Processor Technology Reviews, Analysis And News
Processors come in many types for different applications. However, when it comes to computing, whether mobile, on the desktop or in the Internet of Things, these chips are widely known as the "brains" of the operation. Here you'll find Hot Hardware reviews and news on products from the biggest names in PC and mobile processors from Intel and AMD, to Qualcomm, ARM and more.
After years of work and a few false starts, Intel is finally ready to take the plunge into the smartphone market. At the CES keynote tonight, the CPU giant is officially launching Medfield, the 32nm smartphone SoC the company has built to take it into the next generation of smartphones (and a few tablets). The chip, now officially named the...
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Over the last few years, we've seen an increasing number of liquid coolers positioned as high-end alternatives to traditional heatsink+fan combinations. This has been particularly true in the boutique market, where a number of manufacturers now offer liquid coolers in one form or another. Corsair has a full line of liquid coolers; we've reviewed...
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We’ve been in this business here at HotHardware for a long time now. For most of that time, we’ve heard from countless so-called "industry experts" that the PC is dead, or at the very least dying. Quite frankly, we’re sick of hearing it. The PC is far from dead. One has to look no further than Intel's most recent finanical...
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When we sit down to arrange our thoughts and write an introduction for a new product launch, we typically want to put together some interesting and suspenseful prose that sets the stage for an exciting reveal of an as-yet undisclosed, eagerly anticipated product. No such luck this time around, as the product we’ll be discussing today...
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A few weeks back, AMD officially launched their Llano-based A-Series Accelerated Processing Units, or APUs, in both desktop and mobile flavors. At the time, we covered the high-end variants of both A-Series offerings; our coverage of the desktop version A8-3850 APU and its companion chipsets is posted here and the mobile...
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A couple of weeks back, we took a look at AMD's Llano mobile platform, with a mainstream notebook from Compal, and we came away impressed. If you're unfamiliar with Llano, be sure to check out our launch coverage (available here). But to quickly recap, Llano is the codename for AMD's latest Fusion-based product, that combines...
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AMD launched the first volley of their Fusion technology salvo late last year and since then thin-and-light notebook offerings from various major OEMs have come to market. AMD's Brazos platform and specifically the Zacate E-350 processor were obvious successes and the company was able to pull down many strong design wins with manufacturers...
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VIA introduced its dual-core Nano just four months ago, but the company is already demonstrating that processor's big brother. The newly minted VIA QuadCore is--you guessed it--a quad-core processor that connects two dual-core Nano cores in an MCM (multi-chip module). The new chip won't actually ship for some months, but it may become...
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Although much of the scuttlebutt lately has revolved around AMD’s upcoming Llano and Bulldozer-based APUs, the company isn’t done pushing the envelope with their existing processor designs. In case you haven’t noticed, over the last few months AMD has continued to ramp up frequencies on their current bread-and-butter Phenom...
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It's been several weeks since Asus announced that certain socket AM3 motherboards would support AMD's upcoming Bulldozer processors. Since then, we've turned up additional rumors on the nature of such support. MSI has also announced its own plans to retrofit some existing AM3 boards with Bulldozer compatibility. What follows is the general...
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Intel announced its new E-series of Xeon processors today, claiming that the new processors will deliver nearly unparalleled advances in CPU performance and power efficiency. It's been just over a year since Santa Clara released its Nehalem-based octal-core Beckton processors. Whereas Beckton was focused entirely on performance and architectural...
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For their new generation of notebook processors, Intel decided to take the opposite approach that they took in their desktop architecture, where they launched their mid-range quad-core product first, with a promise of top-end multi-core performance to come just a bit further down their roadmap. From a mobile standpoint, the Core i7 2820QM...
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What do you do when you're the fastest thing around? You just keep on WINNING. It's as if there was tiger blood coursing through your veins. You're so good, you're bi-winning. Heck, with a six core processor at your disposal, you'd be hexa-winning. Ol' Charlie needs one of these things to go with his rock-star life style. ...
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This week, at ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) Intel unveiled its next-generation Itanium processor, codenamed Poulson. This new octal-core processor is easily the most significant update to Itanium Intel has ever built and could upset the current balance of power at the highest-end of the server / mainframe market....
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We have been hearing about AMD’s Fusion initiative for what seems like an eternity. In fact, some of the very first posts regarding Fusion hit this site of ours way back in 2006. Many things have happened within AMD since those early announcements and rumors began swirling, most notably AMD’s acquisition of ATI. However,...
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This year's Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Nevada offered some of the most exciting product announcements we've seen in any previous CES show thus far. The past three years' CES shows have been rather snoozy, to be honest, with the economy taking its toll on product design investment and innovation. However, this...
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About this time last year, Intel offered us a complete processor revamp and architecture update for both the desktop and mobile markets. Intel called it their evolutionary "tick" step in their manufacturing process migration from 45 to 32nm. The "tock," as it were, follows along in cadence offering refinement and feature enhancement...
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Today’s pre-launch of Intel’s Sandy Bridge-based processors should come as no surprise to anyone who even remotely follows the PC tech scene. We, along with Intel and numerous other companies and media outlets, have been slowly leaking Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-related details for many months now. Heck, we’ve even showed...
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We have been hearing a lot from AMD over the last few months regarding the slew of new processors and Fusion APUs slated to arrive next year. With all of the news regarding Zacate, Ontario, Bobcat, Bulldozer, and Llano, et al, that has hit recently, you’d think work on the current generation of products had ceased, but that is not the...
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Last week we brought you a detailed overview of AMD's first ever, fully integrated CPU-GPU combination born out of the company's "Fusion" technology initiative. Dubbed the first ever APU or Accelerated Processing Unit, AMD's claimed goal is to offer a more balance and efficient low power platform for thin and light notebooks and netbooks. ...
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"Fusion." We've heard that word from the good folks at AMD for what seems like an eternity, to be perfectly honest. Fusion is AMD's marketing moniker for the company's next generation of integrated processors with on-board graphics -- a "fusion" of the CPU along with the GPU into what AMD now affectionately calls an "APU" or Accelerated...
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AMD is launching a half dozen new processors today, targeted at virtually all market segments, ranging from an inexpensive, mainstream dual-core Athlon II offering to a new, relatively high-end six-core Phenom II. The complete list of processors launching today, along with their respective price points are as follows: 3.0GHz (3.5GHz Turbo)...
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