Tremendously powerful new processors toiling away in the cloud could make it irrelevant what kind of screen you connect with, ushering in a new age of computing.
Last week, Nvidia launched the first graphics processing unit (GPU) designed for the cloud, dubbed Kepler. Supporting vendors include a who’s who of server providers, such as HP, Dell, Cisco, and IBM — all of which will have products on the market shortly.

The whole concept behind these servers is to serve up a desktop experience from the cloud. This means delivering games, applications, utilities, and media to any device that will run the client: iPads, iPods, Android tablets, smartphones, and even cars and smart TVs. As this technology comes to market, it will increasingly not matter what you are using — you’ll be able to get your stuff on it as long as it is connected with decent bandwidth.
Let’s talk about some of the results.

Gaming from anything
On stage at its GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Nvidia had one person on an iPad gaming head to head with another on a new LG TV using a service called Gaikai. The demo game was Hawken, a mech-oriented title that isn’t even in market yet. These two were gaming on hardware that couldn’t hope to run top-line graphics intensive game locally. Yet both where pounding away at each other, and the amazing thing was, the guy on the tablet was winning, showcasing that screen size didn’t matter as much as gaming skill.

This is often the problem with games: If it comes out on one platform and you or your friends don’t have that platform, not only can’t you play the game, the developer gets a fraction of the available revenue. But if games were delivered like streamed movies, then they could go everywhere. You could play from your connected AV system in your car, your iPad, or your TV in the home.
This is truly cloud computing, though Nvidia calls it GeForce Grid.

Windows on an iPad
I was out to breakfast the other day, and I have a nasty habit of listening in on the conversation at neighboring tables if it has to do with tech. The guy talking had been a recent convert from Windows to the Mac, and was talking about switching back because the Mac sucks. (His words not mine, no desire to peg the hate-mail meter this week.) He was complaining because he was going to have to dump his near-new MacBook Pro for an Ultrabook, and he was going to lose on that investment.

Well, what if you could run Windows on a Mac, or an iPad, or anything that would host a tiny client? If you like Apple hardware but hate the Apple platform, you can still run Windows. If you want to run Windows on your big smartphone or tablet in an emergency, you can do that, too.

Citrix demonstrated new hardware that could scale to support 100 desktops off one tower that looked smaller than my (admittedly rather large) PC.
This is the freedom to run what you want wherever you want. To not be tied to Apple or anyone else. To have software delivered like it was electricity. Someone else worries about malware, and backups, and making sure a catastrophic event doesn’t destroy your digital life along with your real one.

Galaxy-class performance
One of the most fascinating demonstrations had to do with modeling galaxy-class events. No I’m not referring to something out of Star Trek (the Enterprise was a Galaxy Class Starship). What Nividia showed was the progress from its existing Fermi platform, which can model the birth of the universe, to the Kepler platform, which can model what’s going to happen in a few short years when the Andromeda Galaxy runs into our own. Granted, a few short years in galaxy-class events is 3.5 billion years, so no need to jump under a table (not this would do you any good, mind you). As you can imagine, the scale is massive, and the capability is a magnitude (10 times) greater than what it was with the older hardware.

We often get excited about 20 percent performance leaps, so 10 times the performance is amazing. If this level of advancement keeps up, heck, we’ll be obsolete in a few years.
Universal robotics

You may think I’m joking on this last one, but one of the other Nvidia presenting at the show was Universal Robotics. This is the company bringing to market thinking robots that can respond to sensor-based events. In short, they can see and change their actions based on what they see. I’m hoping the eventual result is more like Robbie the Robot than Terminator, but I have my doubts. In any case, at the Nvidia conference, we once again saw major progress with regard to what you can do in the cloud, and even what machines will be able to do in the near-term future. Granted, they may be the only thing that is left of us in 3.5 billion years to say “oh crap” when the galaxies do collide.
And on that festive note, I’ll leave you to ponder our near, and far, future.

Source:http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-nvidias-kepler-chips-could-end-pcs-and-tablets-as-we-know-them/

NVIDIA puts its head in the clouds
Today at the 2012 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC), NVIDIA took the wraps off a new cloud gaming technology that promises to reduce latency and improve the quality of streaming gaming using the power of NVIDIA GPUs. Dubbed GeForce GRID, NVIDIA is offering the technology to online services like Gaikai and OTOY.

The goal of GRID is to bring the promise of “console quality” gaming to every device a user has. The term “console quality” is kind of important here as NVIDIA is trying desperately to not upset all the PC gamers that purchase high-margin GeForce products. The goal of GRID is pretty simple though and should be seen as an evolution of the online streaming gaming that we have covered in the past–like OnLive. Being able to play high quality games on your TV, your computer, your tablet or even your phone without the need for high-performance and power hungry graphics processors through streaming services is what many believe the future of gaming is all about.

GRID starts with the Kepler GPU – what NVIDIA is now dubbing the first “cloud GPU” – that has the capability to virtualize graphics processing while being power efficient. The inclusion of a hardware fixed-function video encoder is important as well as it will aid in the process of compressing images that are delivered over the Internet by the streaming gaming service.

This diagram shows us how the Kepler GPU handles and accelerates the processing required for online gaming services. On the server side, the necessary process for an image to find its way to the user is more than just a simple render to a frame buffer. In current cloud gaming scenarios the frame buffer would have to be copied to the main system memory, compressed on the CPU and then sent via the network connection. With NVIDIA’s GRID technology that capture and compression happens on the GPU memory and thus can be on its way to the gamer faster.

The results are H.264 streams that are compressed quickly and efficiently to be sent out over the network and return to the end user on whatever device they are using.

Continue reading our editorial on the new NVIDIA GeForce GRID cloud gaming technology!!

On the client side, GeForce GRID comes into play again to decompress the H.264 stream and then render the final image to be displayed on the device. While this will obviously work on the PC and laptop side of things, there are still questions on whether GRID technology is necessary on the consumer end of phones, tablets and even TVs. Will NVIDIA require Tegra-based tablets and smart phones in order to take advantage of the streaming services with GRID–and does that mean that we will see NVIDIA-powered TVs in the near future?

UPDATE: The answer is no, it does NOT require NVIDIA technology on the decode side and in fact NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsen Huang said “just about any decent H.264 decoder will work.”

The primary benefit of GeForce GRID technology is that it is supposed to lower the latency between rendered images and the time the user sees them–and how soon they can respond to them. The lower bar on this graph, provided by NVIDIA, represents what a typical user’s latency would be on a “console gaming system.” The times here are pretty vague, though the 100 ms game pipeline and the 66 ms display latency seem somewhat reasonable.

