AMD has unveiled its new line of CPU and GPU products, with a heavy emphasis on low power chips for netbooks, ultraportable laptops, and low power desktops. Probably the most interesting new chips in AMD’s lineup are the new Fusion chips which combine graphics and CPU functions onto a single chip. We’ve been hearing about these products for ages, but…

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Chip designer ARM is behind the basic designs found in most smartphones on the market today as well as a number of tablets and smartbooks. Right now the top speed for most ARM chips is 1GHz, although faster chips with dual core processors are due out next year. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though. Today ARM unveiled plans…

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A few weeks ago AMD announced that it’s new low power Ontario chips for netbooks should begin shipping to PC makers by the end of 2010. There’s always a little gap between the date when a chip maker starts shipping a processor and the time when you can walk into a store and buy a notebook with that chip inside….

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Chinese chip maker Rockchip is introducing a new 1GHz CPU for tablets and other mobile devices. The Rockchip RK2808 is an ARM-based chip with support for 256MB of memory and screen resolutions up to 1024 x 768 pixels. We’ve seen a number of Chinese tablets with Rockchip processors in the past, but most have been stuck with an earlier 600MHz…

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[/caption] Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a built-in tool for rating your computer’s hardware. The Windows Experience Index looks at your CPU, RAM, hard drive, and graphics performance and gives a score for each area that’s designed to give you a halfway decent guesstimate on how well the operating system will run on your hardware. A lower score doesn’t…

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Chip makers ARM and AMD both launched interesting products today. ARM is introducing a new 2GHz chip based on its Cortex A9 dual core architecture. While 2GHz may be old hat for companies like Intel and AMD, that’s blazing fast for a chip maker best known for producing low power processors for cellphones and mobile devices. And it gives me…

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Dell is preparing to launch a new version of the Inspiron Mini 10 netbook. The Dell Inspiron Mini 10v is virtually identical to Dell’s original 10 inch netbook in all respects but one: It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU. Earlier models came with a choice of a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 or a 1.6GHz Z530 CPU. While the Z series…

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The Intel Atom CPU may be the dominant chip in the netbook space right now. But the company is facing competition from VIA, ARM, and to some degree AMD. And now it looks like IBM wants in on the action. IBM and a group of partners is developing a 28 nanometer processor that could power netbooks and smartphones.  The tiny processor…

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[/caption] Intel is preparing the next version of its Intel Atom CPU, and DigiTimes reports that the new chips should beging shipping during the second half of 2009. The next generation Atom chips are currently codenamed Pineview, and DigiTimes reports the processor will feature several improvements over the current Intel Atom N270 chips: Capable of CPU speeds higher than 1.6GHz…

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Considering all the buzz that VIA’s low power, high performance Nano processor got this summer, it feels like the chip has fallen off the face of the earth. I’m not aware of a single netbook using the processor at the moment, although VIA has turned its attention to educational and developing markets, so it’s possible that Nano-powered machines are popping…

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You know how NVIDIA recently announced plans for a platform that would combine the Intel Atom low power CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU to provide enhanced video performance on netbooks and low power notebooks? Yeah, apparently they forgot to run that whole thing by Intel before unveiling the plan publicly. DigiTimes reports that Intel currently bundles the Intel…

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Covering the netbook space, I read a lot about Intel, VIA, and AMD, and ARM processors. But another company, Qualcomm is building a platform, that it says will be ideal for netbooks and other low power devices. A few weeks ago we got a glimpse of  a few prototype netbooks based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform. But a CNET article…

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