be negligible.

June 14, 2010

• Kilopass Brings Gusto to Memory
  Kilopass, a small Silicon Valley company, has introduced its next-generation nonvolatile memory for SoCs. Called Gusto, the one-time-programmable (OTP) memory offers four times the capacity of existing antifuse memories.
  
  
• In Brief: Intel Adapts Larrabee for HPC
  Intel is steering its Larrabee project toward high-performance computing for scientific and engineering applications, after deciding that the first designs aren't competitive enough for the 3D-graphics market.
  

May 31, 2010

• Intel Cuts Atom's Power
  Intel's new Moorestown platform for high-end smartphones and tablets makes a big leap beyond previous Atom-based chip sets in power consumption, performance, and integration. Although it still trails the latest ARM-based smartphone processors from competitors, it will establish Intel's foothold in a vital market.
  
  
• Cavium Pushes Octeon to 32 CPUs
  Cavium's new Octeon II chips push the core count as high as 32, while ditching the previous chips' internal bus for a new crossbar switch. The new 6700 and 6800 processors are fast and power-hungry, but may still be more efficient than competitors' devices.

May 24, 2010

• Editorial: Getting the Band Back Together
  They say businesses run in cycles. If that's so, Microprocessor Report has been through its boom-and-bust period and is ready for growth again.
  
  
• AppliedMicro Raises the Volume
  AppliedMicro has recently announced two extensions to its PowerPC 405 and 460 families: the APM801xx and APM821xx. The new microprocessor lines add features enabling the company to target high-volume segments, such as consumer NAS and energy metering, in addition to the company’s mainstay infrastructure customers.

May 10, 2010

• Letter From the Publisher: MPR Goes Back to the Future
  I am pleased to announce that The Linley Group has acquired Microprocessor Report. We will continue to provide you with the same in-depth technical analysis that you have come to expect.

April 30, 2010

• Editorial: Smartphone Spectrum Disorder
  Wireless providers and handset vendors envision everyone carrying a wireless device that delivers a dazzling array of features and services, including Internet access and mobile video. Unfortunately, there isn't enough RF spectrum available to make the vision come true.

April 26, 2010

• The Single-Chip Cloud Computer
  Intel introduces experimental single-chip Cloud Computer that networks 48 Pentium cores on one die.
  
  
• Why Apple Wants Intrinsity
  Apple's stealthy acquisition of Intrinsity is the latest strategic move toward becoming a fully integrated consumer-electronics company. By developing custom SoCs and embedded-processor cores, Apple is assuming more risk, but the potential payoffs are great.

April 12, 2010

• ARM's Digital Signal Controller
  The Cortex-M4 is ARMs first processor core described as a digital signal controller (DSC). Actually, it's a clean-slate descendant of existing ARM9 and ARM11 cores that adds no new integer signal-processing instructions—but it's faster.
  

March 29, 2010

• Tabula's Time Machine
  Taking a radically different approach to FPGAs, Tabula reconfigures the programmable-logic fabrics of its chips up to 1.6 billion times per second. In effect, Tabula's devices emulate a three-dimensional PLD with eight layers of stacked logic.
  


• Market Watch: The Future of 3D TV
  In this installment of our Market Watch series, In-Stat examines the competing technologies for 3D TV production, distribution, and consumption. Hollywood's renewed interest in 3D filmmaking will drive consumer demand for 3D TV.
  


• In Memoriam: Ellen Clements
  It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our longtime colleague, Ellen Clements. As far as anyone can remember, Ellen was the only copy editor in the 23-year history of Microprocessor Report.

March 22, 2010

• Snapdragon Success
  Offering a multiple-core high-performance efficient processor incorporating an ARM v7 ISA proprietary implementation, Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset captures multiple sockets.
  

March 8, 2010

• Editorial: Support by Communities
  Developer communities can provide answers to OEM designers in real time, but at the cost of disconnecting them from the microprocessor companies and software vendors involved in the system.
  


• Communities, Blogs, Forums
  Online communities and word-of-mouth will continue to expose electronic hardware and software products to the public eye; the companies marketing the products are dealing with the reality of group communications.
  

February 22, 2010

• Editorial: Sun Fades Into Oracle's Orbit
  The pessimists were wrong. Oracle is embracing Sun Microsystems' hardware business—including the SPARC microprocessor architecture. SPARC, Solaris, and Java will live on, and Oracle is promising to reinvest in these key technologies.
  

February 16, 2010

• The Rise of Licensable SMP
  IBM's new PowerPC 476FP processor core will compete with other licensable 32-bit embedded-processor cores designed for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). It supports coherent SMP with up to eight processors per cluster.

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