The middle bar represents the first generation of streaming gaming – including services like OnLive – that I have discussed (and berated) in the past. Total latency in this case has gone from 166 ms from game time to display time all the way up to 286 ms with addition of 30 ms of capture and encoding time, 75 ms of network latency and 15 ms of decode latency on the client side.

NVIDIA GRID aims to bring the total latency UNDER that of current generation consoles. You still have latencies for capture, network and decode, though they are noticeably lowered. Game pipeline time is cut in half thanks to the performance of Kepler GPUs, and with the GPUs ability to quickly pass information from the frame buffer to the encoders. Capture and encode has gone from 30 ms down to 10 ms with the fixed function NVENC (hardware video encoder) unit on the Kepler graphics units. Decode time is also decreased on the client side with NVIDIA technology and even network latency is reduced from 75 ms to 30 ms.

Honestly, the only timing reduction I have a problem with is the network latency–how NVIDIA plans to solve the problems of physics involved with network infrastructures needs to be proven. The idea of “estimations” or “predictions” can work with some game types better than others, but I think hardcore gamers are going to skeptical until proven otherwise. The only real answer is to build out more data centers to make sure there is one withint a reasonable distance to the consumer.

Source:http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/GTC-2012-NVIDIA-Announces-GeForce-GRID-Cloud-Gaming-Platform

A leading custom computer manufacturer, announced that they are now selling the new Nvidia GTX 675M graphics processing unit. The GTX 675M is based off of the previous 580M graphics processing unit that Nvidia integrated in mobile platforms in the past year. They produced ground-breaking performance benchmarks, and reached a whole new level of capabilities that were not tapped by the graphics community, until now. The GTX 675M promises to breach the mobile performance barrier and leave less to be desired.
The GTX 675M provides an array of new features for enthusiasts and professionals to take advantage of:

NVIDIA 3D vision has always been featured in select models. Now, the P270WM notebook offered by AVADirect will have full support allowing enthusiasts to become fully immersed in the experience. NVIDIA 3DTV Play makes connecting an HDMI cable to the P270WM more simple than ever. Allowing AVADirect’s customers to display 3D content on supported HDTVs to include Blu-Ray playback, 3D photos, and favorite game titles! Nvidia Verde support, being excitingly new, will maximize the full power capability of the P270WM creating continuous performance and optimizations for various tasks.

One of the most unique features involves the Hardware Video Editing Acceleration, which combines high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing to create stutter-free video with immense picture clarity, accurate color, and exact image scaling for real-time mastering of various projects. More importantly, NVIDIA Optimus is supported, to assist with conserving battery life, and supports the new PCI-Express 3.0 interface to deliver ground-breaking performance in a mobile platform, being the P270WM Gaming Notebook.

Coupled with support for the NVIDIA GTX 675M, the Clevo P270WM will have the ability to house four hard disks for a total of 4TB of mobile storage. This support will increasingly grow as hard disk manufacturers seek to increase the capacity of their notebook hard disks, thus assisting AVADirect with providing an even more unique, and truly custom product; available for enthusiasts and professional to take full advantage of. The P270WM has native support for three hard disks total, but upgrading to four will force removal of the optical drive bay.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/AVADirects-Clevo-P270WM-Gaming-Notebook-Now-Packing-the-NVIDIA-GTX-675M/

Of the major rivalries in the technology industry, few get as heated as often as that of Nvidia and AMD. When it comes to releasing new graphics hardware, the two companies take no mercy: Every year (or thereabouts, if they don’t bother to follow the calendar) they trade off the title of “the most powerful video card in the world” for this price range or that price range, and frequently leave consumers confused by the options available to them.

This is certainly true with regards to the companies’ two recent flagship video cards: the AMD Radeon HD 7970, which came out toward the end of last year, and Nvidia’s just-released GeForce GTX 680. Both are single-GPU models at the top of their respective lines, utilizing all the latest video display technologies; both promise outstanding frame rates in the hottest 3D games; and both cost around $500. So if you’re upgrading your computer, or building one from scratch, how can you choose between them?

To give you a better idea of whether you should buy the 7970 or the GTX 680, we’ve compiled this comparison of the cards’ salient features. Along with each is our verdict about which card succeeds in that category. If you’re looking for powerful single-card graphics for your PC games, either is a fine way to go. But one of these cards excels in more areas, and is thus the ultimate choice for today—and we’ll tell you what it is at the end.

Gaming Performance

Let’s face it: Pretty much the only reason people ever drop $500 or more on a video card is because they want to play the latest games. And in that department, the two cards run pretty much neck and neck most of the time. In our real-world game benchmarks, the 7970 only came out definitively ahead in Aliens vs. Predator, at both 1,920 by 1,200 (59.2 frames per second, or fps, versus 52fps) and 2,560 by 1,600 (37.4fps versus 31.7fps); and the GTX 680 proved superior at everything else (including two AMD-branded titles at the same resolutions, DiRT 3 and Total War: Shogun 2). On our synthetic benchmarks, which measure a broader scope of performance features that don’t necessarily show up in games, the GTX 680 also came out ahead: In Futuremark’s 3DMark 11 it scored 3,151 to the 7970’s 2,754, and beat the AMD card on the Heaven Benchmark 3.0 at 1,920 by 1,200 (43.6fps versus 40.5fps). The 7970 just barely edged out the GTX 680 when Heaven was upped to 2,560 by 1,600 (29.3fps versus 28.9), however. As with so many things, a lot depends on the games you play, but—even though its leads weren’t always decisive—the Nvidia card proved itself the champ more often.

Price

If you can afford to buy either of these cards, clearly cash flow is not a problem for you at the moment. But that doesn’t mean price isn’t—or shouldn’t be—an issue: You undoubtedly want the best one you can get for the least amount of money. Right now, however, that’s not the 7970. It lists for $549, which is also the lowest price we found for one on Newegg. The GTX 680 lists for $499—and a number of those are available on Newegg for just that much.

Source:http://www.thinkdigit.com/Parts-Peripherals/Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-680-vs-AMD-Radeon_9157.html

Consumers can expect Tegra 3-based tablet devices priced at $199 later this year according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

According to Huang, $199 tablets are feasible if companies remove features like expensive memory.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire device, which features just 8GB of storage and lacks a camera, sells for $199 in the U.S., and managed to gain 14 percent of the tablet market in its first quarter.

Huang is also disappointed with the Android operating system. “Android hasn’t developed as I’d hoped,” he said in an interview with the New York Times.

“For many people, though, work is still the primary reason to have a computer. They want Windows to work well, they want Outlook to work well. A tablet running Windows 8 with Tegra could be very nice.

