AllThingsD » Nvidia http://allthingsd.com Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:31:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 Windows on ARM, Complete With Next Version of Office, to Arrive With Rest of Windows 8 http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next-version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/ http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next-version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:01:50 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=172871 After being somewhat less than clear about its Windows-on-ARM plans, Microsoft answered a number of lingering questions on Thursday.

In an interview, Windows unit President Steven Sinofsky said that the first ARM-based machines running Windows 8 should show up around the same time as the first Windows 8 machines running traditional PC processors from Intel and AMD. He didn’t give a time frame for when that would be, but PC manufacturers and chipmakers have said they expect it to arrive later this year.

Sinofsky also said that the Windows-on-ARM machines will come with several Office apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that have been tuned to run in a very battery-efficient manner. But Sinofsky said that, although those applications will run in the traditional Windows desktop, they will be the only programs allowed to do so, other than components of Windows itself.

“There are no other compiled dekstop apps that are available,” Sinofsky told AllThingsD. All of the other apps for Windows on ARM will be the new-style “Metro” apps.

Windows 8 for Intel and AMD chips, by contrast, will be able to run all of the kinds of programs that have traditionally run on Windows, inside a Windows 7-like desktop environment.

Although Microsoft has said that its focus around Windows 8 would be around new-style “Metro” apps, there had been significant question as to whether, and under what circumstances, programs designed to run in a classic Windows desktop might be able to run.

Windows on ARM will have the desktop as an option for Internet Explorer, the Office apps and various system functions, such as the control panel, file management and other built-in features of Windows. Sinofsky also said that the version of Internet Explorer for Windows on ARM won’t support plugins such as Adobe Flash, noting the trend in the industry away from supporting Flash on mobile devices.

Sinofsky is also penning a several-thousand-word blog post on the subject — long even for someone known for his lengthy posts. In it, Sinofsky said, he goes into more detail on the company’s plans for Windows on ARM, as well as its rationale for some of the decisions it has made.

“There have been a lot of questions,” Sinofsky said. “I want to do my best to answer them.”

Sinofsky had already ruled out some sort of emulation mode for running older Windows apps on ARM chips, noting that the whole point of running Windows on the same kinds of ARM-based chips used for phones and tablets was to gain the kind of power efficiency those chips can deliver.

Microsoft has said it will deliver an updated “consumer preview” test version of Windows 8 on Feb. 29, with plans to tout the software at an event in Barcelona. However, that test version, like a developer preview released last fall, will be available only for machines running traditional Intel and AMD chips.

Sinofsky said the company is working with chipmakers Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments to provide a limited number of test machines to those that make software, hardware and peripherals. The machines are aimed at developers, though, with easy access to the internals, and the company has no plans to make those machines available to enthusiasts, corporate customers or other testers.

Microsoft first announced its plans to allow Windows 8 to run on ARM-based machines at CES 2011.

At the time, it showed a demo of some Office apps running on ARM chips, but showed little else of its plans for the operating system. Months before, it talked about other features of the operating system. Several months later, at our D9 conference, it showed the new Metro interface for Windows, as well as its plans to feature a whole new kind of application, and its plans for a built-in store to sell these new apps.

While the goal is to have Windows-on-ARM machines out at the same time Windows 8 lands on new traditional PCs, Sinofsky noted that there is a lot of work to be done to get the entire PC ecosystem ready.

“We’re building a whole new product, on a new platform, with new partners,” he said.

Update: Sinofsky’s blog post is up, all 8,610 words of it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next-version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/feed/ 0 Tilera's Server Chip Challenges Intel, Sort Of http://allthingsd.com/20120130/tileras-server-chip-challenges-intel-sort-of/ http://allthingsd.com/20120130/tileras-server-chip-challenges-intel-sort-of/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:44:45 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=168642 It’s been awhile since there was a new chip on the scene to get excited about; one that didn’t come from Intel, and wasn’t aimed at a mobile phone. It’s been even longer since there was a chip aimed at servers. Today is one of those days.

A start-up called Tilera today unveiled a chip it calls the TILE-Gx. Essentially, it’s a super-chip with 36 cores which — so the company claims — beats a traditional Intel server chip on the key metric of performance per watt.

For those who don’t keep score in the arcane world of semiconductors, I’ll revisit some of the basics of the above paragraph. We all know that Intel and its one main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, sell chips for servers. Those chips, and those that go into PCs, are generally known as x86 chips, a name derived from the instruction set they share.

On the other hand, there are ARM chips, which are a different breed, and exist in a very different ecosystem. Scores of companies make ARM-based chips for all kinds of different uses, and they license the basics of the designs from ARM, the company, which last year did $636 million in revenue.

ARM chips show up in phones and tablets from the likes of Broadcom, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia, but not so much in PCs and servers. ARM is even the basis for Apple’s A4 and A5 chips. At CES last year, Microsoft said it would create a version of Windows 8 that will support ARM chips. And a company called Calxeda (which I initially got mixed up with Tilera) is aiming to bring ARM cores to chips running in servers.

Tilera, based in San Jose, Calif., is backed by investments from Bessemer Venture Partners, Walden International, Columbia Capital and VentureTech Alliance; plus a trio of strategic investors, Quanta Computer, NTT Finance and Broadcom. Its new chip is based around an entirely new architecture developed by Tilera’s CTO Anant Agarwal, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It forgoes both the traditional x86 and ARM architectures. Aimed squarely at servers, its intention is to get the same work done that a traditional Intel server chip does, while using less power to do it.

That’s not a trivial benefit, especially in data center environments where servers are bunched together and pushed to the performance limit. The biggest operational expense in running them is going to be power. So it’s on this point that server vendors and chip vendors obsess over saving a watt here and there — over the machine’s useful lifetime, the costs will add up considerably.

How it does this is what makes it interesting. Essentially, the cores on the chip do something that an Intel chip can’t do: They communicate among themselves. The way I understand it — and I admit I’m simplifying it greatly — the cores on an x86 chip rely on a single communications channel, called the Bus, to communicate. The Tilera architecture allows each core to communicate directly with the other cores, thus eliminating the need for the Bus and cutting back on the need for power.

The top-end chip — there are two versions — has 36 cores. A core is essentially the main computing engine on a chip. If you’re reading this on a PC, chances are the chip inside it has two cores, maybe four. It used to be that chips had only one core, until it became logical to put two or more on a single chip. I’ve always compared multicore chips to roommates folding laundry together. When there’s a big pile of laundry to be folded, one person can certainly do it, but two or four get it done faster and with less effort. Multicore chips basically prove the old adage that many hands make for fast work.

There’s an obvious appeal to a chip like this, but there are a lot of strikes against it. First, much of the server ecosystem is pretty well entrenched. Companies run what applications they already have, and are usually loath to mess with their computing environments much. Changing the architecture of the CPU chip inside the servers is about as major a decision as a CIO may ever make, and one they don’t make lightly. First they’ll have to test it and run it for awhile, and then see how it interacts with other systems. It’s not the sort of decision that happens just overnight. Also, a new architecture brings with it a lot of software compatibility questions that will give many IT departments pause.

Meanwhile, Intel, which sells chips that go into most of the world’s mainstream servers, will continue to push its power consumption down. At the same time, it’s been trying like crazy to use its Atom line of chips to mount an attack on ARM’s territory and win business from phone and tablet vendors. That effort is just now seeing its first early successes. If there’s a great long-term story in chips that bears watching, the grappling between Intel and the ever-expanding universe of ARM vendors is certainly it.

