Thread: Anandtech News

GlobalFoundries sent over a PR showcasing two significant milestones in its march towards being a major foundry player in the mobile space. The first is the announcement of a dual-core Cortex A9 test chip built on GF's 28nm HPP (High Performance Plus) process. The test chip operates at 2.5GHz although it is apparently capable of higher frequencies according to the ambiguous statement from GF. The chip's operating voltage is a low 0.85V. Both the frequency and voltage targets are good for a Cortex A9 implementation, although again this is only a test chip.
Many companies are expecting to break the 2GHz barrier on high performance 28nm processes starting late next year and moving on into 2013. These designs aren't likely to be used in smartphones, but instead we'll see them in tablets and netbook replacements (e.g. Windows 8 on ARM).

The second milestone is the the tapeout of a 20nm Technology Qualification Vehicle (TQV). This is a test chip designed to, well, test GF's 20nm process as it would be used by a vendor for producing Cortex A9 based SoCs. The move to 20nm is much further out for GF, but there's lots of development work prior to release that necessitates the production of test silicon.
Both announcements are designed to showcase GF's close partnership with ARM, as well as its continued momentum in the manufacturing space. Process technology in general is going to become a very important piece of the puzzle in the mobile space, particularly as companies like Intel enter the market next year.
Gallery: ARM & GlobalFoundries Demo 2.5GHz+ 28nm Cortex A9 & 20nm Test Vehicle




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We've done this a couple of times before, so here's the short version: a new stable version of Chrome is out. As usual, it adds a notable feature and patches security holes.
Chrome 16's major addition to the browser is multi-user support. From within one account in the host operating system, Chrome can now support distinct users with different preferences, themes, add-ons, and synced items. New user accounts can be created and synchronized with different Google accounts, and a new icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen allows for quick user switching - you can have multiple accounts open simultaneously in different windows.

Windows, OS X, and most Linux flavors already feature robust multi-user support, so this added feature has much more to offer to Chrome OS devices than to standard desktops and laptops. However, heavy users could customize different profiles with different add-ons for different workloads - you could keep certain add-ons in a separate profile to keep them from bogging down normal browsing, for example, or you could keep separate accounts for home and work browsing.
The new feature isn't intended to be as secure or robust as traditional multi-user support - there's no support for passwords, and accounts can be changed easily, so this obviously isn't intended as a way to keep things out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. For all that, it's still a potentially useful feature, but you should understand its limitations before turning it on.
Source: Google



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In our original review of the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime I did the best I could do given limited testing opportunity with the platform before the NDA lifted on all reviews data. I made the commitment back then to come back with additional findings after I had spent more time with the platform. Today I'm back to make good on that promise.
Two more Eee Pad Transformer Prime samples later and here we are. Next week retailers and etailers should begin shipping the first orders of the Prime out to customers. There were a number of gaps I wasn't happy with in our original review of the Prime, I've spent the past couple of weeks trying to fill them. Even what I'm presenting today isn't perfect, but when combined with the original review it should paint a more complete picture of the Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

Gallery: ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime

And I've got video, something I had to cut out of the original review due to time constraints:
Read on for the follow-up!


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This is our first look at a power supply from a relatively new company, Lepa. We'll be looking at their B850 (850W) model, that looks to target the upper end of the mainstream market. It has the relatively common 80 Plus Bronze certification (up to 88% efficiency), the expected safety features, and a 135mm fan, all backed by a 3-year limited warranty. Let's find out if this newcomer can deliver the goods or is merely another also-ran.


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It's not even beta, but this is one of the first official releases of an Ice Cream Sandwich ROM from a manufacturer to arrive. Sony Ericsson, which famously took almost a year to update any of its phones to Gingerbread, is trying to make amends by charting an aggressive Ice Cream Sandwich deployment. And it begins with this release, which is squarely aimed at developers, not consumers. Typical of alpha builds, functionality is limited, with all radio functions notably absent. This means no telephony, cellular data, WiFi, Bluetooth or FM. Courageous devs will get a peek at Sony's new Holo skin, and of course the delight of using Android 4.0's new UI features. So if you are a developer and have an Xperia arc S, Xperia neo V, or Xperia ray, hit the source link for details.



