The much awaited TG01 smartphone has been finally released by Toshiba. It’s the world’s first smartphone to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip and is aimed at high speed processing and outstanding performance. The TG01 is super-slim and highly powered. It has got cutting edge technology and a broad array of features that make it an all-in-one solution for mobile computing and communication.

The TG01 boasts large touchscreen with a resolution of 800×480 pixels. Toshiba has imparted its advanced picture-definition technology (the same technology that the company uses in its LCD TVs) to foster the image and video quality of the phone. Toshiba is not a complete stranger to the mobile phone market, with its Toshiba Portege G810 smartphone model among others, however, it is certainly not one of the larger smartphone makers. Even so, it looks as if the company has gotten a lot right. For instance, right from the colour reproductions to image sharpness, everything looks great. The Qualcomm’s Snapdragon delivers ultimate processing power to the mobile. It enables processing @ 1GHz and thus the TG01 takes the crown of the fastest smartphone on the planet. This mobile phone can handle variety of resource intensive tasks simultaneously. The Snapdragon processor is backed by a 512MB ROM paired with 256MB RAM. This ensures that the user is simply immersed into the multimedia world. The TG01 can do everything in a blink of eye. It can load graphic rich web sites in no time and can connect the user with diverse social networks without any glitches.

The TG01 has got everything you may want to stay connected with your business or personal domain all the time. It supports SMS, MMS, E-mail, Microsoft Direct Push Technology, Windows Live Messenger, GPS & A-GPS, Audio/video/image viewer, Java applications, pocket office, Bluetooth, WiFi, USB and much more.

It was decided that the world’s most popular graphics technology maker, Nvidia, will make use of its new system-on-a-chip mobile phone stack known as Tegra to power next generation mobile operating systems. The company has now practically showcased the power of Tegra by running Google’s Android mobile operating system at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

Tegra is the next generation chip that will offer unprecedented performance in terms of graphics processing and multi-tasking in smartphones. It integrates the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), northbridge, southbridge and primary memory functions onto a single chip. The company presented the demonstration using the Tegra APX 2600 processor. The technology that this processor is based on is similar to the one that is used by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform. According to an Nvidia spokesman, the Tegra based devices will hit the consumer markets in late 2009. Google is welcoming the Tegra technology whole-heartedly as a means to boost its Android phones like the T-Mobile G1 Google-phone in the future and encourage the development of unique more demanding apps. One of the iPhone advantages, for example, is its powerful graphics processor that allows developers to come out with sophistaced games and apps for the Apple phone.

Michael Rayfield, general manager of the mobile business unit at Nvidia says, “Nvidia and Google are both working to unlock the visual computing potential of mobile devices, and this announcement matches the power of Tegra with the innovation of the Android platform. Nvidia will be working within the Open Handset Alliance to continually strengthen the ability of Android to tap into advanced mobile graphics and media acceleration to make interaction with handheld technology more intuitive and instinctive.”

NEC Electronics America has recently unveiled its first prototype devices that support the USB 3.0 specification. The company has demonstrated the working of the new devices in the USB Tech Zone at Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2009. The demonstration featured a USB 3.0 PHY test chip that is developed by NEC.

According to NEC Electronics the new USB 3.0 based prototypes can support data transfer speed 10 times faster than the legacy USB 2.0 specification offers. This means we can expect devices like the Integral Courier 16GB USB stick to transfer data ten times as fast in the future, which is an exceptional improvement. Morover, it’s also good news that the new USB 3.0 devices are compatible with the old USB 2.0 specification as well. However, plugging it into the old USB interface will of course force the device to work below its full potential. The company also revealed that it is currently evaluating a large number of USB 3.0 devices including bridge chips, hub controllers etc.

Katsuhiko Nakazawa, general manager for digital consumer and connectivity strategic business unit, NEC Electronics America commented, “NEC Electronics continues to deliver innovative solutions to help establish and promote the adoption of new USB specifications, and USB 3.0 represents a natural evolution of the USB standard, delivering greater transfer capabilities for today’s feature-rich consumer electronics products. As a leading supplier of USB and PCI Express technologies, we offer all of the building blocks required to develop the next generation of USB technology, and we are also working to develop new SuperSpeed USB devices that will offer the required performance increases and interoperability with existing USB standards needed to facilitate a smooth transition to the new standard.”

Tags for this article: ces 2009, chip, devices, las vegas, nec, superspeed, usb 3.0

LG Electronics has come up with a new modem chip for smartphones which will boost the data upload as well as download rate via mobile web surfing. The new chip is based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, which is in fact the main contender for the next generation mobile broadband.

The LTE technology is still being established and theoretically it is supposed to deliver an incredible 100 Mbps download speed. The chip that is designed by LG offers a download speed of 60 Mbps and can upload the data at a rate of 20 Mbps, which is far better than the current data transfer speed of 7.6 Mbps offered by most smartphones. The new LG chip, which we can expect to hopefully find in LG mobile phones sometime soon, will broaden the horizons of consumers who will have new mobile surfing possibilities. Because of the high speed connection they will be able to do more and explore new horizons that are not practically possible with the current chips. For example consumers will experience amazingly high speed mobile web browsing and be able to watch high definition videos on the go without encountering the annoying buffering process.

The LTE technology will soon become the driving force behind the next generation technology. Besides LG, many other companies including AT&T and Vodafone are using it as a base of their 4G networks that are to be launched after few years.

With the increased demand for smartphones and other mobile computing devices, there has been hike in the customer’s expectations too. People want wireless devices that have exceptional processing power and integrate with every new technology easily. Analysing this, Qualcomm has announced that it will launch a new QSD8672 chip specially designed for mobile computing. It will be a dual-CPU, single-chip processor based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile platform.