Source:http://mybroadband.co.za/news/quick-news/46814-nvidia-ceo-more-cheap-tablets-this-year.html

Steve Scott wants to build a supercomputer that can calculate 1 quintillion floating-point operations per ­second. That’s a one followed by 18 ­zeroes or, in computer speak, an exaflop. Such a machine would be a billion times faster than a MacBook Air and could design wildly efficient ­combustion engines, simulate the workings of an entire cell and model a clean-burning fusion reactor. With enough zeroes Steve Scott can change the world.

The reason no one has built an exa­scale computer yet is the electric bill. An exaflop machine using today’s standard x86 processors would draw 2 gigawatts of electricity, the maximum output of the Hoover Dam. The biggest supercomputer ever built handles 11 quadrillion flops (or petaflops, a 1 with 15 zeroes) and draws 13 megawatts, the juice of nine wind turbines. Scott, one of the world’s leading supercomputing engineers, sees a day coming when we can have computers a thousand times faster than that, without using that much more power.

The prospect has brought Scott, 45, to Nvidia ( NVDA – news – people ), the Santa Clara,Calif. company that is the world’s largest maker of graphics-processing units, or GPUs. Its incredibly complex circuit boards are prized by videogamers for their ability to render battlefield chaos and oozing zombies with stunning realism. Nvidia chips are also prized by the supercomputer community because they can handle six to eight times more operations per unit of energy than an Intel ( INTC – news – people ) chip. Lash together thousands of them and you get a power-sipping supercomputer.

Scott’s last job was as chief technology officer of supercomputer manufacturer Cray ( CRAY – news – people ). In the spring of 2009 Intel pulled out of a joint effort to build ­supercomputer processors with Cray. “I was definitely disappointed,” says Scott, but he doesn’t blame Intel. “The high-performance computing market just isn’t big enough to support the development of competitive processors.”

It’s a humbling admission for Scott, a 19-year veteran of Cray with a Ph.D. in computer architecture from the University of Wisconsin and 27 patents to his name. “Scott is at one of those interesting intersections,” Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang says. “As a computer architect he’s a geek at heart, and yet he really lives to ­understand customers and markets.”

Supercomputers are a little more than a third of the $8.6 billion market for ­high-performance computers, ­according to IDC, but they are a-fast-growing and highly profitable slice that confers great p.r. to hardware makers. Sales overall of high-performance computers will rise 56% to $13.4 billion in the next three years, according to IDC. While Nvidia doesn’t break out numbers for its supercomputer business, its overall professional solutions group is its most profitable, boasting 36.7% gross margins for the first nine months of 2011, compared to 21.1% for Nvidia’s GPU business.

Nvidia can keep growing in supercomputers by exploiting its energy-­efficient edge. Its chips have dozens of simple cores that tackle lots of repetitive computations at once. Supercomputer scientists have been pushing the idea of parallel computing for years. It’s more power-efficient than an Intel Core i5, which is built around two to four quick, versatile cores that compute one instruction at a time. Pairing Intel or AMD chips with Nvidia’s graphics chips in supercomputers (much as they are in personal computers) results in machines that are three times more efficient than ones that rely on CPUs alone.

Three of the world’s five fastest super­computers use Nvidia’s processors. In October the Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced an effort to build the world’s fastest supercomputer, which will use AMD Opteron chips and 18,000 of Nvidia’s graphics-processing units. When it is completed later this year, it might crank out up to 30 petaflops and use around 10 megawatts.

The Department of Energy has ­announced it would like a machine that can hit exascale speeds using just 20 megawatts of power. The same technology could be used to build machines able to do the work of today’s supercomputers on a much smaller power budget. “That would allow a small ­engineering group to do things that today can only be done by a rarefied few,” says Scott. He thinks we can hit that mark by the end of the

Source:http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0227/technology-supercomputer-steve-scott-nvidia-builds-dream-machine.html

If you’ve paid attention to quarterly earnings reports from the major computer OEMs, you’ve likely noticed that the hard drive shortage this fall had an impact, but not a disastrous one. Companies like Intel reported that manufacturer inventories were substantially affected as company’s held off on restocking to see what prices would do, but net sales only fell modestly.

The GPU market, on the other hand, seems to have taken a hit. Nvidia has stated that its Q4 results were hurt by the hard drive shortage, something AMD also mentioned in its Q4 results. We didn’t break it out initially — AMD’s overall GPU results were fairly decent — but in the wake of NV’s statements it’s worth revisiting.

The company has cut its profit forecast by ~12 percent, from $1.06B in sales for the quarter down to $950 million. The stated reasons are the aforementioned HDD shortage as well as “the Tegra 2 mobile business declined more rapidly than expected, ahead of devices based on the Tegra 3 processor ramping into production in the first quarter of calendar-year 2012.”

Both impacts are a bit surprising given NV’s previous guidance. During the company’s last conference call, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang indicated that he thought the HDD shortage situation would be a non-issue, while talking up momentum for Tegra 3 and Tegra 2. One point the CEO hammered several times throughout the call is that Tegra 3 had more design wins going into this quarter than Tegra 2 ever had. If that’s true, Tegra-related revenue will start to pick up again once more phones and tablets start shipping with the chip.

What Do Hard Drives And GPUs Have In Common?

The fact that an HDD shortage would impact NV’s GPU sales is testament to just how much of the industry is driven by integrated graphics. Ten years ago, when only rock-bottom systems shipped with integrated graphics, a discrete GPU was still standard in the majority of configurations. Today, GPUs are a value-added component. As a result, manufacturers hurt by rising HDD prices, compensated by shipping systems with integrated graphics.

The long-term discrete GPU attach rate has been stable for years, but the trend is one reason why NV has pumped so much money into driving products like Tesla and Tegra. The slide below shows the company’s changing revenue — note that “Q3 2012″ refers to Nvidia’s fiscal year. The calendar period referred to as the fourth quarter of 2011 is actually Nvidia’s Q4 2012.

The good news is that both of the factors that’ve hit NV’s revenue should ease off in the first quarter. We expect to see more Tegra 3 design wins announced at Mobile World Congress in late February, while the hard drive shortage will gradually improve throughout the year. We should also hear more about Kepler, and possibly NV’s “Tegra 3+” solution (think Tegra 3 on 28nm) in the weeks ahead.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-warns-on-Q4-Profits-Thanks-To-HDD-Shortage/

We weren’t sure what to expect from NVIDIA’s press event at CES, but the big news turned out to be that ASUS is shipping the world’s first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet–starting today–an ASUS Transformer Prime, which boasts the NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage and hosted an impressive demonstration of the new Transformer Prime, including gorgeous movie playback from Fandango, real-time photo editing with Snapseed, multiplayer FPS gameplay over a LAN, and remote PC access through Splashtop THD. (The latter included a smokin’ hot demo of Skyrim being played via Steam via Splashtop THD.)