Correction: I initially thought the Tilera chip was based on the ARM architecture. I’ve revised the story to correct that.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120130/tileras-server-chip-challenges-intel-sort-of/feed/ 0 Nvidia Cuts Sales Forecast, Blaming Hard-Drive Shortage, Tegra 2 Decline http://allthingsd.com/20120124/nvidia-cuts-sales-forecast-blaming-hard-drive-shortage-slow-pc-sales/ http://allthingsd.com/20120124/nvidia-cuts-sales-forecast-blaming-hard-drive-shortage-slow-pc-sales/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:59:09 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=167204 Chipmaker Nvidia warned on Tuesday that its current quarter’s sales would fall short of expectations.

The company, whose fourth quarter ends Jan. 29, said it now expects quarterly revenue of about $950 million, as compared with its original expectation of approximately $1.066 billion.

Nvidia said the shortfall was caused in part by the PC-market impact from a global hard-drive shortage brought on by flooding in Thailand. As a result, fewer systems were shipped, and some PC makers opted to scale back on graphics to account for their higher hard-drive costs.

Nvidia also said that its Tegra 2 mobile chip business declined more rapidly than it had expected. The company is currently ramping production for the successor to that chip — the quad-core Tegra 3.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120124/nvidia-cuts-sales-forecast-blaming-hard-drive-shortage-slow-pc-sales/feed/ 0 Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video) http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:00:34 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=162455 For years, Intel has talked about using its chips to power smartphones. Now it actually has something in its hands.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel is showing a working reference design that it is offering to any phone maker that wants to use its chips. The phone itself packs a 1.6GHz single-core Atom chip along with an array of sensors and radios.

“The sample platform we have is fully buzzword compliant,” General Manager Mike Bell said in an interview.

The company has been testing thousands of phones internally and says the performance is top of class, with battery life at least as good as most Android devices.

“We are not the best at power, but we are definitely very, very competitive,” Bell said.

Compatibility is another issue that Bell said he is asked about a lot. Nearly all Java-based Android apps should run, as well as a good number of those designed specifically for chips based on cores from rival ARM.

“We think that gets rid of the last argument people have,” Bell said.

Of course, Intel faces plenty of competition in the phone chip space, including existing Android chip providers Qualcomm, Nvidia, Texas Instruments and other challengers, such as Broadcom.

Intel is announcing two phone customers running its chips — a Lenovo phone for China slated to be released in the first half of the year and a multi-year, multi-device alliance with Motorola Mobility that will begin with a phone in the second half of the year.

Although Intel announced only the two customers, Bell indicated more names will be coming soon. (Think next month’s Mobile World Congress for an update.)

“You can imagine our business is all about scale,” he said, declining to say how many phone designs are being built around its chips, or how many customers it has.

In a roundtable with reporters, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said he was attracted to the chipmaker by both its roadmap and its approach, which focuses as much on running multiple instructions on a single chip core as it does on packing in as many cores as possible.

“What they have done is multithreading vs. multicore,” Jha said, noting there is a big debate in computer science as to which is better. Jha said that, along with other innovations like three-dimensional transistors, this will be important as the laws of physics prevent rapid performance gains just by shrinking the size of transistors.

Intel has focused its phone efforts entirely on Android for now, noting that it believes it has more people working on Android than Google does.


[ See post to watch video ]

MORE CES NEWS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/feed/ 0 Nvidia's Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways http://allthingsd.com/20120109/nvidias-tegra-3-tries-to-save-battery-in-all-sorts-of-different-ways/ http://allthingsd.com/20120109/nvidias-tegra-3-tries-to-save-battery-in-all-sorts-of-different-ways/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:30:52 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=161404 Well, the Tegra 3 is just full of surprises.

Nvidia has already disclosed that its quad-core chip also packs a low-power fifth core that can be used in place of the other four to save power. On Monday, Nvidia shared a few more secrets about its latest smartphone and tablet processor.

Among its other power-conserving superpowers is the ability to reduce the amount of backlighting needed. It does this by looking frame by frame at what is being displayed and, when possible, opening up pixels and turning down the backlight where possible.

“That adds a significant amount of battery life to these mobile devices,” Nvidia mobile unit head Mike Rayfield said in an interview, noting that backlights are one of the bigger drains on battery life. In addition to the backlight trick and the low-power core, Rayfield said the Tegra 3 also eliminates the need for a separate controller to process input on a touchscreen.

The Tegra 3 is already shipping in Asus’s Transformer Prime (a device first shown at AsiaD). At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia is showing the Tegra 3 in action on a bunch of other devices.

Nvidia isn’t the only chipmaker trying to make a case for its processors this week. Both Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs are slated to deliver keynote speeches on Tuesday.

All three companies are trying to make the case for why their processors should be the brains of device makers’ next mobile gadgets. And they aren’t the only ones: Texas Instruments, MediaTek and Broadcom are also angling for different segments of the market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120109/nvidias-tegra-3-tries-to-save-battery-in-all-sorts-of-different-ways/feed/ 0 Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:17:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=155876 Intel plans to use next month’s Consumer Electronics Show as the launching point for its effort to get serious in the market for the chips that power smartphones.

The company has come up with an iPhone-esque prototype of an Android device running its chip. More than just a concept device, though, the phone (pictured here) is a fully baked design that Intel is making freely available for phone makers to use in whole or in part.

“You’ll see a number of Intel customers using the guts of this phone to go into the market in the first half of next year,” CEO Paul Otellini said at a Credit Suisse investor conference last month. “And we’ll have more announcements of that at CES.”

Otellini is slated to give a keynote speech at the Las Vegas event on Jan. 10, so that would be a logical place for any news, though the company has also scheduled a notebook-related press conference for the prior day.

Technology Review posted a story on Tuesday, talking about Intel’s efforts and quoting Intel as saying the phones should hit the market in the first half of 2012. However, Otellini suggested in his Credit Suisse speech that Intel is aiming to have products out there sooner rather than later.

“We’ll be shipping in the first quarter of next year,” Otellini said.

Intel has previously talked about its plans for phones, and Android in particular, including at its September developer conference, when Otellini invited Android chief Andy Rubin on stage to talk about Google’s work to make Intel chips a first-class citizen for future Android releases.

The chip giant faces a host of competitors as it enters the space, including the current Android leaders — Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia. Broadcom has also said it has designs on the market, particularly the low end, an area dominated by MediaTek.

Though cognizant of the competition, Intel has said its tests show its reference design as a solid competitor not just on performance, but also in the all-important area of battery life, where many have felt that Intel could not compete with ARM-based processors.

The move is about more than phones, though. Intel already faces steep competition from ARM and Apple in the tablet arena, and with Windows 8 it will also see challenges on the PC side of things.

Leading Intel’s effort are former Infineon executive Hermann Eul, and former Apple and Palm executive Mike Bell. The chipmaker recently reorganized its mobile efforts, putting the two executives in charge of all aspects of the project.

After years of talking about being in the smartphone processor game, it will be interesting to see if Intel can actually make some headway.

MORE CES NEWS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/feed/ 0 Solid Keyboard Elevates This Tablet, Though Software Lags http://allthingsd.com/20111207/solid-keyboard-elevates-this-tablet-though-software-lags/ http://allthingsd.com/20111207/solid-keyboard-elevates-this-tablet-though-software-lags/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:03:52 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=151713 One of the biggest things that deters people from relying on tablets is the lack of a convenient physical keyboard. Now, Taiwan-based Asus is attacking this issue with a new Android-based tablet and accompanying keyboard dock, due on store shelves in the U.S. on Dec. 15.