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Microsoft today launched the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown site with the express goal of reducing worldwide usage of IE6 to 1% of the browser market, down from its current 8.3%. The release and success of Windows 7 as well as the increased popularity of third-party browsers like Firefox and Chrome have done a lot to eradicate the ten-year-old Internet Explorer 6, but in spite of that it still retains a fair amount of market share, especially in Asian countries like China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan.
To this end, the company announced that for the first time it would automatically begin updating Windows users to the most recent browser version supported by their OS (IE8 for XP, IE 9 for everyone else) - in the past, IE has been offered as an optional or recommended update, and users have been given the opportunity to opt out before installing. Users who have opted not to upgrade in the past, users who have installed one of the IE Automatic Update Blockers, users who have Automatic Updates disabled, and enterprise customers who grab their updates from a local WSUS server will not be upgraded automatically. These automatic updates will begin rolling out to Australian and Brazilian Windows users in January, with other territories to follow.
To encourage upgrades, Microsoft has included a few lines of code you can add to websites you administer to prompt users of IE6 to upgrade. Enterprise users, on the other hand, have been offered mostly training courses and case studies showing the benefits of switching.
Google, Facebook, Amazon and many others have already dropped official IE6 support from many of their products and web sites.
Source: Microsoft



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Adobe has made good on its proimises today by updating its Flash for Android client to support Android 4.0. The update brings Flash to 11.1.112.60 and doesn't change functionality at all beyond simply including support necessary for 4.0. If you haven't been following Adobe and Flash lately, Adobe recently announced that it will discontinue developing Flash past 11.1 on mobile platforms, making ICS the last version of Android to include the plugin.

Adobe has a full rundown on the changes on their website, but there isn't much to note with respect to this version bump beyond a few known issues and ICS support.

Source: Adobe, Android Market

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Recently Motorola unleashed a bunch of devices it was keeping up its sleeve, and the latest for Verizon is the Motorola Droid RAZR. A while ago we reviewed the Bionic, which was the first time we got to see 4G LTE connectivity (courtesy of a Motorola Wrigley LTE baseband) alongside a dual core OMAP4430 SoC. The RAZR continues with those two components and brings a new industrial design, a different display, and revival of the RAZR brand itself.

While it's not the Galaxy Nexus (our review of the GSM and LTE variants is forthcoming), it might just be some of the best Android hardware around. Read on for the full review.

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The launch of Bulldozer in October wasn't exactly a success for AMD. In our review, Anand ended up recommending the Intel i5-2500K over AMD FX-8150. One of the reasons behind the poor performance of Bulldozer is its unique design: each Bulldozer module consists of two integer and one floating point core. Todays operating systems don't know how to optimally schedule threads for this design and as a result, the full potential of Bulldozer has not been achieved. Microsoft has released a hotfix for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 that should increase the performance of Bulldozer.
Let's look at the problem to see what happened and how the hotfix helps address it. Before the update, Windows didn't know how to ideally schedule threads on Bulldozer. Essentially, it didn't know when it was good to place threads on single module versus multiple modules.

The picture above explains this pretty well. Before the update, Windows more or less randomly placed the threads which meant many modules were unnecessarily active at the same time. This capped the maximum Turbo speeds because those can only be achieved when some of the modules are inactive (power gated). VR-Zone is claiming that Windows sees one Bulldozer module as a single multi-threaded core, similar to an Intel Hyper-Threading core. Basically, your 8-core FX-8150 is seen as a quad-core, 8-thread CPU—just like Intel's i7-2600K for instance. This goes against AMD's design and marketing because Bulldozer is closer to an 8-core CPU. We have not yet tested Bulldozer with the hotfix, but don't expect miracles. Better scheduling for the Bulldozer CPUs will improve performance a bit, but not enough to close the gap in many scenarios. Windows 8 already has the new thread scheduler and according to AMD's own and third party tests, the performance increase is up to around 10%. Windows 8 is still in pre-beta stage so things may turn out to be better under Windows 7, but Bulldozer needs a lot more than 10% to surpass Sandy Bridge.

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The big push in movies and displays has been 3D the past few years. In movies it’s ranged from well designed and executed (Avatar) to a gimmick to charge $4 more per ticket (many examples), but for gaming, it has far more direct benefits.

Virtually every game now is rendered in 3D, and so all of the information is there that is needed to show the game in 3D to the user, unlike the fake 2D to 3D conversions that many films use. Running in active 3D also means a panel that works at a true 120Hz, so even your 2D image can benefit. Read on to see how Samsung's S23A750D does in our testing.


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