ARM sees 16 percent profit increase in Q4 2012, 21 percent increase in royalty payments

Posted on 05/02/2013 by Mat Smith

UK-based chipmaker ARM had yet another profitable quarter, announcing that the end of 2012 saw pre-tax profits of around $126 million -- an increase of 16 percent since the same period last year. Revenue totaled $262.8 million for Q4 and with a huge proportion of Android and iOS devices containing chip know-how from ARM, it continues to benefit from the smartphone boom. In fact, shipments of chips based on its processors totaled 2.5 billion in Q4 alone, while royalty revenue grew 21 percent year-on-year, thanks to successes with both its Cortex-A and Mali silicon series. ARM chief exec Warren East added that the company is "well positioned" to have a great 2013, too -- unless everyone stops buying phones all of a sudden.

Filed under: Misc

Comments

Via: Reuters

Source: ARM

Samsung’s next-gen Exynos 5 Octa rumored to have only current-gen PowerVR graphics

Posted on 14/01/2013 by Sharif Sakr

There's nothing we can concretely do or say about the Exynos 5 Octa until it's in a device and in our hands. It's all just educated guesswork in the meantime, but that happens to be something AnandTech is rather good at. That site has reached the conclusion, based on "numerous sources," that the Octa probably uses a PowerVR 544MP3 GPU clocked at 533MHz. If true, this implies that the ARM Mali T-604 used in Exynos Dual devices like the Sammy Chromebook somehow couldn't meet Octa's needs, and that the higher-specced T-658 perhaps wasn't ready. It also suggests that Octa's graphical and GPU compute performance might lie somewhere between that of the third-gen iPad (A5X) and the fourth-gen (A6X). Frankly, a newer GPU would have been more exciting, especially given the appearance of PowerVR Series6 at CES, but big.LITTLE should still give us plenty to talk about when the new eight-core chip finally arrives.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Samsung

Comments

Source: AnandTech

ASUS MeMo Pad makes quiet post-CES debut, offers Jelly Bean and 16GB of storage for $150

Posted on 14/01/2013 by Sean Buckley

ASUS MeMo Pad makes quiet postCES debut, offers Jelly Bean and 16GB of storage for $150

Despite a strong showing of slates in 2012, ASUS showed precious few tablets at CES last week. Missing from the show? Its latest MeMo Pad -- a 7-inch 1024 x 600 tablet rocking Jelly Bean, 16GB of storage, a Mali 400 GPU, 1GB of RAM and a 1MP front-facing camera. ASUS didn't name the tablet by model number, but it's a dead ringer for the ME172V that slipped through GLBenchmarks last month, and fits the bill of a recent federal authorization. The new slab isn't quite as nice as the Nexus 7 its predecessor became, but at $150, it's a little easier on the wallet. ASUS also cautions buyers that the MeMo pad is a "tablet-only product," clarifying that it won't be getting a Transformer Pad-like keyboard dock -- assuming you could type on a 7-inch keyboard, that is. Check out the slate's official press release after the break.

Continue reading ASUS MeMo Pad makes quiet post-CES debut, offers Jelly Bean and 16GB of storage for $150

Filed under: Tablets, ASUS

Comments

Benchmarks hint at budget ASUS ME172V Jelly Bean tablet, 1GHz processor Mali 400 GPU

Posted on 02/12/2012 by James Trew

ASUS has been a strong force in the tablet game even before it set a new price-to-quality standard with Google's Nexus 7. It looks like the firm could be tightening the budget screw even further, if some recent GLBenchmarks are to be believed. The details are sparse, but outline a product with model number ME172V (which follows from its pre-Nexus smaller tablet line), that runs Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, sports a 1,024 x 552 (likely 1,024 x 600) resolution powered by a Mali 400 GPU and 1GHz chip. There's no indication on the number of cores, or, well, much else for that matter. Various rumors are keen to suggest there'd be support for microSD, which if true, would make it unlikely to be a Nexus. But a budget tablet by the same manufacturer, is likely enough for many people all the same.

