| AMD Refreshes Mobile APU Lineup with Beema, Mullins Posted: 14 Nov 2013 01:51 PM PST Double the performance with AMD's security processor in tow Bye-bye Kabini and Temash. Hello Beema and Mullins. Those are the names for AMD's two new mobile APUs announced at the APU13 Developer Summit. The promises are lofty: twice the performance per watt and PC gaming in a tablet. 
According to TechRadar, Mullins is the clear poster boy. Designed for use in fanless tablets, convertible notebooks, and standard laptops, Mullins and its little brother Beema are made to pack more punch despite running on lower power. Beema and Mullins will both be available in dual- and quad-core Puma flavors. Included in the APUs are Graphics Core Next Radeon graphics with everything on a 28nm chip. Beema replaces Kabini with a 10W minimum TDP. Mullins has a minimum ~2W SDP (Scenario Design Power) replacing the 3-4W TDP minimum of Temash. Both APUs are expected to be available before Computex 2014 with demo units on display during CES. AMD's also excited about the AMD Security Processor which is an ARM Cortex-A5 core with support for ARM TrustZone. The technology is supposed to provide a trusted execution environment to help prevent software-based attacks like malware while also providing secure ways to handle user authentication and payment processing. Both APUs are geared towards Windows 8.1, but AMD Director of Marketing Gabe Gravning says that it's "working with partners to put Android over Windows." Follow Ben on Twitter. |
| Intel Plans to Open Several Pop-Up Retail Stores for the Holiday Season Posted: 14 Nov 2013 10:41 AM PST  These are not your typical retail stores
As the holiday shopping season comes into view, Intel has revealed that it plans to open a series of "Intel Experience Stores" in various locations, starting with the first opening in NoLita, New York on November 23 at 10 AM. Since they're being designed for the holiday season, these stores will stay open until the latter part of January, during which time patrons will be able to walk in and play with Intel gear, recycle used electronics, and even test drive new Intel products at home. These stores are aimed at pushing Intel's products and to promote its brand, but in a unique way that's not typical of your average brick-and-mortar location. In a promotional video, Intel describes these as "free to attend events." As opposed to a regular store where you walk in, browse and maybe buy things, and then leave, Intel will be giving out free coffee, playing movies for free every Friday, and presenting speakers from the community. The pop-up stores will change physically three times each day with new programming each day as well, Intel says. Local tech inventors and makers will be invited to come in and showcase their skills, and even participate in challenges that will give back to the community. Have a look at the video describing Intel's plans and let us know what you think about this in the comments section below! Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Google Transparency Report Reveals Dramatic Rise in User Data Requests Posted: 14 Nov 2013 10:10 AM PST  There's even more than what Google's allowed to show
Everything changed when news of the U.S. government's PRISM spying program came to light. In an instant, we went from assuming our dealings online were mostly kept private (or as private as we wanted them to be) to knowing that virtually nothing is out of bounds, not even instant messaging conversations. The government will contend all this snooping is in the best interest of national security, which also happens to be the same reason why Google can't share certain statistics with us. What the company is able to share, however, is pretty staggering. Google today updated its Transparency Report for the eighth time. Revealed in the update is a 100 percent uptick in the number of government requests for user information over the past three years, Google says. The search giant was also quick to point out that these figures only include the requests it's allowed to publish, suggesting that the real number of requests could be much higher. "Over the past three years, we've continued to add more details to the report, and we're doing so again today. We're including additional information about legal process for U.S. criminal requests: breaking out emergency disclosures, wiretap orders, pen register orders and other court orders," Google explained in a blog post. "We want to go even further. We believe it's your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive," Google added. 