Then, he announced that the Tegra 3-based ASUS Transformer Prime with Ice Cream Sandwich starts shipping today.

Although there’s no official name for some reason and no ship date for it, Huang and ASUS CEO Jerry Shen showed off a 7-inch tablet, which sports a lot of the same specs as the Transformer Prime–including a Tegra 3 chip, great camera and sound, Ice Cream Sandwich, and so on–and will retail for $249.

NVIDIA also demoed some of its other technologies, including PRISM, which dynamically adjusts backlight levels and color to achieve a great picture while consuming less power, and DirectTouch, which significantly boosts the sample rate for touch input by leveraging the fifth companion core in Tegra 3. With DirectTouch, sample rates went from about 80 samples a second with 10 finger input to over 200 samples a second.

Huang shared the stage with a Microsoft Executive who demoed and discussed Windows 8. Some of the premier features of Windows 8 (which will apparently launch in 200 markets) will be connected standby, which keeps the device connected and up to date even when in standby mode; a picture password that requires a series of swipes and gestures on specific parts of a photo to unlock the device; and the Windows app store. Microsoft will only claim a 20% fee, leaving 80% to the app devs, and enterprises will be able to easily customize app deployments on Windows 8 devices.

Finally, Huang briefly mentioned the car industry and its growing integration of mobile technology, teasing an announcement coming in the near future regarding NVIDIA technology and car maker Audi and noting that the Tesla Model S and a Lamborghini model already have Tegra chips inside.

If you were expecting a desktop GPU announcement, too bad–the Tegra 3 was the star of the show so far. We do have meetings with NVIDIA at which we hope to hear more about their GPU plans, for both desktop and mobile applications.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/NVIDIA-CES-Showcase-Tegra-GeForce-3D-Vision-and-More/

NVIDIA has open sourced its CUDA compiler for the benefit of “academic researchers and software-tool vendors.” To enable them “to more easily add GPU support for more programming languages and support CUDA applications on alternative processor architectures”. The NVIDIA compiler is based on the popular LLVM

The NVIDIA CUDA is a GPGPU(General-Purpose GPU) solution that enables software to take advantage of a computer’s graphics hardware for non-graphics related tasks. The kind of highly parallelized computation that graphics hardware excels at can also be beneficial in processing other kinds of data. Video encoding and decoding, mathematical / scientific calculations, and other tasks that can benefit from massive parellization could be run on the GPU to greately accelerate throughput.
Currently CUDA is restricted to NVIDIA hardware only, however with the this opening of the CUDA platform it could be used for other architectures, such as those by Intal and AMD. An alternative open standard OpenCL, by the creators of OpenGL is also available and can be used across platforms.

The NVIDIA compile source code is not available openly — at least not right now — but only for “qualified academic researchers and software tools developers,” who need to register at NVIDIA’s website in order to obtain access to the source code.

Source:http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/NVIDIA-Open-Sources-its-CUDA-Compiler_8228.html

CyberpowerPC announced a laptop bundle that enables users to stream content to a large-screen TV via WiFi in full 1080p. It follows that users can browse the Internet with the same connection, using the TV as a monitor.

The bundle is comprised of a Netgear Push2TV 2.0 adapter and Intel’s WiDi technology and will ship with CyberpowerPC’s Xplorer X6-9100 ($825) and 9200 ($885) notebooks for a limited time.

There’s no need to crowd around a laptop screen to view and share content from your hard disk, home network or browser. CyberpowerPC, www.cyberpowerpc.com, a leading manufacturer of custom gaming desktop PCs, gaming notebooks, and performance workstations, today announced a pair of high-performance laptop computers that combine Netgear’s Push2TV 2.0 adapter and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, which allow you to enjoy personal and online content on a big screen TV with a simple wireless connection.

For a limited time CyberpowerPC is bundling its Xplorer X6-9100 and Xplorer X6-9200 series of gaming notebooks with a free Netgear PUSH2TV (Version 2.0) adapter for Intel WiDi 1080P, and a visibly smart 2nd generation Intel Core processor. The combination lets you kick back and experience your favorite movies, videos, photos, online shows and even game in full HD on your big screen TV with outstanding image clarity and sound.

Simply connect the wireless Netgear PUSH2TV adapter to your High-Def TV, follow a few simple steps, and you are ready to beam full HD 1080P straight to the big screen. Experiencing your videos and pictures in HD resolution up to 1080p on your TV is as easy as pushing a button. You can also surf the internet from your couch on your TV; watch TV shows and movies online, or go anywhere a web browser will take you.

The CyberpowerPC Xplorer X6-9100 features a 15.6″ 1920×1080 Full HD display; Intel Core i7-2670QM Processor; 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-1333 RAM; Intel HD3000 Integrated Graphics; Intel HM65 Chipset; 640GB 5400RPM SATA300 HDD; and 8X DVD Rewritable Drive. The MSRP is $825.

The CyberpowerPC Xplorer X6-9200 features the same specs as the X6-9100 series but includes a discrete NVIDIA GT540M 2GB GPU with NVIDIA optimus technology for improved battery efficiency. The MSRP is $885.

CyberpowerPC’s Xplorer gaming notebooks can be customized with a number of performance hardware and components such as Solid State Drives, Blu-Ray drives, memory, gaming gear, business and productivity software, and more at the company website, www.cyberpowerpc.com.

Additionally, CyberpowerPC loads every gaming notebook with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Operating System for an enhanced gaming and multimedia experience. All CyberpowerPC Xplorer gaming laptops includes a 1-year limited warranty and free lifetime phone support.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/CyberpowerPC-Laptop-Bundle-Lets-You-Stream-HD-Content-To-Your-TV/

Going from making good motherboards to going head to head with Samsung for Google’s affection is a pretty big step for ASUS, but it’s one that the company has taken and done very well with. None of its peers have made the same transition, especially not while continuing to thrive in their existing businesses. I don’t think anyone can say that ASUS’ motherboards have suffered over the past several years as the company has transitioned, much like Apple, into the world of being a mobile computer manufacturer.

ASUS’ first Android tablet was a knock out of the park. The original Eee Pad Transformer gave us a glimpse of the future with its keyboard dock while delivering a good Honeycomb experience for $100 less than the competition. As many sacrifices as ASUS had to make to reach its price point, the original Eee Pad remains one of the best Honeycomb tablets on the market. But the show must go on and simply being the cheapest on the block doesn’t work anymore, particularly with companies like Amazon redefining what cheap means. It was time for a new flagship and today we have that tablet:

Whereas Motorola was first out of the gate with a Tegra 2 based Honeycomb tablet, ASUS is done with playing second fiddle. ASUS is NVIDIA’s first and only launch partner for its new quad-core Tegra 3 SoC. The Google OS of choice is still Honeycomb, although I hear the Eee Pad Transformer Prime also happens to be Google’s development and validation vehicle for Ice Cream Sandwich on Tegra 3.