[ See post to watch video ]

This 10-inch tablet, called the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, starts at $499, the same price as the market leader, Apple’s iPad 2. But it has twice the memory—32 gigabytes—at that price. The keyboard dock, with an additional battery and added ports, is an optional extra for $149.

The new Asus has another notable feature: It is the first tablet to use a new processor from chip maker Nvidia that has four cores, double what other recent tablets use.

Asus and Nvidia, which developed the product jointly, claim this processor, called the Tegra 3, offers more power when it’s needed, and the flexibility to sip less power when it’s not, for overall better performance and battery life. I expect this same chip to show up in other tablets in coming months.

I’ve been testing the Transformer Prime, and I found it to be the best standard Android tablet I’ve used. In my tests, the Prime had snappy performance, and decent battery life, though less than the iPad’s (more on that later). It is a tad lighter and thinner than the iPad 2 and has a sharp, pleasant screen.

PTECH

The Transformer Prime tablet starts at $499. Keyboard dock is an extra $149.

Plus, when the tablet is coupled with the keyboard dock, by nestling it into a hinge, it becomes the screen of what is essentially an Android netbook. When docked, the tablet even folds down over the keyboard like a lid. I found typing on the keyboard to be easy and accurate.

However, as with all other tablets based on Google’s Android platform, its weak point is software. The tablet-oriented Honeycomb version of Android on the Prime isn’t as slick or smooth as the iPad’s operating system, though the Prime’s potent processor makes it more fluid than is typical on such Android devices. And Google’s Android Market offers only a small number of tablet-optimized apps, compared with 140,000 for the iPad.

PTECHjp

The Transformer Prime

In addition, the Prime lacks access to a large, unified ecosystem of music, videos and books, unlike the Apple or Amazon’s Kindle Fire. It does offer Google’s new music store, and a movie-rental service. But, when I tried to rent two movies, neither would play.

The Prime will gain a fresh version of the Android operating system, called Ice Cream Sandwich, early next year, according to Asus. The company says early buyers of the Prime will be able to upgrade for free.

Fans of the iPad will point out that it, too, can work with optional physical keyboards. But Apple doesn’t make one that couples with the iPad 2 the way the Asus docking station mates with its tablet, and the extra battery in the Prime’s keyboard dock can supposedly add up to six hours of unplugged power, a claim I didn’t test. The Prime’s dock also has a USB port and a memory card slot.

The Prime is actually the third try by Asus to mate a tablet with a physical keyboard. An earlier, bulkier version of the Transformer wasn’t embraced by many consumers, and a thick tablet with a cramped slide-out keyboard, called the Slider, also hasn’t been a big hit. But Asus is hoping that the slimmer, lighter Prime and its dock will do the trick.

PTECHjp2

The Transformer Prime, when coupled with the keyboard dock, can fold down like a lid.

The stand-alone tablet is 0.33-inch thick and weighs 1.29 pounds. The dock adds 1.18 pounds and 0.4-inch of thickness. Together, they cost $648, just $49 more than the cheapest 32 GB iPad, but hundreds more than many standard 10-inch Windows netbooks.

The companies are stressing how the processor improves the graphics and speed of games on the tablet, and boast that the Prime can be used with gaming-console controllers. This is good news for tablet gamers, and, in my tests, some sample games the companies provided looked impressive. But I wasn’t blown away with their superiority over iPad games.

To me, the keyboard dock is the big story here. I found it to be a solid companion. Its keys were well spaced despite the unit’s small overall size, and the hinge that holds the tablet as a removable screen was sturdy. Special keys control Android functions such as Home, Back and Search. And there’s a roomy, responsive touch pad.

The screen was responsive and the speakers were good. In my tests, email, Web browsing, and streaming of music and videos worked well over good Wi-Fi connections. But the Prime lacks any cellular connectivity, meaning it is crippled when you’re out of Wi-Fi range. When I tested it at a hotel with slow Wi-Fi, the Prime was notably pokier at streaming the same YouTube video as an iPad 2 using Verizon’s 3G cellular network.

Gauging the battery life on this tablet is a bit complicated. I performed the same battery test I have used for every tablet since the original iPad appeared. In that test, I set the screen brightness to 75%, leave the wireless on and play locally stored videos back to back till the unit dies.

The Transformer Prime lasted just shy of seven hours, compared with slightly more than 10 hours for the iPad 2, a big difference. Still, that seven hours was better than many other full-size Android tablets have achieved in this test.

Asus and Nvidia build in three battery modes, and I tested only the one called Normal. Unfortunately, Nvidia now says that nomenclature is misleading, and that Normal is really meant for only high-performance tasks. So, early next year, when it switches to the next version of Android, it plans to rename Normal as “Performance,” to steer users to a less power-hungry mode called “Balanced.” I can’t say how the Prime’s battery will perform in that scenario with the new OS.

I still believe the iPad 2 is the best overall tablet available. However, if you’re looking for a model using Google’s Android interface and are yearning for a well-designed, easily integrated keyboard solution, or want to play more power-hungry games, the Transformer Prime is a good choice, as long as you can tolerate its software limitations.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111207/solid-keyboard-elevates-this-tablet-though-software-lags/feed/ 0 Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang on Superman Quad-Core Chip, Microsoft and Apple: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video) http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:12:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=146698

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

An early pioneer in graphics chips, the tech company is now aiming at the market for processors driving smartphones, tablets and, soon, PCs. Nvidia’s latest effort is a quad-core chip code named Kal-El, which is the Krypton moniker of Superman.

Is Huang the Man of Steel? Or, at least, can he steal some of major rival Qualcomm’s thunder?

Here’s the video of his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 How Thrilled Is Texas Instruments to Have Its Chips in the Kindle Fire? http://allthingsd.com/20111118/how-thrilled-is-texas-instruments-to-have-its-chips-in-the-kindle-fire/ http://allthingsd.com/20111118/how-thrilled-is-texas-instruments-to-have-its-chips-in-the-kindle-fire/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:03:18 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=145720 This morning, I awoke to something I never thought I’d see. It was an email message, and what it contained was so rare that I thought I had to share it with you.

Yesterday, I published a story about the teardown analysis by IHS iSuppli of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet. And, as you may remember, the story related how, in the opinion of its analysts, it cost Amazon $201.70 to buy the parts and build the Fire — a sum which is only slightly above the $199 retail price of the device.

The other big news was how dominant the chipmaker Texas Instruments is among the suppliers. Its applications processor chip, wireless chips, and audio and power management chips add up to about $25, approximately 12 percent of the bill of materials (BOM), which is the aggregate cost of all the components. It’s a pretty solid victory for TI in the competitive tablet field, where, outside of Apple’s iPad, success has been rare.

Naturally, I asked Texas Instruments for a comment about this, and expected none. I’ve been writing teardown stories for six years (here’s the first I ever did); never once has the manufacturer of the device in question, nor any of its suppliers, given anything more than a “no comment.”

Manufacturers tend to hate teardowns because they’re invasive. Take a product apart and you find out who a company is working with — and you learn a lot about how they see things. With the Kindle Fire, for example, we learned that Amazon deliberately took a “less is more” approach to keep costs down, minimize its loss and pave the way to eventually selling the device at a profit.

Suppliers hate teardowns, too. There is nothing more secret — or more interesting to know — than what company is supplying a manufacturer with a key component. Companies can rise or fall on a strategic relationship with someone like Apple or HP — or Amazon. The first iPod, for example, put an otherwise unknown company named PortalPlayer on the map — until Apple replaced its chips with something else. Now that company is part of Nvidia.

