Hardware

Arm’s new Valhall-based Mali-G57

Arm has expanded its Mali graphics portfolio with its new G57 GPU. Targeted at the mainstream market. Mali-G57 is Arm’s first mainstream GPU based on the new Valhall architecture, following the premium Mali-G77 GPU launched back in May this year. The G77 is targeted at the premium mobile market. Arm says the Mali-G57 enables a number of features not traditionally … Read more

Key Smart’s Nano Torch—one very bright, pixel

  We chase pixels here at Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs, so when Key Smart’s rep asked if I’d like to look at the company’s new flashlight, I thought, why? But then I thought. What is a flashlight but a projector without an LCD? And yes, I was intrigued. If you ever wanted a small but powerful light, you should check … Read more

Famous graphics chips: The Integrated Graphics Controller

Integrated graphics have been with us since 1991 in the workstation space, and since 1995 in the PC, and earlier than that in workstations. They found their way into smartphones, tablets, automobiles, and game consoles. Integrated graphics have evolved from being part of the chipset to being integrated within the CPU. Intel did that first in 2010. AMD followed them … Read more

Intel’s new 14-nm Xeon W 2200 processors

  Intel once envisioned a 2018 where 10-nm processors were shipping out of its fabs, followed by a subsequent introduction of a major new core microarchitecture. However, the company’s well-chronicled delays with 10-nm meant another “optimization” generation extending Skylake one more time on 14++ was in order to fill the gap. For the Core brand processors serving high-performance PC and Entry … Read more

AMD’s RX5500 GPU coming soon, to you

  The long-rumored and highly anticipated AMD RX5500 GPU is here, well it will be here soon. AMD is only announcing the GPU, one for mobile (RX5500m) and one for desktop (5500 Series), and the company’s AIB partners will build the mainstream boards based on the chip. That’s the fashion with AMD and Nvidia: build the high-end and midrange AIBs, … Read more

Qualcomm’s ‘XR Enterprise Program’

  At the Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit (EWTS) in Dallas this week, Qualcomm announced a new initiative they’re calling the Qualcomm XR Enterprise Program. The program brings XR technologies and products based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR platform, together with enterprise solution providers to collaborate, innovate and help drive AR and VR adoption in a range of industries including manufacturing, … Read more

What is the best AIB for gaming — it depends

  We keep getting requests from Quora and occasional friends asking, what is the best AIB for____, or can AMD XXX do better than Nvidia YYY? Mostly there are lazy questions that could be asked by the questioner with a little effort and web searching. We never answer such questions, although there seem to be plenty of people within Quora … Read more

Famous Graphics Chips: Artist Graphics GPX

Artist Graphics founded 1979 by Horace and Robert Beale, in Minneapolis released their first add-in board, the Artist 1 in November of 1982, based on an NEC 7220 and sporting a gigantic 1024 × 768 resolution. The traditional semiconductor suppliers like Hitachi, NEC, and Texas Instruments were not keeping up with the demands of the graphics industry, and the graphics … Read more

The foldable display is here from Samsung

Smartphones are great. Miniature computers connected to a vast, worldwide always-on network. They fit in your pocket, are lightweight, and run for hours or days without a recharge. A bit expensive (about twice what a low-end laptop costs), they are ubiquitous, and everybody has at least one of them. There are only two things wrong with them: you can hardly … Read more

SiliconArts new ray tracing chip and IP

Founded in 2010 in Seoul by Dr. Hyung Min Yoon, formerly at Samsung, Hee-Jin Shin from LG, Byoung Ok Lee from MtekVision, and Woo Chan Park from Sejong University, SiliconArts took on the formidable task of designing and manufacturing a ray tracing hardware accelerator co-processor, which they called RayCore. The company showed its first implementation in an FPGA in 2014, … Read more

Intel’s Gen 11 GPU

Intel is bragging about their low-power consuming 10 nm, Gen 11 integrated GPUs in the new Ice Lake processors. And they should brag, look at all the stuff they’ve crammed into the Ice Lake. The company announced its Gen 11 integrated GPU in early August and now the company is shipping the Core processors that have the new GPU design. … Read more