The Prime is everything the original Eee Pad Transformer was missing. It’s thinner than an iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab and built out of aluminum and glass. Other than minor details like the buttons and connectors, your hands never touch plastic when using the Transformer Prime. Even those plastic buttons look and feel great. The tablet is just beautiful. It echoes the design language of ASUS’ Zenbook, but without the disappointment in the panel department. ASUS’ latest tablet actually has the best display of any tablet we’ve reviewed, including those made by Apple and Samsung (more on this later).

The usual suspects are carefully placed around the perimeter of the Transformer Prime. Held in landscape mode the power/lock button is at the top left corner, with the volume rocker perpendicular to and just below it on the left side. Also along the left side is a micro HDMI output for display cloning and a microSD card slot. A standard 1/8″ headset jack finds itself on the right side of the tablet, and ASUS’ standard dock connector is bottom center. The original Eee Pad had two speaker grills, while the Prime has a single, larger speaker on the back of the device. Audio output is surprisingly full but the tablet doesn’t get loud enough to overpower a noisy environment.

ASUS went a little crazy with the rubber stoppers all over the Prime. The dock connector and its two mechanical retention/secure points are plugged with these things, as is the USB port on the optional transformer dock.

Just like last time, the Eee Pad Transformer Prime can be mated to an optional keyboard dock for an extra $149. The dock adds a QWERTY keyboard, trackpad, an SD card reader, USB port and comes with its own 22Wh battery. The dock’s battery not only powers itself but it can charge the Prime’s battery, almost doubling battery life.

We’ll spend the next several pages going through every detail of the new Eee Pad Transformer Prime as well as NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 SoC, but on the surface, ASUS has built a formidable tablet. How does it fare under closer scrutiny? Very well it turns out…
A Lesson in How Not to Launch a Product

Of all of the things ASUS has learned from running the PC side of its business it seems that the proper way to launch a brand new platform didn’t translate over to its tablet business. I received the Eee Pad Transformer Prime 39 hours ago and the NDA lifted just now. While this is not atypical for many mobile launches, ASUS should know better.

To do a thorough review of any product the minimum time we need to adequately integrate that product into our daily routine and come away with a deep understanding of the product is at least a week. I say that’s the minimum amount of time because if you give us more, then we can do even better analysis and spend even more time bug hunting. Most of the players in the mobile space don’t really get this, and as a result they are complicit in the disappointing amount of analysis that’s done on their hardware. This will change as time goes on, but I honestly expected more from ASUS.
My WiFi is Broken

What’s one of the biggest risks when you give reviewers only 39 hours to review a product? If something is wrong with the review sample, there’s hardly any time to fix it. This time I drew the short straw and my Transformer Prime review sample arrived with highly questionable WiFi performance. Both range and performance were impacted by whatever plagued my sample. I got less range and much lower performance than the original Eee Pad Transformer regardless of location or wireless access point. How bad? My Prime had difficulty sustaining more than 2Mbps over WiFi. ASUS and NVIDIA both sent me proof that there wasn’t something wrong with other samples, and from their data it looks like the WiFi stack in the Prime is at least comparable to the original Transformer. The problem may just be limited to my unit, although I tend to believe that if something goes wrong once, it’s bound to go wrong more than once.

Based on the fact that wireless performance improves when docked and upstream speeds are almost normal, if I had to guess I’d say that the receive antenna is either not fully connected or somehow impaired from doing its normal duty. I should have a replacement unit in by tomorrow, but unfortunately that means you won’t see any WiFi dependent results here.

ASUS chose Broadcom’s BCM4329 for WiFi/Bluetooth duty. Although the controller supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz operation, the Prime is limited to work on 2.4GHz networks. The rest of the design is pretty standard – you get a single spatial stream at a maximum of 72Mbps. Real world performance, if ASUS/NVIDIA’s numbers are to be believed, should top out somewhere in the upper 30Mbps area.

Source:http://www.anandtech.com/show/5163/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-nvidia-tegra-3-review

If you weren’t already excited about the upcoming release of Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) platform or the Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet from Asus, you will be after watching a video of the two working together with NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor. This is the kind of technology threesome that should appeal to anywhere, regardless of which way you swing (yes, we’re looking at you, diehard iOS fans).

“Google has done a great job on ICS and has made the platform open to the ecosystem and easy to develop on. Thanks to Google’s developer support, NVIDIA’s experienced software team was able to work with Asus to quickly bring up Android 4.0 ICS on the Transformer Prime,” NVIDIA said in a blog post.

NVIDIA says the embedded video above was recorded on November 16, just two days after the source code for ICS was made publicly available. Even though it’s only an early demo, you can already see Ice Cream Sandwich dripping with all kinds of rad, from silky smooth transitions to impeccable 1080p playback performance, and even a quick look at fully optimized gaming that taps into all four cores of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 processor.

In addition to the Tegra 3 chip and Android 4.0 software, the Transformer Prime also features a 10.1-inch WXGA IPS+ capacitive touchscreen display, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 32GB/64GB eMMC flash memory, 8MP rear-facing camera, 1.2MP front-facing camera, micro HDMI port, microSD card slot, and various other odds and ends.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Tegra-3-Chomps-Through-Ice-Cream-Sandwich-on-Asus-Eee-Pad-Transformer-Prime-Video/

Toppling the iPad has proved more difficult than some manufacturers might have anticipated. Is it because the iPad is a superior tablet to everything else that’s available? Some would argue that’s precisely why Apple’s magical slate is able to conjure up so many sales, but as far as Nvidia is concerned, there are other factors that give the iPad a distinct advantage.

While speaking to the press in New York on Friday, Jen-Hsun Huang, the often outspoken CEO of Nvidia, said the iPad’s main advantage is that Apple can sell the device through its own store instead of having to lean on retailers like Best Buy, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“Everything sold through Best Buy has to pay Best Buy a margin,” Huang explained.

As far as Huang is concerned, everything else is secondary and more easily solved, like creating a better usability experience, craftsmanship, and cost. On that latter point, Amazon (Kindle Fire) and Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet) seem to have it solved, though both ended up cutting corners in the features department and are leaning heavily on their own content platforms in order offer a lower cost slate.

With regards to future tablets, Huang talked up its recently introduced Tegra 3 platform and said it will show up in $299 tablets within the next couple of quarters. He didn’t say whether those would be full size (9.7-inch) tablets or 7-inch slates like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, but either way, a $299 Tegra 3 slate sounds rad, doesn’t it?