Usually these suppliers are unwilling to rock the boat, and usually they’re covered by nondisclosure agreements. So when I do the typical reporter thing and call them for a comment, after a teardown clearly shows their chip or display or other component inside the product, the supplier always — 100 percent of the time, without exception — says, “No comment.” Probably they’d like nothing more than to brag about how their chip makes this or that product do amazing things, but usually they just can’t, won’t and just don’t say a word.

Until today. Today, in response to my questions of yesterday, I got a comment from Texas Instruments. And that meant I just had to share it. Here it is, courtesy of a company spokeswoman:

“We can confirm that TI’s OMAP4430 processor and WiLink 6.0 connectivity combo solution are inside of the Kindle Fire. … TI is thrilled to be a part of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which boasts powerful performance and engaging consumer experiences that are sure to make it a coveted device this holiday season.”

Not exactly riveting. But rare!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111118/how-thrilled-is-texas-instruments-to-have-its-chips-in-the-kindle-fire/feed/ 0 Intel's Plan to Remain the Supercomputing King http://allthingsd.com/20111115/intels-plan-to-remain-the-supercomputing-king/ http://allthingsd.com/20111115/intels-plan-to-remain-the-supercomputing-king/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:11:13 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=144398 As I wrote on Monday, this is a big week for supercomputing. The latest list of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers was released, and while the Top 10 didn’t change, some important barriers, like the 10 petaflop level, were broken.

And while it was Fujitsu, using SPARC chips, that made the top of the list, you couldn’t help noticing how many machines used chips from Intel. Of the 500 supercomputers on the list, 384 of them use chips from the semiconductor giant.

At the SC11 Supercomputing conference in Seattle today, Intel is making some important disclosures about what it is doing to maintain its role as the chip vendor of choice, and also offering its competitive response to a potential threat from the graphics chip specialist Nvidia.

As I’ve explained a few times before, the graphics chips, or GPUs, that Nvidia makes are starting to make some inroads into supercomputing and high-performance computing environments, thanks to their ability to handle floating point computations at a high rate of speed. Sometime next year, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, a machine called Titan, using a combination of chips from Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia, is expected to break the 20 petaflop barrier when it begins operation.

The narrative that has emerged recently is that GPUs are generally better at the floating point operations that are increasingly used in supercomputing — better in many cases than traditional x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Even so, if you add up the number of systems on the Top 500 list using Intel and AMD chips, you’d hit a percentage that’s just shy of 90.

In a presentation today (on what just happens to be the 40th birthday of the Intel microprocessor — hence the two people I saw today outside the “Today” show at Rockefeller Center on my way to work), Rajeeb Hazra, Intel’s general manager of Technical Computing, detailed Intel’s response. First off, Intel is supporting a new technology, called PCI Express 3.0, that will speed up the ability of chips inside a supercomputer to share data. In systems this big, and working on such large amounts of data at once, the processors spend a lot of time tapping their feet and waiting for data to work on. Engineers call this latency, and the point of the new interconnect technology is to cut latency by doubling the bandwidth available. The result is an improvement in the raw FLOPS (floating point operations) available by 2.1 times in lab tests, and a 70 percent improvement in real-world workload tests. In supercomputing terms, that’s real progress, and it effectively means getting answers to big questions faster.

Another advance that Intel talked about today is a chip bearing the codename “Knight’s Corner.” It’s a coprocessor, meaning it’s an additional chip that would be added to a computer to boost its performance. Intel says it can do a full teraflop — a trillion floating point operations a second — and that’s just the result of demonstrations from the first silicon. When in full production, it will probably do even better.

And not only will it do a teraflop on a single chip, it will perform those calculations to what engineers call “double precision,” which is a fancy way of saying the result of each operation will be accurate to a higher level of granularity. As John Hengeveld, Intel’s director of technical computer marketing, told me last week, the rule of thumb in these matters says that moving from single to double precision boosts the amount of time you have to wait by four times.

Why is that important, when an off-the-shelf GPU from Nvidia can do 2 teraflops — though only at the single-point precision? Programming. If you’re a scientist who 10 years ago wrote a program to simulate weather patterns or nuclear explosions or some other classic supercomputing problem to run on systems running Intel chips, there’s nothing new to learn in terms of programming. While the GPUs are great, there are new programming rules to learn.

Finally, Intel is reiterating its plan to keep working on the exascale problem, which is the next great summit in supercomputing. Right now the world’s top supercomputer maxes out at 10.51 petaflops, and a candidate to top the list next year will go north of 20 petaflops, or quadrillions of floating point operations. Sometime this decade — say, about 2018 or so — the hope is that supercomputers will break the exaflop barrier, where machines will run quintillions of FLOPs.

The fundamental problem there isn’t the computing so much as it is power, as in electrical power. Already some of these machines consume as much power as a small city. Getting to exascale will require chips and other components that can run full out at speeds we can as yet only imagine, but doing it consuming a lot less power than they would otherwise be expected to. Think in terms of a Prius that could win the Indy 500 — and not just by a hair, but by a long mile — and do it day after day without really using much more gas than the other cars. It’s kind of like that.

Anyhow, Intel has said that it plans to enable exascale supercomputing that will require only a doubling of the power needed, rather than, say, 10 times as much. To that end, it said today it will open its fourth research lab in Europe. This one is in Barcelona and joins one in Paris; another in Juelich, Germany; and a third in Lueven, Belgium. They’ll all have a lot of work to do between now and 2018.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/intels-plan-to-remain-the-supercomputing-king/feed/ 0 Fujitsu Supercomputer Remains World Champ, but IBM and Intel Are the Real Computing Kings http://allthingsd.com/20111114/fujitsu-supercomputer-remains-world-champ-but-ibm-and-intel-are-the-real-computing-kings/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/fujitsu-supercomputer-remains-world-champ-but-ibm-and-intel-are-the-real-computing-kings/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:58:39 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=143661 Today is a big day of the year for those who keep score on the world’s most powerful computers. It’s one of the two days each year that the Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful, publicly known supercomputers is released by researchers at the University of Mannheim in Germany, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

If you’re a regular AllThingsD reader, you’ve already been introduced to the world’s most power supercomputer: It is the Fujitsu K Computer, which the Japanese computing concern disclosed earlier this month, and it runs in Japan’s quasi-public research institution RIKEN. That’s it in the picture above.

It’s capable of performance as high as 10.51 petaflops, or 10.51 quadrillion floating point operations per second. The same machine had been rated in the top spot on the list before, but was less powerful then, because it was still being assembled, and then capable of only 8.16 petaflops.

The machine is based on SPARC chips — the chips for which Sun Microsystems, now part of Oracle, gained such renown. Fujitsu has been building SPARC chips under license and using them in its own servers and supercomputers for years. In this case, there are 705,024 SPARC64 processing cores in action. And if my memory is correct, the chips in question each have four cores on board, meaning there are 176,256 individual processing chips in the machine.

It’s the first machine on the Top 500 list to venture past the 10-petaflop milestone; however, work is underway in the U.S. on a machine known as Titan, which will supposedly break the 20-petaflop mark sometime next year.

In the meantime, the second most powerful machine in the world is in China. The Tianhe-1A system took the top spot on the list a year ago — and in the process, caused President Obama such consternation about the state of American leadership in innovation that he mentioned it in his State of the Union address to Congress. Its performance reaches 2.57 petaflops and it’s powered by a combination of Intel-made Xeon processors and Nvidia graphical processing units.

In fact, the supercomputers in the top 10 spots on the list are otherwise unchanged from the list released in June.

At No. 3 is Jaguar, the system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that is being rebuilt into the machine called Titan, which I mentioned before. It’s a system built by Cray primarily around Nvidia GPUs and Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Its current performance is just shy of 1.8 petaflops.

