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ARM's new mobile GPU will bring hardware ray tracing to smartphone gaming
The company also revealed CPU designs like the big new Cortex X3 and other lower-end GPU improvements
Not everyone is aware of the complex technical lineage involved in the parts nestled inside their smartphone, even if they know of names like Qualcomm or MediaTek and the chips these companies make. Basically all consumer Android devices use a CPU design and architecture created by a company called ARM, tweaking and customizing bits as they see fit. Today ARM announced its new CPUs and GPUs, which, over the next year or two, will trickle down into actual hardware released by chipset manufacturers and eventually end up in a phone you see online, on a store shelf, or maybe in your pocket. And by far the biggest announcement is ARM's new GPU, which supports hardware ray tracing — a feature mostly limited to recent game consoles and high-end desktop GPUs, though Samsung beat ARM to it.
Early adopters are used to dealing with bugs (or they should be), but once in a while a hidden problem can trickle down into stable, though rarely are they so funny as this. Some folks are running into issues with Chrome OS Stable v72 and later releases, resulting in crazy high CPU use. The twist? This problem only occurs in very particular, self-fulfilling circumstances: while you have the task manager open.
Qualcomm has announced what is technically a new chipset today in the upcoming Snapdragon 850 - and it's probably not what you think. While it could power your next laptop (maybe), you almost certainly won't be seeing the Snapdragon 850 in your next phone.
A report from The Register yesterday claimed that Windows and Linux developers were scrambling to fix a "fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips." The flaw theoretically allows any program to view the layout or contents of protected kernel memory areas, which often contain passwords, login keys, cached files, and other sensitive data. Even a web app could potentially read kernel-protected data.
Qualcomm has announced two new platforms today, the Snapdragon 660 and 630, meant to supplant the 653 and 626 respectively. Both are built on the company's latest 14nm FinFET process. They are also each part of Qualcomm's so-called "High tier," which rests — as one would numerically assume — between the 800 and 400 tiers. I don't want to oversimplify too many details of this release since it is very nifty, but at the same time I would like to ensure the information I'm presenting is accessible, so forgive me if I occasionally digress and/or geek out.
The name MediaTek is usually associated with lower-end Chinese smartphones and tablets, since their SoCs are rather inexpensive. In the last year or so, the chip manufacturer has been working to push past that reputation. When it introduced the Helio X20, a few people took notice. Innovation is not usually the game with MediaTek, but it does try some interesting CPU designs. Today, it revealed the new Helio X23 and Helio X27 mobile processors.
Earlier this month, I wrote about possibly the worst benchmarking application I had ever seen, 'Nenamark.' But Geekbench has come to save the day, bringing their Geekbench 4 benchmarking utility to Android. Geekbench is another cross-platform benchmarking program, so you can compare your results to a wide range of devices.
Samsung and Qualcomm have been reliable partners since the rise of Android, to the mutual benefit of both the phone maker and the OEM chip supplier. But according to this report from Bloomberg, that relationship has hit a rocky patch as Samsung prepares its next flagship phone, presumably the Galaxy S6. An anonymous tipster told Bloomberg that Samsung will decline to use a Qualcomm chipset for the phone after poor testing of the Snapdragon 810, the OEM's top-of-the-line processor.
ARM technology powers the vast majority of mobile devices in the world, and the company has just announced some new designs to continue that tradition. The ARM Cortex-A17 is a new mid-range CPU core that offers improved speed and efficiency for budget devices. That's not all – there is also a new version of the Mali GPU for a complete price-conscious package.
If you've already updated to Android 4.3, whether via an OTA or by flashing it manually, and rooted it, you're more than likely using Chainfire's SuperSU, which carefully works around the new restrictions Google put in place. Cody has a good write-up about why they did it and what's going on, so go read that if you're interested in the details.
ARM Announces Cortex-A12 CPU And Mali-T622 GPU Architectures, Mali-V500 Video Processing Solution, Coming In 2014
ARM is kind of of big deal if you like mobile devices: they release and maintain the architectures licensed by nearly all the world's mobile System-on-a-Chip
ARM is kind of of big deal if you like mobile devices: they release and maintain the architectures licensed by nearly all the world's mobile System-on-a-Chip (SoC) makers. Today they've announced new CPU and GPU designs specifically targeted ant the growing mid-range market, the Cortex-A12 and Mali-T622. This silicon is powerful by today's standards, but a bit less so than their A15 (Samsung's Exynos 5250, NVIDIA Tegra 4) and T624 (and higher) counterparts, designed for more economical implementation. The basic idea is that mid-range devices, which ARM defines as between $150 and $350 unsubsidized, will get both more powerful and more efficient.
Security Researcher Demonstrates GPS Vulnerability That Could Let Hackers Track Users' Location, Take Over Phone
Over at Black Hat USA 2012, security researcher Ralf-Phillip Weinmann demonstrated a vulnerability in several Android devices that utilized A-GPS to send
Over at Black Hat USA 2012, security researcher Ralf-Phillip Weinmann demonstrated a vulnerability in several Android devices that utilized A-GPS to send illicit messages to the device which could, he explained, be used to send a report of the device's location any time an A-GPS message was sent or even be used to gain complete control of the device.
Today, I uninstalled the Amazon Appstore and bought all the FAOTD (free app of the day) apps I've been really using. Why did I do it? Because, mildly put, the Amazon Appstore app, which is required for all Amazon-installed apps to run and perform their license checks, has affected my battery life in very negative ways. Even if you never open it, it will keep running in the background, using up valuable CPU cycles, keeping the device awake when it should be sleeping.
During Mobile World Congress nearly 2 months ago, NVIDIA released some details about a few impressive looking upcoming games. One of them was the very original looking Eden to GREEEEN. Eric summarized the game well:
JRummy, the developer behind Root Browser, Ultimate Backup, BusyBox Installer, and a handful of other awesome apps, has put ROM Toolbox on sale in the Play Store for just $2.99 (a cool 50% off its usual price) and plans to donate half of all the sale's revenue to the Testicular Cancer Society.
To any hardcore modder, overclocking (or underclocking) your CPU is one of the best ways to get the most from your device. While some popular ROMs now have the ability to control your CPU baked in, many don't - and in the earlier days, virtually none did. Enter SetCPU - the de facto standard.
Sony brought some sleek new devices to MWC, but we were surprised to see nothing truly groundbreaking - specifically, a lack of quad-core CPUs. CNET Asia got a few minutes with Stephen Sneeden, product marketing manager for Sony Mobile, and he clarified the companies stance, saying that we likely won't see quad-core phones from the company until early 2013.
Qualcomm is going to release an upgraded version of its S4 generation Snapdragon chipset in the second half of 2012, the company announced at MWC 2012 today.
Just two days ago, we saw how blazingly fast Qualcomm's new Krait-based Snapdragon S4 CPU is in dual-core MSM8960 guise. Today, they've announced that the S4 line of CPUs - including the MSM8960 and its quad-core brother APQ8064 (seriously, who came up with this naming system?) - will pack the next-gen 802.11ac Wi-Fi spec.