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Talks-299-Tegra-3-Tablets-and-the-Challenge-of-Competing-Against-the-iPad/

Wondering if ARM-based chips are powerful enough for the real world? Here’s your answer. NVIDIA has just unveiled a new prototype system with Tegra ARM CPUs and CUDA GPUs, and that system just so happens to be a supercomputer. The company has announced that the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is developing a new hybrid supercomputer that, for the first time, uses energy-efficient, low-power NVIDIA Tegra ARM CPUs, together with high-performance NVIDIA CUDA GPUs.

BSC is planning to develop the first large scale system based on this technology, with a near term goal of demonstrating two to five times improvement in energy efficiency compared with today’s most efficient systems. BSC’s ultimate research goal is to deliver exascale-level performance while using 15 to 30 times less power than current supercomputer architectures. This so-called EU Mont-Blanc Project will explore next-generation HPC architectures and develop a portfolio of exascale applications that run efficiently on these kinds of energy-efficient, embedded mobile technologies.

“In most current systems, CPUs alone consume the lion’s share of the energy, often 40 percent or more,” said Alex Ramirez, leader of the Mont-Blanc Project. “By comparison, the Mont-Blanc architecture will rely on energy-efficient compute accelerators and ARM processors used in embedded and mobile devices to achieve a four- to 10-times increase in energy-efficiency by 2014.” To support growing demand for similar ARM-based initiatives around the world, NVIDIA also announced plans to develop a new hardware and software development kit. The kit, with hardware developed by SECO, will feature a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM CPU accelerated by a discrete NVIDIA GPU. It is expected to be available in the first half of 2012, and will be supported by the NVIDIA CUDA parallel programming toolkit.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/NVIDIAs-Tegra-CPUs-And-CUDA-GPUs-Hit-Barcelona-Supercomputing-Center/

NVIDIA today announced that system builders worldwide are now shipping the fastest PC gaming platforms ever built, thanks in part to NVIDIA(R) SLI(R) technology and the just-released Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors and X79 chipset-based motherboards.

The combination of NVIDIA SLI technology — which allows for multiple GPUs to run on a single PC — and new X79-based motherboards allow gamers to customize their PC experience with up to four NVIDIA GeForce(R) GTX GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, the world’s fastest DX11 GPUs. Licensed by the world’s leading motherboard manufacturers — including Intel, ASUS, ASRock, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI, SLI technology is crucial for playing this year’s hottest graphics-intensive games, such as the recently released Battlefield 3 and upcoming Batman: Arkham City with detail, resolution and immersion settings cranked up.

“Falcon’s entire desktop lineup will be moving to Sandy Bridge-E, and NVIDIA SLI technology was an absolute necessity for every model we make,” said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest. “It was critical for us to offer our clients multi-GPU options, and pairing Sandy Bridge’s monstrous new CPU horsepower with SLI’s monstrous graphics power will give gamers and enthusiasts smoother frame rates and a better visual experience.”

NVIDIA SLI technology is now available for all consumer-based desktop and mobile PC platforms, including previous versions of Intel Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo processors, as well as those based on the AMD Bulldozer and Phenom II CPUs.

NVIDIA DX11 GPUs are designed to deliver the world’s fastest performance for DX11 games, and are the only consumer GPUs to feature multiple tessellation engines for advanced graphics rendering capabilities. NVIDIA GeForce GPUs also provide gamers with additional features not found on any other discrete graphics solutions, such as NVIDIA PhysX(R) technology for deeper gaming immersion, and support for NVIDIA 3D Vision(TM) technology, delivering eye-popping stereoscopic 3D on a single display or spanning across three screens for an immersive gaming environment.

For more information on NVIDIA SLI technology, please visit: http://bit.ly/grvFP8 .

Note to editors: to download images of new X79/SLI systems and motherboards from companies listed in this press release, please visit: http://bit.ly/srWPgJ .

Partner Quotes

“The combination of an Intel X79 motherboard and NVIDIA GeForce GTX SLI will break all the existing performance barriers raising the gaming standard for the power user. The wait is finally over.” — LL Shiu, Chief Operating Officer at ASRock

“PC gaming is growing at a rapid pace. With so many hot games rolling into the market, it’s time for gamers to switch the gear. All hardcore gamers looking for the best bang for the buck will naturally gravitate towards an Intel X79 motherboard and GeForce GTX GPUs as this combination will provide enthusiasts with the best gaming platforms for 2011 and 2012.” — Kent Chien, General Manager, Multimedia Business Unit at Asus

“CyberpowerPC gaming systems powered by Intel’s blazing fast X79 chipset along with NVIDIA’s fastest single GPU on the planet in single, dual, triple or quad GPU configuration yields uncompromising gaming performance for maximum high-definition gaming.” — Eric Cheung, CEO of Cyberpower

“A Digital Storm Hailstorm system equipped with three NVIDIA GTX 580s in TRI-SLI and Intel’s new X79 platform has blown away all our previous performance records making it the most dominant gaming system we’ve ever built.” — Harjit Chana, chief marketing officer at Digital Storm

“EVGA is extremely excited to be launching new NVIDIA SLI-ready Intel X79 chipset based motherboards. Right now is a great time to be a PC gamer, and with the latest game titles, the need for enthusiast performance hardware is more apparent than ever.” — Bob Klase, VP of Sales at EVGA

“For playing any of today’s hottest PC titles, the pairing of Intel X79 motherboard and GeForce GTX SLI is one awesome combination that our customers have been asking for.” — Henry Kao, Vice President of GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit

“MAINGEAR’s got what gamers want: expertise, extreme performance, and options galore. If you’re looking for a new PC featuring the new Intel X79 platform with extreme overclocking and NVIDIA GeForce graphics in single, dual, 3-way or even quad SLI, combined with MAINGEAR’s EPIC liquid cooling solutions, gamers can have the best immersive gaming experience possible.” — Wallace Santos, CEO of MAINGEAR

“Gamers know that the best way to experience their games is with an Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPUs. Now, they will be able to harness the power of multiple GPUs for even more performance and immersion features with our Intel X79 motherboard and GeForce GTX GPUs.” — Jeremy Liao, Assistant Vice President of Multimedia Department at MSI

“ORIGIN PC is gearing up this holiday season with NVIDIA GeForce GPUs and the new Intel X79 processors. Our ORIGIN PC GENESIS desktops and EON laptops are ready for battle, using Intel X79 processors to slay dragons, and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs in SLI to clean out Arkham City. It’s time to gear up for the win!” — Kevin Wasielewski, CEO and co-founder of ORIGIN PC

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-sli-multi-gpu-technology-paired-with-intel-core-i7-extreme-edition-processors-power-worlds-fastest-desktop-gaming-platforms-2011-11-14?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Asus and Nvidia have collectively taken the wraps off the next-generation version of Asus’ well-received Transformer tablet line, and the new system aims to carve out a slice of the premium tablet market. It’s far from a sure bet given the tremendous difficulty Android tablets have had cracking into the iPad-dominated industry, but the Prime impresses—at least, so far. We reserve final judgment until we’ve actually seen shipping hardware.