The No. 4 system is in China. It’s called Nebulae and is at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzen. Its performance is just short of the 1.3-petaflop mark. No. 5 is called Tsubame 2.0, and is at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan.

Chip companies in particular like to crow about the use of their products in the systems that wind up on the list. That makes this a banner day for Intel. Of the 500 systems on the list, 384 of them — 77 percent — use Intel chips. Chips from AMD, Intel’s main rival, are in 63 systems.

It’s a banner day for Nvidia, too. Its GPU chips can be found in 35 systems, more than double the number from the previous list. GPUs were invented to make the graphics in computer games more stunning and realistic; as such, it meant they were, from the beginning, pretty good at performing a certain type of math problem known as a floating point operation. It turns out that the people who run supercomputers do a lot of floating point operations — or FLOPs — too. So as GPUs have gotten more powerful, they’re finding their way into an ever-larger number of the world’s top supercomputers. Two supercomputers on the list use GPU chips from AMD’s graphics chip unit, ATI. Two more use IBM’s PowerCell architecture, which is a sibling of the Cell processor chip found in the Sony PlayStation 3.

President Obama shouldn’t feel so bad about the U.S. not being in the top spot. For one thing, practically all of the systems on the list are built on American-made technology. And among the systems that can reach 1 petaflop in performance or more, the U.S. has five, more than any other country. China and Japan have two each, and France has one. And the U.S. has more supercomputers on the list than any other country: 263. European countries have a combined 127; China has 75 and Japan has 30.

Intel may furnish more chips to the Top 500 list than anyone, but the king of the systems vendors on the list is unquestionably IBM, followed by Hewlett-Packard. IBM built 223, or more than 44 percent, of the machines on the list; HP built 140 of them. IBM also led the performance pack: Its machines are responsible for more than 27 percent of the total. Fujitsu, which made the list-topping K Computer, was in second place, with 14.7 percent. Cray and HP were in a statistical dead heat, with about 14 percent each.

Here’s a link to the full list, and a bunch of other things related to supercomputing.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/fujitsu-supercomputer-remains-world-champ-but-ibm-and-intel-are-the-real-computing-kings/feed/ 0 Nvidia Earnings, Revenue Nudge Past Estimates on Strong Graphics and Mobile Business http://allthingsd.com/20111110/nvidia-earnings-revenue-nudge-past-estimates/ http://allthingsd.com/20111110/nvidia-earnings-revenue-nudge-past-estimates/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:24:09 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=143009 Nvidia on Thursday reported quarterly earnings that were just ahead of what analysts were expecting.

The chipmaker said it earned $178.3 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenue of $1.07 billion for the three months ended Oct. 30. Nvidia had been expected to post earnings of around 26 cents per share, on revenue of $1.06 billion, according to First Call.

For the current quarter, Nvidia said it sees its revenue staying roughly flat from the current quarter, give or take a percentage or two. Gross margins are expected to be steady or up half a percent.

“NVIDIA’s strategy is coming into its own, as the world becomes increasingly visual and mobile,” CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said in a statement. “Our GPU business accelerated in the third quarter, driven by strong demand from gamers and the professional market. And our mobile business benefited from new devices coming onto the market.”

Earlier this week, the company announced it is ready with its quad-core Tegra 3 chip, which will show up first in Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer Prime next month, and in other tablets and phones next year.

“With Tegra 3 phone wins well ahead of Tegra 2’s pace, we’re expecting strong growth in the year ahead,” Huang said.

For more on Nvidia, here’s what Huang had to say at our recent AsiaD conference:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111110/nvidia-earnings-revenue-nudge-past-estimates/feed/ 0 Fujitsu Beefs Up Its Best Supercomputer http://allthingsd.com/20111102/fujitsu-beefs-up-its-best-supercomputer/ http://allthingsd.com/20111102/fujitsu-beefs-up-its-best-supercomputer/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:53:27 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=139643 It’s November, and in the rarefied world of supercomputing, it means that a new edition of the twice-a-year Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful publicly-known computers is due out any day now. That also means that the people who assemble the world’s most powerful bean counters are bragging about them and jockeying for placement on the list.

Today it was Fujitsu’s turn. The Japanese computing giant teamed up with RIKEN, the quasi-public Japanese research institution, to announce that they had built a machine they call the K Computer, which can perform 10.51 petaflops, or 10.51 quadrillion floating point operations per second.

And while all that may sound very impressive, it’s not quite as muscular as the Titan machine being assembled in the U.S. at the Oak Ridge National Labs, which can — or will — perform 20 petaflops.

The machine (pictured) is made up of 864 racks with 88,128 interconnected CPU chips, all of them based on the SPARC architecture for which Sun Microsystems, and therefore Oracle, are best known, though Fujitsu has long been a SPARC licensee. The new K Computer is basically an improvement and extension to the same K computer that took the top spot on the last Top 500 list in June, supplanting in the process a Chinese machine that had taken the crown last November.

Never mind that it contained all U.S.-made chips, the Chinese feat caused the leader of the free world to kvetch about the apparent sorry state of U.S. supercomputing, thus prompting, perhaps indirectly, the Titan machine at Oak Ridge.

It’s not as though China hasn’t been heard from on the supercomputing front recently. Last week its Sunway BlueLight MPP raised eyebrows not for its performance — a relatively pokey 795 teraflops — but rather for the fact that it’s built using all Chinese-made components.

So what will it be used for? Weather simulations, research into drugs and solar cells, and simulating earthquakes and tsunamis.

Here are the more formal descriptions from the announcement:

–Analyzing the behavior of nanomaterials through simulations and contributing to the early development of such next-generation semiconductor materials, particularly nanowires and carbon nanotubes, that are expected to lead to future fast-response, low-power devices.

–Predicting which compounds, from among a massive number of drug candidate molecules, will prevent illnesses by binding with active regions on the proteins that cause illnesses, as a way to reduce drug development times and costs (pharmaceutical applications).

–Simulating the actions of atoms and electrons in dye-sensitized solar cells to contribute to the development of solar cells with higher energy-conversion efficiency.

–Simulating seismic wave propagation, strong motion, and tsunamis to predict the effects they will have on human-made structures; predicting the extent of earthquake-impact zones for disaster prevention purposes; and contributing to the design of quake-resistant structures.

–Conducting high-resolution (400-m) simulations of atmospheric circulation models to provide detailed predictions of weather phenomena that elucidate localized effects, such as cloudbursts.

So what’s a petaflop anyway? A FLOP is a floating point operation. Its a type of mathematical function that involves decimal points. Adding 5.6 and 11.21 is a floating point operation and is therefore slightly more complicated from a computing standpoint than adding 11 and 5. But in computing, even day-to-day computing, it’s massively more complicated than all that.

A top-of-the-line NVidia GeForce GTX 590 graphics card, which specializes in floating point operations, can run about 2,400 gigaflops. Since a gigaflop is a billion flops, I guess that technically puts the GeForce GTX 590 into the teraflop, or trillion-flop range.

Petaflops are then in the quadrillion-flop territory, which as I noted before makes them fun because they’re among those rare numbers that are larger than the U.S. national debt. So 10.51 quadrillion flops gets written like so: 10,510,000,000,000,000. Didn’t I say this was fun?

