AMD has painted a basic picture of its plans for the next two years and it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that a big part of that picture focuses on low power processors. The chip maker plans to update its E-series and C-series notebook chips later this year, as well as its Z-series low power chip for tablets. The next-generation laptop…

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Earlier this month Microsoft and a handful of partners started showing of Windows 8 running on tablet with ARM-based processors. While Windows 8 probably won’t be released to the public until the second half of 2012, CNET reports that an early version Windows 8 for ARM will be available for developers in February. [/caption] Windows 8 on ARM is reportedly…

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Texas Instruments plans to start sending samples of its new OMAP 5 processors to partners next week. The company also unveiled a reference design for an Android phone based on the new ARM Cortex-A15 dual core processor. The 28nm chip is a dual core processor with clock speeds as high as 2 GHz, but it also offers a performance boost…

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Chip-maker Freescale is launching two new low-power processors with ARM Cortex-A9 cores. While competitors including Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Samsung have been duking it out for dominance in the smartphone and tablet space, Freescale is one of the top makers of chips for eBook Readers, in-vehicle entertainment systems, and other devices that you see everywhere, but not might hear…

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ZiiLabs is introducing a speedy new mobile processor for Android tablets. The ZMS-40 is an ARM Cortex-A9 quad-core processor with a clock speed of 1.5 GHz. The company says it will be twice as powerful as last year’s ZMS-20, while using as little has half as much electricity. The new chip can handle 1080p 3D video, with resolutions up to…

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The 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N2600 and 1.86 GHz Atom N2800 chips aren’t the only new netbook processors in Intel’s 2012 lineup. The company has released a detailed document looking at features in the new Cedar Trail chips and it includes a few previously unannounced model numbers. The Intel Atom N2650 will be a 1.7 GHz dual core chip with…

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Intel has started shipping its third-generation Atom chips for low-power mobile computers such as netbooks. The company says products with Cedar Trail chips will debut in early 2012, with some of the first devices coming from Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba. Noticeably absent from that list? Dell. The company recently announced that it’s pulling the plug on its…

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Intel is preparing to launch its first Atom chips aimed at smartphones and tablets. The new processors are based on the Medfield platform, and while Intel has been teasing the low-power system-on-a-chip platform for years, the company has been pretty quiet about hte actual specifications. Now the folks at VR Zone have published some of the first specs and benchmark…

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Intel is finally getting ready to launch chips for phones and tablets that could compete with ARM-based processors in terms of performance and power consumption. The company has been working on its next-generation Atom design, code-named Medfield, for a few years. But now Intel is starting to demonstrate reference devices based on the platform. The MIT Technology Review got to…

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A new Chinese processor called the Allwinner A10 is showing up in a growing number of inexpensive Chinese tablets. The chip features a 1.5 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor core, Mali 400 graphics, HD video capabilities and support for up to 1GB of DDR3 memory. Best of all, it’s available for prices as low as $7 when ordered in bulk. That…

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Ultrabooks are a new class of thin and light laptops which feature Intel processors, solid state disks, and other premium features including fast boot and resume-from-sleep speeds. If you’re wondering why they need Intel chips, it’s because Intel coined the word “ultrabook” and has trademarked the heck out of it. But Intel doesn’t have a monopoly on ultraportable laptops, and…

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Samsung is the first company to produce processor samples using ARM’s new Cortex-A15 designs. The Samsung Exynos 5250 is a 32nm chip with a 2 GHz dual core processor. It’s likely aimed at next-generation tablets, smartphones, and other low power devices. According to Samsung, the new chip can handle 14 billion instructions per second, making it almost twice as fast…

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