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Amid serious legal squabbling between Apple and Samsung, Intel may have an opportunity to land Apple as a chip customer, according to analysts.

''Based on a number of inputs, we believe Intel is...vying for Apple's foundry business,'' wrote Gus Richard, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co., in a research note, according to a report in EE Times.

Foundry refers to contract manufacturing. Samsung is currently the foundry for Apple's A4 and A5 processors, which are used in the iPhone 4 and iPad 2.

This may be a golden opportunity for Intel, according to another analyst. "Given the strained relationship between Apple and Samsung over IP (intellectual property) issues, there is a window where Intel can become the foundry of choice for Apple," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw, in a phone interview.

Though Intel is relatively new to the foundry business, it already has one customer on record, Achronix Semiconductor. But it also has at least two more confidential customers, according to a source familiar with Intel's foundry business.

That said, gaining Apple as a customer would move Intel into the contract manufacturing big leagues with the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)--also rumored to be a future Apple foundry. In fact, Intel isn't there yet. "It's not the sort of thing that could happen easily or quickly," said the source. … Read more

Pretax profits at the British chip architecture firm ARM Holdings have gone up by more than a third in the last year, the company reported today.

According to ARM's quarterly results, pretax profits stood at 50.8 million pounds ($83.7 million) in the first quarter of 2011, with revenues at 116 million pounds ($185.5 million)--a year ago, those figures were 37.6 million pounds and 92.3 million pounds, respectively. According to chief executive Warren East, the 35 percent profit rise coincided with a 33 percent increase in ARM-processor-based shipments "driven by growth in smartphones, … Read more

The Intel executive who led Intel's so-far-unsuccessful push into smartphones and tablets quit as that business comes under unrelenting competitive pressure from companies like Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia.

Anand Chandrasekher, who had been senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, announced today that he will be leaving Intel to "pursue other interests." Effective immediately, Mike Bell and Dave Whalen, both vice presidents of Intel Architecture Group (IAG), will co-manage the group, which is responsible for building Atom chips that go into smartphones and tablets.

This follows the departure last year of Eric … Read more

With the upcoming iPad expected to have better performance, an analyst expects multitasking to help change the iPad experience--for the better, of course.

"My guess is that we'll see a general improvement in responsiveness but big improvements in multitasking will come from changes to the software," said Joe Byrne, an analyst at chip consultant The Linley Group, responding to an e-mail query.

But better software alone does not a faster tablet make. A higher-performance processor means a tablet is capable of more heavy lifting for applications. "Usually [a single core] CPU (central processing unit) is fast … Read more

Microsoft plans to demonstrate tablets running Windows 8 by the end of June, a company source has told Business Insider.

The source told Business Insider that Microsoft is taking a more "Apple-like" approach in designing the new operating system for tablets and plans to adopt certain ideas from the Metro interface created for Windows Phone 7. If true, the June date for demonstrating the new OS on a tablet is significant as that month marks the end of Microsoft's fiscal year.

Yesterday's report follows a story by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, who was sent a … Read more

Researchers are ready to advance their tests of a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) from animals to human subjects, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency just granted them more than $6 million over the next three years to get those human clinical trials under way.

Ongoing research out of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Pittsburgh has already demonstrated that the team's tiny 10x10 array of electrodes implanted on the surface of a monkey's brain can process activity from individual neurons to guide a robotic arm through such simple tasks as turning doorknobs and … Read more

The oft-quoted DigiTimes, a Taiwanese tech industry favorite publication, has revealed that Apple is outsourcing the production of its A5 processor chip, which many expect will be based on the ARM Cortex A9 design and used in the forthcoming iPhone 5, to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

AppleInsider reports that Apple's A4 chip is currently produced by Samsung Electronics, but the move to Taiwan Semiconductor for production of the A5 chip is because of Samsung's inability to keep up with Apple's supply demands.

This rumor follows many regarding Apple's iPhone lineup, including a larger, 4-inch screen and … Read more

ARM Holdings owns the mobile market when it comes to licensing chip architecture, but by 2015 the company expects to have a foothold in the PC and server market.

That's the primary takeaway from ARM Holdings' earnings conference call earlier this week. ARM is basically an intellectual property licensing company. As a result, it's a dominant processing company without actually manufacturing a processor. Instead, companies like Nvidia do the heavy lifting. Nevertheless, the message is clear: ARM Holdings is deadly serious about being a PC and server player, and at CES 2011 some of the pieces fell into … Read more

Sony's disclosure of the internals of the Next Generation Portable (NGP) PlayStation at an event in Tokyo today reveals a game engine that might be best described as an Apple iPad on steroids. Lots of steroids.

Like the iPad (and iPhone), Sony will use an ARM processor design. Of course, Sony and Apple aren't the only high-profile device makers using ARM chips. Motorola is using an advanced ARM chip from Nvidia in its Xoom tablet, and RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will tap a powerful ARM chip from Texas Instruments. Both of those are dual-core ARM designs.

But … Read more