All this is leading up to a big supercomputing conference starting in 10 days in Seattle. So expect lots more supercomputing news in the coming days!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111102/fujitsu-beefs-up-its-best-supercomputer/feed/ 0 Chip Makers Post Weak Results http://allthingsd.com/20111027/chip-makers-post-weak-results/ http://allthingsd.com/20111027/chip-makers-post-weak-results/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:30:49 +0000 Lorraine Luk http://allthingsd.com/?p=137435 Asian chip makers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Hynix Semiconductor Inc. and Elpida Memory Inc. posted weak results on Thursday for the quarter ended Sept. 30 and some flagged that demand for chips will remain soft in coming months, highlighting how major component makers are suffering from slowing economies in Europe and the U.S.

TSMC, considered a bellwether for its client base, which includes U.S. technology companies Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp., reduced its capital-spending budget for the second time this year, citing deteriorating market conditions in a further sign of difficult times for chip makers. TSMC now expects its capital spending for this year to be $7.3 billion, down from $7.4 billion. The contract chip maker also trimmed its 2011 revenue growth target in U.S. dollar terms by half, after posting a worse-than-expected 35 percent decline in net profit for the third quarter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111027/chip-makers-post-weak-results/feed/ 0 Jen-Hsun Huang: Highlights From AsiaD (Video) http://allthingsd.com/20111021/jen-hsun-huang-highlights-from-asiad-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111021/jen-hsun-huang-highlights-from-asiad-video/#comments Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:11:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=135382 Nvidia president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang joined All Things Digital’s Walt Mossberg on the AsiaD stage today to talk about processors for post-PC devices and the Tegra 2, the world’s first dual-core graphics processor. Below, video highlights from the session:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111021/jen-hsun-huang-highlights-from-asiad-video/feed/ 0 Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang Talks Quad-Core and Windows 8 at AsiaD http://allthingsd.com/20111020/nvidias-jen-hsun-huang-live-at-asiad/ http://allthingsd.com/20111020/nvidias-jen-hsun-huang-live-at-asiad/#comments Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:09:24 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=135199 An early pioneer in graphics chips, Nvidia now finds its processors at the heart of smartphones, tablets and, soon, PCs.

Overseeing the expansion is the company’s dynamic leader Jen-Hsun Huang, who sees his chips going ever faster and in more places. Next up for the company is a quad-core chip code named Kal-El.

Welcome to the last session of AsiaD. Here’s Jen-Hsun Huang.

Walt: Al Gore talked for a long time. Anyway: You pivoted into processors for “post-PC devices.” How many devices are your chips in now?

Huang: We’re in about 70 percent of non-iPad tablets. Thirteen models of phones (?) around the world.

Walt: Who are your competitiors?

Huang: Qualcomm is a direct competitor. We started out as a graphics company, and evolved from serving gamers, designers, etc.

And we tried to grow initially by growing into the basic PC market by integrating chipsets. That didn’t work out for me, because “going toe-to-toe with Intel is not a good idea.” So now we’re trying increase the usefulness of GPUs in different products.

12:13 pm: Walt: Now the GPU for many PCs is more powerful and complicated than CPU, right?

Huang: Yep. And they can do lots of stuff now: Computer graphics, image processing. Stuff like what Lytro is doing with their camera.

And the second part of the strategy was backing away from the chipset business, and investing in mobile computing. Back to competitors: Qualcomm is direct. Apple is an indirect competitor.

We partner with device makers, so in a lot of ways I’ve adopted their competition.

12:16 pm: Walt: So what’s new?

Huang: When we first got into mobile, I started talking to the cellphone companies and telling them mobile devices would become a computer. And the iPhone proved that and woke people up. So our perspective is that these devices would be “rich computers — quite powerful computers” and that graphics would play an important role.

So we built the world’s first dual-core graphics processor, the Tegra 2, and that’s what we’re shipping today. And now we’re working on our first quad-core processor, Tegra 3, which is really going to be called Kal-El. Huang notes that Kal-El is Superman’s name, and that the rest of the product lineup is also based on comics: “Wayne” for Batman, etc.

Anyway: Getting performance is the easy part. The challenging part is delivering that performance with low power, and better and better efficiency. The low-power core with Kal-El is 20x “less hungry” for energy.

Second invention: Use the image-processing technique to look at the color content of an image. That allows us to save a ton of power that way.

It allows us to sort of “cheat” on colors and use similar colors, with different lighting — the human eye can’t tell.

12:24 pm: Walt: Aren’t your competitors doing quad-cores as well, and trying to reduce power, too?

Huang: Sure. “Our challenge is to create something surprising every generation … we’ll have to come up with something magical or something surprising every generation.”

Walt: Is it a disadvantage for Apple to design its own chips?

Huang: Apple’s Bob Mansfield is really good at chip design. Also, we sell them chips for their PCs.

Anyway, there are a lot of good reasons to build your own chips — they can control the vertical stack, and they might have good insights on bringing stuff to market, and not sharing that with third-party competitors is a fine idea. But R&D costs will go up — I’ve already spent $2 billion on Tegra. So it may become more difficult for companies to build for lots of different segments.

“There might come a time when it becomes important to buy some or build some. We’ll see.”

Walt: “And they know your number.”

Q&A

Q: Please talk about [something, sorry, didn't catch it]

Huang: We started completely focused on mobile phones. That was Tegra 2. Then we tweaked that for the tablet market. Now we’re clear that ARM is going to be a large ecosystem. It’s possible for us to extend that beyond phones to tablets and clamshells. Most likely Windows on ARM.

[Apologies. Really can't follow any of this]

Q: You talked about building processors for phones or tablets. Do you think tablet-specific processors are really coming?

A: There’s not enough volume with 60 million tablets to build tablet-specific chips. But you can imagine building a processor where some versions are perfect for tablets, and other versions are perfect for high-end smartphones. That’s how you can make the economics work.

Q: (Hey, it’s Joanna Stern!)

[Sorry, couldn't follow this question, either]

Huang is advising Microsoft to come out with tablets first, for Windows-on-ARMs, to establish that “these are not PCs.”

If Office could run on Windows-on-ARMs “that would be the killer app.”

And we’re done. Thanks for joining us in Hong Kong, all.

Jen-Hsun Huang Session Photos

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111020/nvidias-jen-hsun-huang-live-at-asiad/feed/ 0 The Globalization of D: All Things Digital Begins Now http://allthingsd.com/20111018/asiad-essay/ http://allthingsd.com/20111018/asiad-essay/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000 Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=133141 And so our international expansion of D: All Thing Digital starts and we could not be more proud that it begins here in Hong Kong, with AsiaD.

So why Asia? It seemed the most obvious choice for us, as we looked at the global landscape for tech. While the whole world has now been engulfed in the powerful trends of digitalization, perhaps nowhere else has been as important a place for understanding where it is headed next than this region, which is home to companies critical to the next phase of innovation.

There’s no question that Silicon Valley, which has been the base for most of the key players — such as Google, Apple, Facebook and more — has driven the digital revolution over the past decade. But as we look out onto what’s to come, it’s clear to us and many others that what’s coming next and even the next great company might be born here.

That’s why we have created a conference that mixes both important speakers from U.S. tech and also from all over Asia.

Given that smartphones are in ascendance globally, having Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android efforts, is a no-brainer. The longtime mobile exec is at the top of an aggressive push by the Internet giant to dominate the important sector across the world.

Speaking of domination, Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma efforts to make the company a powerhouse in China and elsewhere are hard to ignore. His recent tussle and interest in Yahoo, as he has built a wide-ranging Internet giant, should make for an interesting interview.

Expect a deep dive into what makes the future Web work with Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, who is someone breaking new ground as he tears down old digital paradigms. With Twitter, Dorsey redefined the real-time world and how the virtual one communicates; with Square, he is upending the payments arena.

