Computers

Transcend is releasing a tiny mSATA SSD.

As the global PC market continues to spiral downwards, Lenovo, the world’s second-largest PC maker after HP, has reported solid earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter and full-year ended March 31, 2013. The Chinese multinational is in fact boasting that, “despite a challenging macro-economic environment and ongoing PC industry transformation”, it has reached a record 15.5 percent PC market share for the full year. All in all, it has shipped 52.4 million PCs during the year. That has translated in record annual sales of $34 billion for the fiscal year, and $635 million in income after taxes (up 34 percent year-over-year). It also reported an estimate-beating 90 percent rise in quarterly profit. Notably, the company says in a statement that it will “enhance the profitability” of its core PC business but look to smart devices (tablets and smartphones) and enterprise hardware for future growth. Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Chairman and CEO, notes: “Not only were we the fastest growing among all major PC players, with record market share, revenue and profitability, more importantly, our smartphone and tablet businesses saw dramatic growth. In fact, smartphone shipments were 3.7 times greater than last year globally and we are now number two in the China smartphone market. This has laid a solid foundation for the successful transformation of Lenovo into a PC Plus leader.” Also read: As expected, Dell reports miserable $0.21 per share profit on revenue of $14.1B in Q1 Hewlett-Packard misses street on low PC sales with Q2 revenue of $27.6B and $0.87 EPS Image credit: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR for AFP / Getty Images

CTO Henry Samueli says Broadcom is starting to prepare customers for the end of CMOS scaling in the next 15 years, and it is working out plans for 3-D chip stacks.View the full article HERE.

Med Intels nya generation processorer och styrkretsar analkande står det röda laget inte stilla. Under en presskonferens i London delar AMD med sig av sina lösningar för bärbara datorer, och Nordichardware är på plats för att lära känna nykomlingarna Temash, Kabini och Richland.

KakaoHome, the Facebook Home-style Android application from Korea’s top messaging company Kakao, is seeing impressive uptake after passing 500,000 downloads nine days after its launch last week. That’s actually quicker than the 10 days it took Facebook Home to reach the same number. The milestone — listed on its Google Play page – is pretty impressive considering the app is only available in Korea at this point. It adopts a Facebook Home style approach, giving users more visible notifications, quick replies, various Kakao-branded widgets and a deeper integration than the regular chat app offers. The Kakao Talk service has 90 million registered users worldwide, but it remains strongest in Korea. There, the company says it is installed on more than 90 percent of smartphones, of which 90 percent are Android-powered. That’s a pretty sound ground for an Android launcher and early adopters seem pleased as the app has an average rating of 4.1, a big improvement on Facebook Home’s current score of 2.3. As is the case with Facebook Home, it is not clear just how many of those who downloaded the Kakao app are regular users. The service is available for all smartphones in Korea that run Android 4.0 or upwards, which has helped it overcome the device support issues Facebook has run into. Nonetheless, the world’s biggest social network says that Home — which is now past 1 million downloads — has boosted the engagement of users by 25 percent on average. Kakao is aiming to increase its international standing, having inked a deal with Evernote, but global users shouldn’t expect to see KakaoHome in their markets for some time. Last week, the firm told TNW it has no initial plans to launch it outside of Korea. While the two services are coming from different angles — one is worldwide but limited to certain devices, the other limited to one market but open to numerous devices — KakaoHome’s quicker adoption is likely a greater indicator of Facebook Home’s early issues. With wider support for devices under its belt, Facebook will hope downloads will pick up. Headline image via TNW, screenshot via The Verge

AMD attempts to change with the market. The rapid shift to mobile seems to have caught x86 chip makers off guard, but on the bright side for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), this tectonic shift in technology represents a new opportunity to perhaps do things differently than before. Maybe the outcome will be different, maybe not, but either way, we have an early look at AMD's agenda for the changing market place, and it starts with "Temash." Temash Temash is AMD's solution for touch tablets, notebooks, and hybrids less than 13 inches in size. According to AMD, it's Temash-based APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) offer the best graphics of any SoC (System-on-Chip) on the planet and is part of its "Elite Mobility" platform. "The performance of Elite Mobility APUs will reset user expectations for what they can do in tablets and hybrids," AMD explains. Compared to its 2012 platform, AMD's Elite Mobility APUs for 2013 offer up to 212 percent more performance with less than half the power consumption. And compared to Intel's CloverTrail parts, AMD says Temash has several advantages, including application acceleration through GPU compute, DirectX 11 support, high-speed SATA support, support for up to two USB 3.0 ports, 8GB system memory support, and more. AMD announced three Temash APUs, including the A6-1450 (four cores clocked at 1GHz base/1.4GHz max, 2MB L2 cache, DDR3L-1066 support, 8W TDP) with Radeon HD 8250 graphics (128 Radeon cores, 300MHz base/400MHz max clockspeed); A4-1250 (two cores clocked at 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, DDR3L-1333 support, 8W TDP) with Radeon HD 8210 graphics (128 Radeon cores, 300MHz); and A4-1200 (two cores clocked at 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, DDR3L-1066 support, 3.9W TDP) with Radeon HD 8180 graphics (128 Radeon cores, 225MHz). Kabini Moving up to AMD's Mainstream APU platform, we have Kabini. AMD is pitching Kabini as the first x86 quad-core SoC for entry-level and mainstream systems with best-in class graphics on the level of consoles. These consist of two A-Series APUs, including the A6-5200 (four cores, 2GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 25W TPD) with Radeon HD 8400 graphics (600MHz) and A4-5000 (four cores, 1.5GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 15W TDP) with Radeon HD 8330 graphics (600MHz), and three E-Series APUs, including the E2-3000 (two cores, 1.65GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 15W TDP) with Radeon HD 8280 graphics (450MHz), E1-2500 (two cores, 1.4GHz, 1MB L2, 15W TDP) with Radeon HD 8240 graphics (400MHz), and E1-2100 (two cores, 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 9W TDP) with Radeon HD 8210 graphics (300MHz). Richland AMD's "Elite Performance" tier is where its Richland APUs take residence. These parts purportedly offer up to 71 percent better graphics performance than Intel's Core i5 line while still being able to run up to 10+ hours while resting and 7.5+ hours surfing the web, AMD claims. These chips are destined for elite ultrathins. Here's a look at the Richland parts and their respective specs: Between Temash, Kabini, and Richland, AMD seems to have all of its mobile bases covered, now it's just a matter of whether or not it can bring them home to consumers. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Advanced Micro Devices hopes to regain share in the PC processor market with its upcoming chips based on the Jaguar core, which will bring console-like gaming and wireless displays to laptops with Windows 8 and its successor, Windows Blue.read more

Hewlett-Packard has introduced a new wave of Envy and Pavilion thin and light laptops, including an 11.6-inch touchscreen model priced aggressively at US$399.read more

Windows 8 has not found wide adoption among desktop users, so HP has announced a new portable all-in-one and lowered the price of touch PCs so users can take advantage of the operating system.read more

Advanced Micro Devices has opened the door to embrace Google's Android operating system, but said it would continue to focus on Windows with its upcoming tablet and laptop chips.read more