Qualcomm Reveals Snapdragon 835 - collaboration with Samsung

With the year nearing its end, the famous smartphone chip maker Qualcomm just announced their next year’s flagship processor, the Snapdragon 835.

Qualcomm has joined hands with Samsung to bring its next biggest processor that will eventually end up powering the next wave of mobile devices.

Improvements Over Snapdragon 820/821

The company is collaborating with Samsung and utilizing its 10 nm FinFet technology to manufacture the Snapdragon 835. The new chip will perform better than its predecessors and use less power as well.

The new design promises an increase of 27 percent in overall performance and will consume 40 percent less power compared with Snapdragon 821.

Quick Charge 4.0:

You may be wondering that this collaboration with Samsung is not a coincidence. Qualcomm is going to introduce the next version of its Quick Charge technology named Quick Charge 4.0.

The next Quick Charge version will be complying with all the safety measures required for it to be approved by Google and with its partner in chip making, Samsung.

Quick Charge 4.0 will be about 20% faster than Quick Charge 3.o, found in smartphones with Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors. According to Qualcomm, Quick Charge 4.0 will get your device 5 hours of usage time with just 5 minutes of charging.

Better Availability and Better Safety Measures:

Quick Charge compliant cables and power adapters were also less common with smartphone companies often bundling a regular power adapter with their phones instead of Quick Charge compatible adapters. Customers had to buy the charger separately to be able to use the fast charging technology.

Qualcomm is going to remedy this problem by increasing the availability of Quick Charge-compliant adapters and cables next year with the release of Snapdragon 835 in future devices.

These are the safety measures that Qualcomm is looking to employ with Quick Charge 4.0:

"Quick Charge 4 comes with advanced safety features for both the adapter and mobile device. Protection is implemented at multiple levels and throughout the entire charging process to more accurately measure voltage, current, and temperature while protecting the battery, system, cables and connectors. An additional layer of protection is also being added to help prevent battery over-charging and regulate current throughout every charge cycle."

Via TechCrunch 

This Smartwatch Runs On Your Body Heat

While a watch running on your body heat isn’t something new, a smartwatch doing so is unheard of.

Smartwatches of this generation do a lot more than just act like glorified Fitbits of the first generation, but they also use a lot of power to do it.

For that matter you will need to design a smartwatch that uses less power and is capable enough to be deemed a smartwatch. Nowadays people forget to charge their smartwatches and thus in the morning they end up with a dead battery.

Enter the Matrix PowerWatch:

Powerwatch remedies this problem by using your body heat to work. Made by Matrix industries (appropriately named after The Matrix series which had machines use humans as their power source) the Powerwatch was designed from the ground up with power efficiency in mind.

It works with a thermoelectric generator which requires one side of it to be warm while the other needs to be cold. The more difference there is in the temperature on the two sides the more power it generates. Matrix industries have incorporated this piece of tech into their watch. The back of the watch actively absorbs heat while the front of the watch is made with a metal crown and heat sinks to remain cool.

Lowest Power Processor in the World:

The processor used in the watch, AMBI Q,  was specially designed and is claimed by its makers to be the least power hungry processor in the world. Aside from that the watch is so power efficient that once fully charged the watch can remain on standby for 2 years.

Not Many Features:

In terms of features it offers pretty basic ones. It can sync with your smartphone via bluetooth to set the time. It cannot show notifications or allow you to call or send and receive texts. Fitness tracking is where this smartwatch excels and it does it better than other smartwatches. Powerwatch records changes in your body heat to determine the calories burned during exercise. Other watches use heart rate monitoring and other shenanigans to do the same thing.

You can head over to Powerwatch’s Indiegogo page here. It is available for preorder for $99 while the cost will go up to $160 once it comes out.

Softbank buys ARM for $32 billion in cash

Japanese telecommunication giant SoftBank has confirmed that the company intends to acquire UK chip designer ARM Holdings for almost $32 Billion (£24.3 Billion) in an all-cash deal.

ARM has also agreed to this offer from SoftBank and said that its board would recommend the all-cash deal to shareholders.

SoftBank will pay nearly $22.5 per ARM share, which is 43 percent more than ARM's closing share price on Friday and 41 percent more than ARM's all-time high closing share price.

The deal is the largest-ever acquisition of a European technology business, first reported by The Financial Times.

Wondering Why is ARM really Worth $32 Billion?

Founded in 1990, Cambridge-based ARM Holdings designs microchips for a variety of smartphones and powers more than 95 percent of the smartphones in the market.

Whether it is Apple's iPhones or iPads, Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, Amazon's Kindle e-readers, the cheapest Nokia phones or Internet-connected devices like Nest's smart thermostats, Fitbit's fitness trackers, Canon's EOS cameras, Ford's cars, and DJI's drones, all are powered by ARM-based chips.

Here’s what ARM chairman Stuart Chambers said about the acquisition:

"This is a compelling offer for ARM shareholders, which secures the delivery of future value today and in cash. The board of ARM is reassured that ARM will remain a very significant UK business and will continue to play a key role in the development of new technology."

ARM does not actually manufacture chips, but rather it licenses its semiconductor technologies to a huge variety of device makers. ARM not only dominates the market for smartphones but also used in other consumer gadgets, industrial-like devices and "Internet of things."

