The notion of “purposeful computing” may sound like corporate thought leadership kind of stuff, but when I spoke with GB about his company’s goals and his personal philosophy in this regard, I came to realize it’s anything but.

In this paper, we have tested Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Chromebook reference platforms against competing devices equipped with processors from Intel and MediaTek. This data is a first-look at Snapdragon 7c performance since the platform’s launch, and it’s the first time the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c compute platform has been tested in a Chromebook.

Homomorphic Encryption will underpin a new US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that both Intel and Microsoft just announced a new platform enablement collaboration for.

Adaptive silicon solutions heavyweight, Xilinx, has just announced a new line of SmartNIC, or intelligent, adaptable Network Interface Cards, consisting of not only the physical Alveo SN1000 line, but broad platform solution frameworks and references designs to address major market opportunities like AI-powered video analytics and algorithmic financial trading. In addition, the company has launched an FPGA platform app store with ready-to-deploy solutions that address several key markets, such as data analytics, video and image processing, HPC, machine learning, networking and security.

NVIDIA is set to launch a new mainstream gaming graphics card on February 25th but with the introduction of its new $329 GeForce RTX 3060, the Silicon Valley GPU giant is also making bold moves to address critical shortage and supply/demand dynamics that are keeping its products from getting into the hands of more PC gamers around the world.

Mobile silicon heavyweight and 5G innovator Qualcomm announced a blockbuster deal this morning, that it intends to acquire NUVIA for $1.4 billion. As a custom Arm-based CPU start-up, NUVIA’s design engineering and executive team brings with it a pedigree of proven execution, having formerly contributed to custom Arm CPU development at Apple for its Mac and iPhone products. It’s a bold move by Qualcomm that makes a lot of sense, and likely accelerates its efforts to expand into new markets and product categories.

Details were also given regarding Mobileye’s plans for software-defined radar customized to autonomous vehicles, but it’s the new Lidar SoC that could really be the game changer. Costs can mount quickly when outfitting AVs with current Lidar sensors and technologies. The future photonic integrated circuit, or PIC, however, which is expected to arrive in 2025, could drive costs down significantly, while easing integration.

“Transparent OLED is a technology that maximizes the advantages of OLED and can be used in various places in our daily lives, from stores, shopping malls, and architectural interiors to autonomous vehicles, subway trains, and aircraft,” said Jong-sun Park, Senior Vice President & Head of the Commercial Business Unit at LG Display. He added, “It will grow into a next-generation display that can change the existing display paradigm.”

For this study, we set out to measure the potential productivity gains that can be realized by leveraging a Dell dock attached to full-sized input devices, such as a keyboard and mouse kit, dual monitors, and various peripherals, attached to an assortment of laptops of various configurations.

In detailed briefings with Qualcomm, I learned about the company’s next generation Snapdragon mobile platform that’s manufactured on a cutting-edge 5nm semiconductor fab process, and it sounds impressive to be sure. Let’s step through a few of the particulars…

“With today’s rapidly evolving business climate, enterprises are constantly looking for new ways to modernize their business while leveraging their existing infrastructure. Running Anthos on bare metal using servers based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors will simplify the deployment of a cloud-first approach, opening a wide array of new use cases across retail, telco and manufacturing industries,” said Jason Grebe, Intel corporate vice president and general manager the Cloud and Enterprise Solutions Group.

Competing in the semiconductor industry is often a game of chess, placing long term bets several moves ahead that culminate for a winning strategy. The announcement of AMD entering into an agreement to acquire adaptive computing powerhouse Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock transaction, is a proverbial case study in Silicon Valley power moves. The transaction will be immediately accretive to AMD margins, cashflow and EPS, but what’s more interesting to me is the technology that Xilinx brings to the table, as well as the substantial market impact the combined companies could have.

Whenever Microsoft rolls out a large update for Windows, there are inevitable reports of problems. As much as Microsoft takes flack for these issues, the fact is Windows has to support a near infinite number of hardware and software combinations, which makes it impossible to test every one of them. Microsoft just announced that it has begun rolling out the big October 2020 update, which includes a revamped Start menu, new shortcuts and biometric security tools, and numerous other features…

Intel made a splash with the announcement of its new 11th Gen Core mobile processors, code named Tiger Lake, earlier this month. The company trumpeted hundreds of OEM laptop designs that are inbound for the Q4 holiday shopping season, offering breakout performance over its previous gen Ice Lake 10th Gen Core series platform, in addition to besting competitive AMD Ryzen 4000-powered laptops in mainstream app performance. Soon following that announcement, Intel also sent out pre-production reference systems to press and analysts like myself, as validation vehicles for its performance claims…

Though the field is advancing rapidly, we’re not quite there yet. Technologies being introduced today, however, inch us ever closer to that fully-autonomous future and enhance current vehicles with additional capabilities to improve safety, comfort, or both.

Intel just concluded a deep-dive analyst and press briefing that the company calls Architecture Day. It was a remotely hosted event, of course, but the company offered more than a few key disclosures that speak to both its product roadmap and strategy, based on its “Six Pillars Of Innovation,” which are Process, Architecture, Memory, Interconnect, Security and Software…

As you can see here in a Dell-EMC chassis configuration, a drive array configured with Kioxia’s new 3.84 Terabyte E3 drives offers serious density, in a standard 2U rack height.

If you understand what the Surface Pro X is all about and the prospect of a silent, thin, light convertible PC with solid battery life is intriguing, it’s worth checking out. You may be surprised by what it can do.

In short, NVIDIA’s new DRIVE platform will kick Mercedes-Benz into a much-needed higher gear in the race for autonomous driving, giving chase to Tesla and many others.

Foveros goes beyond traditional 3D stacking to enable logic-on-logic integration, which will work with virtually all high-performance circuits, like CPU cores, GPUs, and AI accelerators, for example. Foveros allows Intel to leverage different IP, potentially manufactured on different process nodes, on a single, small chip.