Nvidia is not only a pioneer of graphics chips, but now its processors are widely used in the latest mobile devices. That’s why its founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a lot to say about the future of the fastest-growing sector of computing, from smartphones to tablets and whatever’s next.

Asus Chairman Jonney Shih has presided over the Taiwanese tech giant since the early 1990s. Most recently, the company pioneered the netbook market and is now plunging deeply into the tablet business, making Shih perfect to discuss these key issues in Asia and around the world.

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance in tech, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use?

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind-Google-and-Apple job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia, and Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

We also felt that it was important to hear from Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including: Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site; former Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who is running the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online; and David Goldberg, who is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company.

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou, needs little introduction. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba.

And so does LivingSocial, whose CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, it was natural to invite Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, who heads global product strategy for the Korean giant’s mobile business. That has surged in the past year to make Samsung a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, chairman of HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. Add to that HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market, and it’s clear it is in a pole position on the critical mobile market going forward.

Finally, we are also glad to bring back Al Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist. He is also on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, as well as a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins.

In total, along with some very cool demos to show off, it’s going to be an exciting AsiaD, and we are thrilled most of all to welcome our first international audience. So get ready for a busy three days here and we hope you will like what we have to show you.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111018/asiad-essay/feed/ 0 Final AsiaD Speakers: Apple's Phil Schiller and Former VP Al Gore http://allthingsd.com/20111004/final-asiad-speakers-apples-phil-schiller-and-former-vp-al-gore/ http://allthingsd.com/20111004/final-asiad-speakers-apples-phil-schiller-and-former-vp-al-gore/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:15:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=128535

And then there was Schiller and Gore.

That would be Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller and former Vice President Al Gore, who round out the stellar list of speakers at our upcoming AsiaD conference.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21 in Hong Kong, the lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of Silicon Valley start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Asia head Rose Tsou; LivingSocial’s Tim O’Shaughnessy, along with founders of two of its Asian units, Daniel Shin and Paul Srivorakul; Samsung mobile head Dr. Won-Pyo Hong; HTC CEO Peter Chou, who replaces Chairwoman Cher Wang.

Schiller, who reports to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook (and before that, Steve Jobs) is a member of the executive team of the tech icon, where he has worked for 17 years. He is responsible for a swath of Apple’s outward-facing businesses, including product marketing, developer relations and business marketing.

Today, in fact, he was onstage at Apple’s iPhone event, outlining some of its new product offerings. In addition, Apple just opened its first retail store in Hong Kong.

Gore, who had a memorable interview at the fourth D: All Things Digital conference in 2006, needs little introduction. The former VP and Nobel Peace Prize winner is now chairman of Current TV and also continues as a prominent environmental activist.

Gore is on the board of Apple, while also being a senior adviser to Google, which is a neat trick. At the same time, he is a partner in the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a partnership that is focused on sustainable investing.

And, as most people know, he knows a thing or two about the Internet.

Walt Mossberg and I could not think of two better people to add to the lineup we have for AsiaD, which has very few seats left.

See you in China in two weeks!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111004/final-asiad-speakers-apples-phil-schiller-and-former-vp-al-gore/feed/ 0 Nvidia's Quad-Core Kal-El Packing a Secret Fifth Core http://allthingsd.com/20110920/nvidias-quad-core-kal-el-packing-a-secret-fifth-core/ http://allthingsd.com/20110920/nvidias-quad-core-kal-el-packing-a-secret-fifth-core/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:32:21 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=122534 We now know the answer to a very nerdy trivia question.

When is a quad-core chip not a quad-core chip?

The answer, it was revealed on Tuesday, is when it is Nvidia’s forthcoming Kal-El processor. Although the chip does indeed pack four main processing cores, Nvidia noted today that it also harbors a low-power single-core processor that can be turned on in place of the four main cores when power consumption is the most critical factor. The fifth core runs at a lower frequency than the other four, the company said in a technical paper it posted to its Web site on Tuesday.

“The companion core is used primarily when the mobile device is in active standby and performing background tasks such as Email syncs, Twitter updates, Facebook updates etc.,” Nvidia said in the paper.

The approach aims to address one of the challenges of the smartphone and tablet markets. While there is clearly demand for ever more processing power for things like gaming and augmented reality, these are also portable devices that have no utility once they run out of battery power. In a second paper, Nvidia also talks about how, even though it packs more cores, a quad-core chip can actually be used to consume less power than a dual-core chip.

Nvidia first talked about Kal-El back at February’s Mobile World Congress and said it would arrive later this year. A YouTube video from earlier this year shows the processor in action.

Rival Qualcomm has said it also plans to have a quad-core chip, though not until next year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110920/nvidias-quad-core-kal-el-packing-a-secret-fifth-core/feed/ 0 Is Windows 8 Just the Bold Bet That Microsoft Needed? http://allthingsd.com/20110915/is-windows-8-just-the-bold-bet-that-microsoft-needed/ http://allthingsd.com/20110915/is-windows-8-just-the-bold-bet-that-microsoft-needed/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:30:53 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=120387 For years, Microsoft has prided itself on being able to show the latest version of Windows running even the oldest of applications.

This week, however, Redmond is striking a very different tone in introducing Windows 8. Although any programs that ran in Windows 7 should do just fine in the new release, Microsoft is putting nearly all of its energy around a whole new type of application that is quite unlike the Windows programs of yesteryear.

A scan of the session list at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in Anaheim, Calif., reveals dozens designed around building the new “Metro-style” applications, and almost no programs focused on traditional Windows applications.

Also, as one reporter pointed out to me, it’s worth noting that the new-look Windows has no windows. Nor do the new kind of apps have visible menus or other hallmarks of the venerable desktop operating system. Instead, new Windows applications fill the entire screen and are navigated largely through touch, with needed commands brought up with the swipe of a finger.

And although Windows 8 will run older programs, there are clear signs that Microsoft is ready to break with tradition. Older Windows apps share space on one screen — the desktop. That’s the same amount of screen real estate that all other apps have to themselves. And while both new and old apps will run on Intel-based Windows 8 machines, Microsoft is only promising that new-style programs will run on the forthcoming machines using ARM-based chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

It’s a major shift that Microsoft has resisted making for many years. Even as rivals like Apple and Palm went back to the drawing board and redesigned their operating systems for the Internet age, Microsoft chose to make evolutionary improvements to Windows while maintaining nearly full compatibility with the past.


[ See post to watch video ]

Change is clearly needed. After years of dominating the computing universe, Microsoft has seen a number of incursions into its core business. A resurgent Mac has grabbed a significant share of the computer market, while the iPad and other mobile devices have also taken momentum and sales away from the traditional computer business.

And as much as Microsoft needs an answer to the iPad — and it clearly does — the threat posed to today’s Windows extends far beyond the tablet. The type of mobile computing that dominates the smartphone and tablet markets today is poised to move into laptops and desktops, as well. On the laptop side, in particular, customers clearly want the same thinness and long battery life that is found on tablets.

The only way for Microsoft to get there with Windows was to break with the past. Microsoft indicated its willingness to go in new directions back in January, when it announced that Windows 8 would support ARM-based processors. With this week’s announcement, Microsoft is showing that it is willing to go a step further and sacrifice some backward compatibility to produce more competitive products.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110915/is-windows-8-just-the-bold-bet-that-microsoft-needed/feed/ 0 Windows 8 Forces Some Compromises After All http://allthingsd.com/20110913/windows-8-forces-some-compromises-after-all/ http://allthingsd.com/20110913/windows-8-forces-some-compromises-after-all/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:39:10 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=119965 Steven Sinofsky talks about Windows 8 as a “no compromise” operating system, but the fact is there are some trade-offs to be made.