Google shared a series of graphs related to the topic of data requests, one of which shows that the number of inquiries has jumped from 3,580 in Jul-Dec 2009 to 10,918 in Jan-Jun 2013. However, many of those were related to law enforcement -- 68 percent were subpoenas and 22 percent were warrants. The rest were made up of other court orders (6 percent), pen register orders (2 percent), and emergency disclosure requests (1 percent). Keep in mind those only pertain to what Google is allowed to show. A fourth graph labeled "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Requests" is blacked out. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| AMD's Console Strategy Nets Additional x86 Market Share Posted: 14 Nov 2013 08:47 AM PST  Finding new ways to fight with Intel
Since the beginning of time (or thereabouts), Intel has dominated the x86 scene, even when AMD blazed a trail into 1GHz territory (Athlon) and 64-bit computing (Athlon 64) on the consumer side several years ago. Both of those architectures represent design wins for AMD, and if we fast forward to today, AMD has done well to get its hardware inside all three major game consoles, especially the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, both of which feature x86 foundations. AMD has already shipped millions of semi-custom x86 chips for Microsoft's and Sony's upcoming game consoles, says Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, according to IDG. In doing so, AMD has grown its x86 market share to 19.3 percent in the third quarter of 2013, up from 16.1 percent in the same quarter a year ago. That's still a distant second from Intel's 80.2 percent share, though Intel's slice of the pie got a little thinner, dropping from 83.3 percent a year prior. VIA Technologies collected the scraps to sit in third place with a 0.4 percent share, down from 0.6 percent. "It ties in with AMD's long-term goal of getting outside the PC market," McCarron said, who added that it's a good strategy since the growth is coming from custom chips for non-PC products. While AMD's strategy is paying off, if we narrow our focus strictly on the PC side, it's a different story. Intel bumped its share of the x86 PC processor market from 83.3 percent to 83.8 percent, while AMD's share declined from 16.1 percent to 15.8 percent. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| CyberPowerPC, EVGA Tag Team Hadron Hydro Mini ITX Gaming PC Posted: 14 Nov 2013 08:18 AM PST  Living large in a little chassis
Boutique builder CyberPowerPC is teaming up with EVGA to offer an exclusive series of mini ITX based gaming rigs loaded with powerful hardware. Specifically, the system the two companies are pimping is the Hadron Hydro, a compact gaming machine that measures 6.6 inches wide by 13.7 inches high by 12.1 inches deep. It's only 1.7 inches taller than the Hadron Air, though this version comes with EVGA's liquid cooling kit. A base setup runs $1,275 and includes the above mentioned liquid cooler with a 500W 80 Plus Gold certified power supply nestled inside EVGA's Hadron Hydro mini ITX chassis, Intel Core i5 4670K processor, Gigabyte Z87-N WiFi motherboard, Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 graphics card, 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory, 1TB hard drive (7200 RPM), EVGA 24X slot-loading DVD burner, and Windows 8.1 64-bit. The liquid cooling arrangement cools the Haswell chip and is also capable of running through an optional EVGA Hydro Copper GeForce GTX GPU. It has a 240mm radiator, high performance CPU block, stainless steel fittings, tubing, and coolant. 
Like the Hadron Air, the Hadron Hydro is customizable and can accommodate more powerful hardware, including Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 Ti or AMD's Radeon R9 290X. The Hadron Hydro is available now. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Surprise! Lenovo is World's Third Largest Smartphone Vendor Posted: 14 Nov 2013 07:47 AM PST  The No. 1 PC maker is also No. 3 in smartphone sales
Life is good for Lenovo. The OEM figured out the secret formula for thriving in a technological landscape that finds itself in a midst of a transitory phase, and as such, it grew its desktop PC shipments last quarter by 1 percent when the industry averaged a 6 percent decline. Laptop sales went up 8 percent, and as for the mobile handset sector, Lenovo is now the world's third largest smartphone vendor. Part of Lenovo's "PC Plus" strategy entails focusing on the mobile market while continuing to dominate in traditional PC sales. As a result, Lenovo is the world's largest PC supplier and the third largest vendor of smartphones, the latter of which is the result of increasing its smartphone sales to 12.9 million units in the third quarter of 2013, according to data released by Gartner. That's an 85 percent year-over-year bump. Out of the more than 455 million smartphones shipped in Q3, Samsung led the way with 80.3 million units, followed by Apple at 30.3 million. With Lenovo's rise to No. 3, LG was bumped down to fourth place with 12 million units, followed by Huawei (11.6 million) and all others. In terms of platform dominance, Android is found on nearly 82 percent of the world's smartphones. Google's open source OS is crushing every other contender, including iOS (No. 2), which is way back in Lenovo's rear-view mirror with a slightly better than 12 percent share of the market. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Seagate 4TB Desktop Hard Drive, MSI Z87-GD65 Motherboard, and More! Posted: 14 Nov 2013 06:11 AM PST |
