Industry Coverage

AMD’s $35 Billion Acquisition Of Xilinx Is Another Stroke Of Strategic Brilliance

AMD’s $35 Billion Acquisition Of Xilinx Is Another Stroke Of Strategic Brilliance

Competing in the semiconductor industry is often a game of chess, placing long term bets several moves ahead that culminate for a winning strategy. The announcement of AMD entering into an agreement to acquire adaptive computing powerhouse Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock transaction, is a proverbial case study in Silicon Valley power moves. The transaction will be immediately accretive to AMD margins, cashflow and EPS, but what’s more interesting to me is the technology that Xilinx brings to the table, as well as the substantial market impact the combined companies could have.

Dave AltavillaOctober 28, 2020Xilinx, AMDComment

Be Prepared, Microsoft Is Rolling Out The Big Windows 10 October 2020 Update

Be Prepared, Microsoft Is Rolling Out The Big Windows 10 October 2020 Update

Whenever Microsoft rolls out a large update for Windows, there are inevitable reports of problems. As much as Microsoft takes flack for these issues, the fact is Windows has to support a near infinite number of hardware and software combinations, which makes it impossible to test every one of them. Microsoft just announced that it has begun rolling out the big October 2020 update, which includes a revamped Start menu, new shortcuts and biometric security tools, and numerous other features…

Marco ChiappettaOctober 20, 2020MicrosoftComment

First Retail Intel Tiger Lake-Powered Laptop From ASUS Impresses

First Retail Intel Tiger Lake-Powered Laptop From ASUS Impresses

Intel made a splash with the announcement of its new 11th Gen Core mobile processors, code named Tiger Lake, earlier this month. The company trumpeted hundreds of OEM laptop designs that are inbound for the Q4 holiday shopping season, offering breakout performance over its previous gen Ice Lake 10th Gen Core series platform, in addition to besting competitive AMD Ryzen 4000-powered laptops in mainstream app performance. Soon following that announcement, Intel also sent out pre-production reference systems to press and analysts like myself, as validation vehicles for its performance claims…

Dave AltavillaSeptember 30, 2020IntelComment

Subaru Taps Xilinx For New EyeSight Vision-Based ADAS System

Subaru Taps Xilinx For New EyeSight Vision-Based ADAS System

Though the field is advancing rapidly, we’re not quite there yet. Technologies being introduced today, however, inch us ever closer to that fully-autonomous future and enhance current vehicles with additional capabilities to improve safety, comfort, or both.

Marco ChiappettaAugust 19, 2020XilinxComment

Take-Aways From Intel Architecture Day 2020: SuperFin, Tiger Lake And Xe For The Win

Take-Aways From Intel Architecture Day 2020: SuperFin, Tiger Lake And Xe For The Win

Intel just concluded a deep-dive analyst and press briefing that the company calls Architecture Day. It was a remotely hosted event, of course, but the company offered more than a few key disclosures that speak to both its product roadmap and strategy, based on its “Six Pillars Of Innovation,” which are Process, Architecture, Memory, Interconnect, Security and Software…

Dave AltavillaAugust 13, 2020IntelComment

Kioxia Unveils First E3 Enterprise SSD For A Path To PCIe 5 Speeds

Kioxia Unveils First E3 Enterprise SSD For A Path To PCIe 5 Speeds

As you can see here in a Dell-EMC chassis configuration, a drive array configured with Kioxia’s new 3.84 Terabyte E3 drives offers serious density, in a standard 2U rack height.

Dave AltavillaJune 30, 2020Kioxia, StorageComment

Examining Windows 10 On Arm As A Platform For Mobile Power Users

Examining Windows 10 On Arm As A Platform For Mobile Power Users

If you understand what the Surface Pro X is all about and the prospect of a silent, thin, light convertible PC with solid battery life is intriguing, it’s worth checking out. You may be surprised by what it can do.

Marco ChiappettaJune 29, 2020Microsoft, QualcommComment

NVIDIA And Mercedes-Benz Announce Autonomous Vehicle Partnership

NVIDIA And Mercedes-Benz Announce Autonomous Vehicle Partnership

In short, NVIDIA’s new DRIVE platform will kick Mercedes-Benz into a much-needed higher gear in the race for autonomous driving, giving chase to Tesla and many others.

Dave AltavillaJune 23, 2020NVIDIA, autonomous carsComment

Intel Launches Hybrid Processors With 3D Chip Stack Technology To Enable Ultra-Portable PCs

Intel Launches Hybrid Processors With 3D Chip Stack Technology To Enable Ultra-Portable PCs

Foveros goes beyond traditional 3D stacking to enable logic-on-logic integration, which will work with virtually all high-performance circuits, like CPU cores, GPUs, and AI accelerators, for example. Foveros allows Intel to leverage different IP, potentially manufactured on different process nodes, on a single, small chip.