Filed under: Tablets, ASUS, Google

Comments

Via: Pocket Now

Source: GLBenchmark

Lenovo reveals K860 LePhone, quad-core Exynos and a 5-inch screen

Posted on 17/08/2012 by James Trew

It's been a pretty good week for Lenovo all things told, but the Chinese firms isn't stopping to congratulate itself too much. Today, it's business as usual, marked by the official arrival of the new K860 ~~"Music Phone"~~ aka LePhone. The quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos 4412 chip, Mali-400MP GPU, 5-inch (1,280 x 720) display, 1GB of RAM and slight 9.6mm-thick form should come together to sing a sweet song though. The 8-megapixel snapper is no slouch either, with support for 100 frames continuous shooting and 1080p video recording (plus there's a 2-megapixel camera around the front, too). If all this sounds like a recipe for battery-drain, there's a 2,250 mAh cell to help keep you going. This will all be running on Android 4.0.4, but currently no word on price or availability -- but it's not like there aren't any other large phones to think about in the meantime.

Update: We got a little excited in the translation for a moment there. The "Music" (or Happiness -- both the same symbol) Phone is of course the LePhone we link to in the article.

Filed under: Cellphones

Lenovo reveals K860 LePhone, quad-core Exynos and a 5-inch screen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Engadget Chinese | source

Zol.com (Chinese) | Email this | Comments

ARM’s eight-core Mali GPUs promise ‘dramatic’ boost to mobile graphics

Posted on 06/08/2012 by Sharif Sakr

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.

Continue reading ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablet PCs

ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

Posted on 02/08/2012 by Sharif Sakr

It's been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos -- that great keeper of open standards -- to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn't settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been "relaxed" for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos's certification is just a formality at this point, and that today's news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

Continue reading ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Gooseberry Android board plans to sate those still waiting on a Raspberry Pi (video)

Posted on 19/06/2012 by Daniel Cooper

If one of the aims of the Raspberry Pi was to embody the "do-it-yourself" ethos, then it's already succeeded. Annoyed at the wait for the education-friendly board to arrive, the anonymous creator of the Gooseberry decided to build their own. Looking reasonably similar to its inspiration, it's packing a 1GHz AllWinner CPU, 400MHz Mali GPU, 512MB RAM and 4GB of onboard storage. It'll go on sale in the UK for £40 ($63) shortly, running Gingerbread and is capable of running HD video -- as demonstrated by the video we've got for you after the break.

Continue reading Gooseberry Android board plans to sate those still waiting on a Raspberry Pi (video)

Gooseberry Android board plans to sate those still waiting on a Raspberry Pi (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

TG Daily, Liliputing | source

Gooseberry | Email this | Comments

ARM vows Mali-450 graphics will liven up mid-range smartphones

Posted on 13/06/2012 by Jon Fingas

ARM is still cooking its next-generation Mali-T604 mobile graphics, but it has what could be a massive lift to performance coming considerably sooner through the Mali-450 family. The architecture is almost almost literally two Mali-400 chips (the same that powers the Galaxy S II) grafted together, and the maximum eight cores accordingly run up to twice as quickly as what we saw just a year ago. The real achievement might be just be targeting the Mali-450 at a more down-to-Earth audience: where the 400 was all about conquering the high-end, ARM wants the 450 to focus on mid-range and even entry-level phones. Design work for the new Mali video should be done before the end of 2012, although it'll be up to chip manufacturers to carry the torch and finish work that likely won't show in phones and tablets until 2013.

ARM vows Mali-450 graphics will liven up mid-range smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

EETimes | Email this | Comments

Ergo GoTab Epic hands-on (video)

Posted on 10/04/2012 by Daniel Cooper

There's a new entrant in the cut-throat world of British budget tablet makers: Birmingham-based Ergo Electronics. It previewed its new GoTab line of Ice Cream Sandwich-powered slates and e-readers at this year's Gadget Show Live, but our interest was captivated by the most premium model: the GoTab Epic GTB9040. Interested in our impressions? Course you are, that's why you're going to read more after the break.

Gallery: Ergo GoTab Epic - Hands On