The Transformer Prime incorporates Nvidia’s new Kal-El processor and it’s one of Tegra 3’s upper-end launch systems. We’ve discussed Kal-El in depth several times before; the new chip contains a fifth ‘Companion Core’ to reduce idle power consumption and contains 12 GPU cores, up from Tegra 2’s eight. NV claims that Tegra 3’s GPU is up to 3x faster than Tegra 2’s thanks to additional architectural enhancements.

The Transformer Prime uses the same dock as the Transformer and the tablet itself is the same size and offers the same size screen at a 1200×800 resolution. One new feature of the Prime, however, is what Asus is calling “Super IPS+.” The display’s normal brightness tops out at ~500 nits, but the Prime offers an alternate ‘Super IPS’ mode that pushes display brightness up to 600 nits for use in bright outdoor environments.

Asus has also worked with Nvidia to improve touch-screen lag and claims the screen responds with just a 50ms lag time, compared to an average lag of 110ms on competitor’s products. Battery life has improved over the Transformer’s claimed 9.5/16 hours for mobile and docked mode; the Transformer Prime can supposedly run 12 hours independently and up to 18 hours when connected to the dock. When we asked Asus how it conducted its battery life tests, the company responded: ” In addition, battery life results were obtained with a constant 720P video playback with all ports on and screen brightness at 60nits. We are still optimizing battery life with NVIDIA and expect these numbers to hold true or improve slightly.”

The new tablet will launch with Honeycomb 3.2, but Asus intends to offer an update to Ice Cream Sandwich once it finishes testing that OS.

Asus is positioning the Prime remarkably well, at least as far as the original Transformer is concerned. An extra $100 buys you 16GB more storage, a significantly faster system, and an improved camera, plus the Super IPS+ display. There’s no arguing that the Transformer Prime’s specs are much stronger than those on the iPad 2—even if Kal-El only matches the A6 overall, the Transformer Prime would come out ahead in terms of its price/performance ratio. It’s an impressive, exciting machine and we’re curious to see if the new generation of Android tablets can finally chip away at Apple’s iPad.

Unfortunately for Asus, it’s unclear if impressive specifications and good design are going to be enough. Thus far, none of the manufacturers that’ve introduced Android tablets have seen them go on to become smash hits, though we suspect the less-hyped devices from smaller players have done far better than the dramatic failures of the Motorola Xoom or BlackBerry PlayBook. Even so, the Transformer Prime is expensive, all the more so considering Asus wants $149 for a keyboard with a small battery, USB 2.0 port, and an SD slot in it. That’s not nearly the rip off that the Atrix 4G’s dock was earlier this year, but it’s scarcely a compelling value. $649-749 buys a nice laptop these days, and we’re not convinced that the Transformer Prime’s price structure is going to win it any converts.

Somehow, in all the excitement over the iPad 2, OEMs have apparently forgotten that netbooks became popular precisely because they didn’t cost as much as full size noteboooks. Nvidia’s Tegra 3 isn’t going to be able to match the performance of an x86 laptop, which is going to make it harder for any tablet this expensive to carve out a niche for itself, particularly given the enormous economic uncertainty gripping the US and Europe. With tablets like the Kindle Fire set to debut at $199, Asus may have priced the Transformer Prime too high for the buyers it’s hoping to attract.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Asus-Unwrap-Transformer-Prime/

Tablets and smartphones will soon get quad-core processors with Nvidia’s new Tegra 3 chip, which will eclipse the application and graphics performance provided by dual-core processors found on tablets like Apple’s iPad and Motorola’s Xoom.

The Tegra 3 chip, announced Wednesday, is the first quad-core processor for tablets and smartphones, Nvidia said. Its performance will be five times better than Tegra 2, the dual-core predecessor found in tablets from Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba.

The chip, formerly code-named Kal El, will run at up to 1.3GHz in a quad-core configuration and appear in Asustek Computer’s Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet, which was announced on Wednesday. The Transformer Prime tablet will have 12 hours of battery with the help of a Tegra 3 chip, a Nvidia spokesman said.

Tegra 3 is based on the Cortex-A9 processor design from ARM, whose processor designs are found in most tablets and smartphones today. The chip will run Google’s Android OS. A Tegra 3 tablet with Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 was shown at the software giant’s Build conference in September. Smartphones with the chip are expected in the first quarter next year, an Nvidia spokesman said.

A shot of the Tegra 3 die. [Photo: Nvidia]The chip combines CPU cores with a number of processing units for tablet and smartphone functions. It has 12 GeForce graphics cores, which could provide a massive multimedia performance boost. A low-power fifth core can run secondary tasks to reduce the processing strain on the four main CPUs. For example, the low-power fifth core is activated if a user wants to listen to music, and the four high-performance cores are shut down to extend device battery life, Nvidia said.

Though advertised at 12 hours, the battery life of devices like Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer Prime with Tegra 3 could vary with tasks, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

“It’s going to depend on the workload. We’ll see once we get our hands on the hardware,” McCarron said. “The general rule of thumb is the more intense the workload, the less life you get out of the battery.”

Nevertheless, Tegra 3 provides more performance headroom, McCarron said. Mobile devices are demanding more computing power and many form factors are evolving, and Tegra 3 could be an effective gaming platform, McCarron said.

The additional performance provided by Tegra 3 may not be needed every time as most tablet and phone applications run well on single-core or dual-core processors, McCarron said. The Tegra 3 chip architecture provides a way to activate only the necessary cores to run programs, McCarron said. The chip also consumes very little power in idle mode, McCarron said.

Nvidia’s prime competitor is Qualcomm, which is also heading in the direction of quad-core chips with its Snapdragon S4 integrated chips, also built around ARM CPU architecture. They will have an integrated 3G/4G radio. On the other hand, quad-core chips are not a top priority for Texas Instruments, which argues that software hasn’t yet been designed to take advantage of four processing cores, and that it will bring those chips to market only when they fit in a device and meet the thermal budget.