So, SoftBank’s acquisition of ARM Holdings means the Japanese company is buying the most valuable company in the world of mobile processors.

SoftBank said that ARM Holdings, which currently has 4,064 employees worldwide, will remain headquartered in Cambridge, and that the company would retain ARM's senior management team, brand, as well as a lucrative partnership-based business model.

The Japanese firm has also promised to double the staff headcount in the United Kingdom over the next five years.

Here’s what SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said about the acquisition:

"We have long admired ARM as a world renowned and highly respected technology company that is by some distance the market-leader in its field. ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the Internet of Things."

Son described the ARM acquisition as "one of the most important" acquisitions in the history of its Japan-based business.

This is the latest major tech acquisition in last few months. At the beginning of this month, Antivirus firm Avast acquired AVG Technologies for $1.3 Billion in cash and last month; Microsoft made its biggest acquisition by buying LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion in cash.

Snapdragon 821 - Qualcomm Fastest Processor

Not a lot of people who used a Snapdragon 820 phone would’ve thought “hmm, the only thing I need is more power”, yet here we are. The new Snapdragon 821 processor is Qualcomm’s most powerful processor yet.

The 14-nm processor is 10 percent faster than before, thanks to higher clock speeds in its Kryo cores. The two more advanced cores run at 2.4 Ghz rather than 2.15 Ghz, while the two lower-clock ones are said to run at 1.8 Ghz rather than 1.6 Ghz.

The Adreno 530 GPU is retained though it runs at a higher clock too. Apart from that, it borrows several of 820’s features, including the X12 LTE modem, with download speeds of 600 Mbps and 3 times faster LTE uploads with Snapdragon Upload+. It also brings Ultra HD Voice for better call quality.

One of its more important applications will happen in the field of virtual reality, where it could be used in upcoming stand-alone VR headsets, including Google’s Daydream VR. Possible uses also include the upcoming Nexus devices and future Galaxy flagships. Qualcomm expects devices using Snapdragon 821 to hit in the second half of 2016, so you won’t have to wait long anyway.

After the multitude of issues with the launch of the Snapdragon 810, Qualcomm upped its game to produce one of the beefiest and widely used chipsets in the market with the 820. The new 821 will likely follow its footsteps and make its way to flagships, even as the past version remains strong.

KiloCore is the World’s First 1,000 Core Processor

A team of researchers from the University of California have designed a first of its kind, 1000 core processor which they call the KiloCore.

Bevan Baas, professor of electrical and computer engineering, who led the team said,

“To the best of our knowledge, it is the world’s first 1,000-processor chip and it is the highest clock-rate processor ever designed in a university.”

There have been attempts at making processors with a lot of cores, but none of them ever went past 300 cores according to an analysis by professor Baas’ team. Majority of those were made for research purposes and very few of them ever made it into the consumer market.

Features of the KiloCore

The processing chip was fabricated by IBM using 32nm CMOS technology. The professor claims that this processor is the most energy efficient processor as well, saying that it uses just 0.7 watts of power.

The way the processor handles its tasks is also much more efficient than regular processors because it divides each application into smaller applications. Each of the smaller apps are given to a single processor to handle, in a more flexible approach. It can execute instructions about 100 times more efficiently than a regular laptop processor.

Possible Use in the Future

The KiloCore would not enter mass production any time soon as they were made using a relatively older manufacturing process of 32nm, whereas most of the processors nowadays are made using 14nm technology.

We could possibly see it make its way into the mobile devices, where several small applications are being run at the same time, and using less power is also considered a major plus point. This can lead to long-lasting mobile gadgets.

Future Processors will only Support Windows 10

Microsoft is seemingly going to a new limit to define Windows 10 as the ultimate platform for the people of its ecosystem. In short, older OSes will no longer be supported by newer processors, making Windows 10  the absolute minimum starting point for people who are still holding out to their outdated hardware and software configurations.

As it turns out, the AMD, Intel and Qualcomm processors of the future will only support Windows 10 to get enterprise support. This news will allow Microsoft to further add reluctant business users who have stuck faithfully to older OS iterations.

What about Windows 7, 8 and 8.1?

The company is making it mandatory for Skylake processors to upgrade in the near future. It has made a list of these 6th-gen chips that will get support for Windows 7 and 8.1, but that too will end barely a year-and-a-half later on 17th of July, 2017.

After the expiry of the 2017 deadline, it is almost certain that an upgrade is needed and only those updates will be rolled out that don’t risk the “reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices”.

Users with older versions of Intel and other options will get the support till Jan. 14, 2020 and Jan. 10, 2023 for versions 7 and 8.1 respectively.

Here’s Tyler Myerson in his own words regarding the change:

“Windows 7 was designed nearly 10 years ago before any x86/x64 SoCs existed. For Windows 7 to run on any modern silicon, device drivers and firmware need to emulate Windows 7’s expectations for interrupt processing, bus support, and power states – which is challenging for Wi-Fi, graphics, security, and more. As partners make customizations to legacy device drivers, services, and firmware settings, customers are likely to see regressions with Windows 7 ongoing servicing.”

It is not immediately clear what hardware developments are making Windows 7 a nuisance at this point, but as Skylake has shown, a better power management between the chip and the OS it runs on is possible. With Koby Lake coming soon, this and much more can be taken to an all new level.