Although the new Windows offers a number of upsides, including the fact it runs on a wider range of processors, such flexibility comes at a cost.

Systems that run Windows 8 using low-power ARM processors will be able to run all of the new-style Windows applications, but it appears few traditional Windows programs will run. Microsoft demonstrated a technology preview of Office running on ARM back in January, but Sinofsky said that in general older Windows applications won’t run on ARM-based machines.

That’s not to say Microsoft didn’t make the right choices when it comes to Windows 8. Were Microsoft to have brought over all of its legacy to the new chips, it might well have lost the long battery life and other benefits that ARM-based systems can provide.

A strong case can be made that this break with the past is exactly what Microsoft needed in order to compete with a new generation of devices running operating systems designed with mobility in mind.

However, the choice means that Microsoft and its partners will need lots of new apps to make Windows 8 a success. Indeed, a big part of this week’s Build conference will be equipping developers with the tools they need to write such programs and convincing them of the upside of doing so.

Recognizing this, some of Redmond’s partners are taking matters into their own hands. Nvidia, for example, plans its own program to convince developers to write new-style Windows apps.

“We’re going to be investing in our own effort to get developers on board,” Nvidia General Manager Rene Haas said in an interview.

But if the company faces challenges getting developers to write the new apps, Haas said he is not worried about finding PC makers willing to make machines with the ARM-based processors. Such systems, he said, can be slimmer and cheaper and offer better battery life than those running traditional PC processors from Intel and AMD, he said.

“We’ve seen very big OEM interest,” Haas said, using the industry term for PC makers. “Virtually every OEM around the world wants to do something with Windows-on-ARM.”

Related posts

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110913/windows-8-forces-some-compromises-after-all/feed/ 0 Even More AsiaD Speakers: Yahoo's Yang, HTC's Wang, Samsung's Hong and More! http://allthingsd.com/20110912/even-more-asiad-speakers-yahoos-yang-htcs-wang-samsungs-hong-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20110912/even-more-asiad-speakers-yahoos-yang-htcs-wang-samsungs-hong-and-more/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:08:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=119818

With AsiaD just a little over a month away, Walt Mossberg and I are adding even more speakers to the list, for what we hope will be an awesome event in Hong Kong.

Taking place from Oct. 19 to 21, the conference lineup is already impressive, with a mix of speakers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as Silicon Valley and more.

The previously announced speakers include: Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; Asus Chairman Jonney Shih; Sony president and second-in-command Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai; Google+ guru Bradley Horowitz; Hollywood big shot Peter Chernin; Huawei’s North American R&D head John Roese; Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Andy Lees; and a panel of start-up stars — Joyus’ Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

Now, to add to the kitty:

Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, who will appear with the Internet giant’s Asia head Rose Tsou. For all of the noise around the company these days, Yahoo has a huge footprint in the region, maintains a big e-commerce business there and holds massive stakes in key firms, such as Yahoo Japan and China’s Alibaba. One of Yahoo’s first big investments came from Asian investor Masa Son, in fact, way back when.

Also on deck is LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, who will appear with Daniel Shin, the CEO and co-founder of South Korea’s Ticket Monster, which the daily deals site just bought as part of its aggressive move into Asia. Competing there with its U.S. rival Groupon, as well as a myriad of local social buying services, the market is a tough one.

Because of Samsung’s increasing importance as a global player in smartphones and tablets, we thought it was important to have Dr. Won-Pyo Hong. He heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business, which has surged in the past year to make the Korean tech giant a leader in Android-based phones and tablets, and a significant challenger to Apple.

Also key in the mobile arena is Cher Wang, the chairwoman of three Taiwan companies, including HTC, the important and innovative handset and tablet maker which has been a key player in Android’s success story. But just this week she talked about the possibility of HTC buying an operating system, which would further strengthen its hand in the competitive market.

That’s it for now, but we will have more big names to come, as well as some pretty cool demos we will be putting onstage at AsiaD. So stay tuned.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110912/even-more-asiad-speakers-yahoos-yang-htcs-wang-samsungs-hong-and-more/feed/ 0 Gearing Up for Microsoft's Big Week http://allthingsd.com/20110912/gearing-up-for-microsofts-big-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20110912/gearing-up-for-microsofts-big-week/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:30:39 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=119421 For years, Microsoft has faced the theoretical concern of Windows becoming less relevant in a world where the computer was one device among many, rather than the centerpiece.

With the rise of the smartphone and the emergence of the tablet, that threat has become real. Now, as the pressure mounts, Microsoft is due to make its case for why Windows can not only hang on to the desktop, but finally deliver on the tablet promises it has been making for a decade.

At a developer conference in Anaheim, Calif., the company is expected to offer a great deal more detail on Windows 8 — the next version of the operating system first shown at our D9 event in June. Windows 8 boasts a touchy-feely new interface, literally, along with a whole new means for writing Windows apps. Also, in a shift, Windows will run on the same kinds of ARM chips that power many of today’s smartphones and tablets.

With the changes, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky says Microsoft is in a position to deliver a “no compromise” operating system that is equally at home on small tablets and powerful desktops.

Some are hoping that Microsoft would go a step further and announce some sort of plan to allow Windows Phone apps to run on Windows 8. That, however, seems unlikely. While Windows and Windows Phone may someday converge, for now the two remain on different architectures.

Whatever Microsoft has to say, AllThingsD will be on hand to make sure our readers don’t miss a beat.

Redmond will also be talking about its bottom line, holding a financial analysts’ meeting on Wednesday. And since it is bringing out its big guns, AllThingsD is doing the same, with Kara Swisher joining me in Anaheim to bring her wit and wisdom to that part.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110912/gearing-up-for-microsofts-big-week/feed/ 0 Nvidia's Profit, Share Price Rise http://allthingsd.com/20110811/nvidias-profit-share-price-rise/ http://allthingsd.com/20110811/nvidias-profit-share-price-rise/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:25:26 +0000 Don Clark http://allthingsd.com/?p=109088 Nvidia Corp. reported solid quarterly results and upbeat guidance, a sign that the company is taking market share in chips for laptops and enjoying strong demand for game consoles and other products.

The company’s shares surged in after-hours trading Thursday.

Nvidia swung to a profit in the second quarter and predicted revenue in the current quarter would grow 4% to 6%, while analysts had called for growth of 4%.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110811/nvidias-profit-share-price-rise/feed/ 0 More AsiaD Speakers: Sony, Google+, Microsoft, Hollywood, Huawei and Hot SV Start-Ups! http://allthingsd.com/20110809/more-asiad-speakers-sony-google-microsoft-hollywood-huawei-and-hot-sv-start-ups/ http://allthingsd.com/20110809/more-asiad-speakers-sony-google-microsoft-hollywood-huawei-and-hot-sv-start-ups/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=107055

After our grand tour of Asia last week — with stops in Korea and Japan — it seems like a perfect time to update the speaker list for our upcoming AsiaD conference in Hong Kong in October.

As Walt Mossberg and I said, we are trying to mix both U.S.-based speakers with a pan-Asian selection of speakers from across the region, and the new additions are just that.

For the international confab — this one will be held Oct. 19-21 — we’ve already announced a great lineup, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; and Asus Chairman Jonny Shih.

Now, to add to that terrific lineup:

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is at the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job No. 1.

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former top News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there is no denying that it has been a golden time for Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including:

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site that recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face, will be an interesting topic for discussion.

After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.

Finally, longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media, which was bought by Yahoo, and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.

We have even more speakers for AsiaD we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks, so get ready for what’s next.

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