Source:http://www.pcworld.com/article/243453/tablets_get_snappier_with_nvidias_quadcore_tegra_3.html

In the 1990s, Intel (INTC: Charts, News, Offers) and Microsoft (MSFT: Charts, News, Offers) were widely regarded as the dominant growth forces in tech. Together, they started the “Wintel” dynasty – a time where Pentium clock speeds were an industry standard and Windows was synonymous with the personal computer. Both companies were big bullies – Intel marginalized long-time rival AMD (AMD: Charts, News, Offers) using controversial strong arm tactics and Microsoft was probed by the Justice Department for its anti-competitive practices against Netscape. Microsoft’s former rival Apple (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) was broken, shriveling in the corner without its iconic founder, Steve Jobs. What a difference a decade makes.

Today, Intel and Microsoft are among the worst performing tech stocks in the Nasdaq. Microsoft rests at less than half of its all-time high, and Intel is at approximately a quarter. That doesn’t mean these companies have shrunk. On the contrary, they have continued growing earnings, more than doubling their earnings per share. However, investors are indifferent to “Wintel” stocks since the prevailing view in 2011 is that the Wintel dynasty has ended. With the industry shaking return of Apple with its iPhone and iPad devices, the tech industry has shifted away from focusing on desktop and laptop based processors in favor of low-power consumption mobile processors – a field dominated by ARM Holdings (ARM: Charts, News, Offers). Other names dominate key supply chain parts of the tablet/smartphone revolution – Qualcomm (QCOM: Charts, News, Offers), Broadcom (BRCM: Charts, News, Offers) and Texas Instruments (TXN: Charts, News, Offers) being its most important industry peers, each producing specialized fabless microprocessors for specialized hardware. Even graphics chip giant Nvidia (NVDA: Charts, News, Offers) has thrown its hat into the mobile processor ring with its Tegra all-in-one chips. With the decline of personal computers – as evidenced by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: Charts, News, Offers) and Dell’s (DELL: Charts, News, Offers) poor quarterly earnings and guidance – Intel is steadily losing ground to specialized processor manufacturers in niche markets. In the end, even long-time partner Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would be optimized for ARM processors.

However, Intel hasn’t completely given up on making a mark in the mobile revolution. This week, the company announced that it was now working with Google (GOOG: Charts, News, Offers) to port Android to the aging x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD. While this won’t be a silver bullet against the onslaught of tablets and smartphones powered by its smaller rivals, it buys Intel valuable time to manufacture a proper competitor to its more energy efficient competitors. The hardware giant is most likely to design a new batch of processors for mobile devices as none of their current Atom CPUs are power-efficient enough for phones or tablets. They also need to work on a solid GPU, since Intel integrated graphics have become an industry punchline for mediocre performance. ARM and Nvidia have been churning out powerful hardware for the mobile platforms for a while now, so Intel has some catching up to do. Despite Intel’s cross-licensing agreement with Nvidia, the latter still remains an efficient competitor which threatens to chip away at Intel’s market share.

Analysts have long touted Intel’s attractive valuations. With a trailing P/E of 9.3. a dividend yield of 4.3%, and a RoE of 25.9%, it’s hard to argue. However, shares of Intel have gone nowhere over the past decade. Intel’s operating (30.13%) and net profit margins (22.67%) both shrunk over the past year, and its core business is based on maintaining gross margins over 60%. While the company was able to keep its head above water with gross margins of 60.64% in the most recent quarter, its younger industry rivals are perfectly content with gross margins of 40% on higher sales volume. In addition, the geek revolution in the 1990s, when computer users would compare clock speeds religiously, is long over. Normal computer users no longer care about nor understand processor speed – rather superior branding, packaging and software interface (such as Apple) – has become far more important. Ironically, Intel confused consumers even more with its i3, i5 and i7 lines – which was originally intended to “simplify” its product line – perhaps to mimic BMW’s 3,5 and 7 series. The idea backfired and confused consumers even more than its Ghz measurement standard. Throw in the idea of multiple cores (physical and logical), and ordinary consumers would just rather buy “something that works out of the box” than fret over technical details.

Although some investors think that Intel will survive only relying on its core competencies in PC and laptop markets, this would flatten the company’s growth potential. The company’s virgin effort in mobile territory – the Atom – was dubbed a failure. However, the company introduced new smartphone and tablet processors this week in San Francisco at the Intel Developer Forum, demonstrating its latest advances in chip miniaturization and Ultrabook processors. The thin Ultrabook devices, fragmented across multiple hardware retailers, will retail for approximately $1,000 and aimed at refreshing the laptop market with an improved power consumption / performance ratio. However, industry observers are quick to notice a glaring fact – that Intel’s “Ultrabooks” seem to be lackluster imitations of Apple’s three-year-old Macbook Air. Intel’s new processors are also focused on lower power consumption in an all-in-one chipset, showing that the company is evolving to compensate for its weaknesses, exploited continuously by rivals ARM Holdings and Nvidia.

Source:http://www.investorguide.com/article/9563/intel-intc-aint-what-it-used-to-be/

Speaking during a recent interview by Forbes, Jen-Hsun Huang Nvidia’s CEO confirmed that the company’s quad-core processor, codenamed “Kal-El”, would feature in tablet PC devices by the end of this year.

“We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm, we’re really the only two active players [in the tablet PC processor market],” said Huang.

While Nvidia originally planned for the quad-core processors to feature in tablets and smartphones by the end of 2011, he has now hinted that quad-core smartphones won’t appear until 2012.

The Nvidia mobile business section of the company currently generates around $2 billion annually and the company expects that to grow to around $20 billion by 2015. Huang was quick to point out that Nvidia currently features in 50 percent of the Android smartphone market, and 70 percent of the Android tablet market.

Source:http://mybroadband.co.za/news/quick-news/33496-quad-core-tablets-this-year-%E2%80%93-nvidia-ceo.html

Mini PCs? Check! Admittedly, small form factor machines have seemingly vanished from the spotlight in recent years, but there are still a handful of companies out there pounding the (small) pavement. CompuLab is one of them, and this week they’ve introduced the Trim-Slice. It’s an ARM Cortex A9-powered desktop that runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset, and it’s reaching out to the open-source community with Trim-Slice developers program.

The Trim-Slice H further extends the usability of ARM on the desktop by incorporating an accessible bay for a 2.5″ SATA hard-disk inside the Trim-Slice miniature fanless casing, and it’s offered in a couple of models: the $279 Trim-Slice H Diskless – where the buyer can add the hard disk or SSD, and the $319 Trim-Slice H250 – with 250GB hard disk and Linux pre-installed.

Both models incorporate 1 GHz Tegra 2, 1 GB RAM, HDMI and DVI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, built-in 802.11n WiFi, 4 USB ports, 2 SD slots, RS232 serial port and a USB Bluetooth adapter. Not bad for a micro PC, now the only question is: how are you going to put it to use?

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/TrimSlice-Micro-PC-Runs-On-NVIDIAs-Tegra-2/