Marco ChiappettaJune 10, 2020Comment

Measuring AI Performance On Mobile Devices: Why It Matters Now And In The Future

Measuring AI Performance On Mobile Devices: Why It Matters Now And In The Future

It will be incumbent upon benchmark app developers and the press to sort through the finer points of what makes for a quality mobile AI benchmark, and also what is a truer measure of performance for your own personal pocket AI assistant.

Dave AltavillaJune 4, 2020AI, QualcommComment

Samsung Galaxy Book S Showcases Potential Of Windows On Snapdragon

Samsung Galaxy Book S Showcases Potential Of Windows On Snapdragon

Following on the heels of Microsoft’s own Surface Pro X launch — a classic detachable 13-inch Surface device that’s powered by a semi-custom version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx — Samsung stepped out in an effort to offer an even more premium laptop experience at a more competitive price point, in a traditional clamshell design, branded the Galaxy Book S.

Dave AltavillaMay 29, 2020QualcommComment

Microsoft May As Well Call Its Next-Gen Console The Xbox Series PC

Microsoft May As Well Call Its Next-Gen Console The Xbox Series PC

Today, in a blog post titled “Xbox Series X: The Most Powerful and Compatible Next-Gen Console with Thousands of Games at Launch”, Jason Ronald, Director of Program Management for Xbox Series X, revealed a number of new details regarding backward compatibility and performance enhancements enroute with Microsoft’s upcoming console.

Marco ChiappettaMay 28, 2020MicrosoftComment

Qualcomm Mixed Reality Viewers Unveiled For Advanced 5G-Connected Experiences

Qualcomm Mixed Reality Viewers Unveiled For Advanced 5G-Connected Experiences

All of these partners have revealed plans to commercialize XR Viewers to provide immersive, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) experiences over 5G networks.

Marco ChiappettaMay 26, 2020qualcommComment

Powerful Xilinx Space-Grade Adaptable Processors To Power AI In Space

Powerful Xilinx Space-Grade Adaptable Processors To Power AI In Space

FPGAs have evolved into intelligent, adaptable processing engines that will be critical in burgeoning markets like machine learning and 5G wireless infrastructure, since the rate of evolution and innovation in these arenas moves so quickly.

Dave AltavillaMay 19, 2020XilinxComment

NVIDIA Ampere Unleashed For Supercomputers And AI-Fueled Data Centers

NVIDIA Ampere Unleashed For Supercomputers And AI-Fueled Data Centers

NVIDIA is calling the newly announced DGX A100 "the world's most advanced system for all AI workloads" and claiming a single rack of five DGX A100 systems can replace an entire AI training and inference-focused data center, at 1/10th the cost, while using 1/20th the power and 1/25th the space.

Marco ChiappettaMay 14, 2020NVIDIAComment

Dell Latitude 7400 SafeSecure Privacy Panel User Experience And Competitive Analysis

Dell Latitude 7400 SafeSecure Privacy Panel User Experience And Competitive Analysis

In this paper, we evaluate three laptops that feature various integrated privacy panel technologies, not only for their effectiveness and the overall user experience, but to measure their impact on battery life.

Dave AltavillaApril 10, 2020DellComment

How Major Tech Players Are Coming Together To Fight Coronavirus

How Major Tech Players Are Coming Together To Fight Coronavirus

There’s no question, literally every human being worldwide has a responsibility to do their part in the Coronavirus pandemic, even if it’s just simply washing your hands and staying home. However, major Tech innovators around the world have an even greater responsibility, as key intellectual property and specialized manufacturing capabilities can provide a huge positive impact in the fight against COVID-19.

Dave AltavillaApril 8, 2020NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel, Xilinx, MaingearComment

MediaTek Accused Of Cheating In A Myriad Of Popular Mobile Benchmarks

MediaTek Accused Of Cheating In A Myriad Of Popular Mobile Benchmarks

As companies seek to gain a competitive edge, unfortunately, some of them are willing to bend (or break) the rules to make the performance of their products seem better than it actually is in real-world use cases.

Dave AltavillaApril 8, 2020MediaTekComment

Intel Funds Efforts To Find Security Exploits In Its Own Silicon But Why?

Intel Funds Efforts To Find Security Exploits In Its Own Silicon But Why?

Intel has taken a lot of heat in the tech news circuit lately, for security vulnerabilities that exist its various processor line-ups. What you might be surprised to know, especially with some of the more recent discoveries, however, is that Intel brought much of this pain upon itself…

Dave AltavillaMarch 19, 2020IntelComment