The QSD8672 will offer a high processing speed of 1.5 GHz and will be optimised for longer battery life and support technologies like 3G mobile broadband connectivity. The chip features a small form factor and thus it is an ideal core component to be used in mobile computing devices with a screen size between nine to twelve inches, such as the Samsung NC10. The QSD8672 will simply offer big power in an impressively small package. It will also support GPS, Bluetooth, 1080p high-def video recording/playback and Wi-Fi. Apart from this it will also let users to experience advanced mobile TV technologies such as MediaFLO, DVB-H and ISDB-T. A 2D/3D graphics engine is also integrated with the processor to render WSXGA resolutions.

Luis Pineda, senior vice president of marketing and product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies said, “This new dual-CPU Snapdragon chip demonstrates our long-term commitment to helping our customers develop a wide variety of innovative, data-centric, mobile computing devices. With its exceptional computing power and improved energy efficiency, the QSD8672 chip allows us to enable more advanced devices that are essentially always on, always awake and always connected.”

If you are planning on buying a smartphone, then it’s better to wait for some time as these devices will get cheaper in the near future. Sandbridge Technologies has introduced its new innovative baseband processor chips called SB3500 for mobile phones which will make this happen.

These chips are based on new technology and differ from traditional smartphone processors as they are completely software-based and reprogrammable. This will allow smartphone manufacturers and designers to pack different technologies and multiple applications on a single chip rather than installing different chips dedicated to perform specialised tasks. Consequently, the hardware cost of the phones will drop incredibly and slimmer models, like the Samsung SGH-U600 but as smartphones, will emerge offering enhanced performance. As the new chips are software programmable, the smartphone manufacturers can easily decide on what technologies to support on the chip. This will also reduce the technical as well as hardware complexities. The most amazing thing is that these chips will support the forthcoming 4G technology.

Tanuj Raja, vice president of business development for Sandbridge said, “Because we allow manufacturers to pack more functionality into a single chip, we can reduce the cost of those phones by about 15 percent. Because its software based, we are announcing the first programmable chip that can support 4G wireless technology even before those standards are finalized.”

ARM, a British processor design company is recognized for its preeminence in the smartphone market. After marking its presence in the manufacture of smartphones, as well as the iPhone, the company is now ready to launch a netbook capable processor. The novel product is expected to offer competition to Intel’s Atom.

Speaking about the company’s latest move, Rob Coombs, director of ARM’s mobile solutions said,” In the future, we’re going to be in Netbooks…..Expect announcements in the next few months”. This step is quite surprising as ARM is more of a small devices company. However, only performance can reveal the capability of ARM’s netbooks, which are expected to run on Linux.

As conveyed by Coombs, we can expect to experience the new Cortex-A8 in netbooks along with smartphones. The first smartphones based on A8 will probably hit the market next year but we will have to wait till 2010 to see A9 in action. The multi-core A9 is in a direct competition with the approaching dual core Atom. Currently the Atom is found in nearly every netbook on the market, including the ultra successful Asus Eee PC 901 20G Linux model. The rivalry becomes even tougher with Intel’s recent announcement on the companies intentions to introduce Atom chips into smartphones. Will both the innovators benefit by entering into each-other’s shoes?

Well! It is just a matter of some more time and the product will be ready for an acid test

Intel is set to launch a new hardware platform, Calpella, for next generation laptops. Focused on energy efficiency, performance and enhanced battery life, the new platform is going to delight chip designers and hardware manufacturers. Nathan Brookwood, an analyst said, “If I were a hardware vendor, I’d be eagerly awaiting the 2009 arrival of Calpella. It’s a very different platform than anything they’ve done to date. When Calpella shows up, everything inside that laptop will be brand new.”

This is because while current Intel laptops consist of a CPU and a Northbridge chip holding the memory controller and graphic chip, Calpella has moved the memory controller onto the CPU itself. As a result, the memory controller and CPU, like the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550, will receive a performance enhancement and better access on account of the Calpella based systems. The graphic chip, however, still resides as a separate part. According to Brookwood, “These are all good things. If I was a vendor, I’d be excited over this, but a little nervous because everything inside the platform is changing at the same time. With so many balls in the air, it’s easy to drop one.”

Calpella will be based on Intel’s upcoming technology, the 45nm-based Nehalem architecture. Nehalem chips will make its debut with the launch of quad-core server chips followed by desktop chips, dual cores and even eight cores chip.

The chip designer PA Semi, who since belong to Apple, will begin developing special chips for the iPhone and iPod. This is what Apple president Steve Jobs told the New York Times. PA Semi was last occupied with developing power saving processors on the basis of power architecture.

According to Forbes, Apple paid around 278 million US dollars for PA Semi and heated up speculation that they would begin developing their own chips, instead of using Intel’s Atom processors. Steve Jobs has now confirmed this to be true in an interview with the New York Times.

It remains to be seen whether this also means that Intel’s Atom processor will have no role in Apple’s future models. One thing is certain, Apple acquired the resources of many talented and experienced chip developers by purchasing PA Semi.

PA Semi last developed power saving 64 bit processors with multiple CPU cores on the basis of Power architecture, under the name of PWRficient. The PWRficient chips consumed between 5 and 13 Watts with two cores, clearly too much for use with the iPhone or iPod.

PA Semi was founded by Dan Dobberpuhl in 2003, and first began developing Alpha processors and StrongARM chips for DEC. The PA Semi has around 150 employees.

Apple’s President Steve Jobs also promised something big for the upcoming version of the MacOS X operating system: Apple managed a breakthrough with parallel computers, he told the New York Times. A type of technology named Grand Central was officially announced, which makes it easier for developers to push multi core processors to their full capacity.