Intel kicks off ultrabook road trip in New York

NEW YORK -- Intel on Friday kicked off its ultrabook world tour in New York, hoping to make consumers excited about the latest PCs and curb a drop in the computing market.

The chip giant opened a temporary pop-up shop in Manhattan's Meatpacking District from May 17 to 19 to give New Yorkers the chance to try out new computers firsthand. The "Experience Intel: Look Inside" world tour will move on to Chicago and Tokyo next month, Beijing and London in July, Sao Paulo in late August, Moscow in September, and Sydney in October.

"When consumers … Read more

Apple graphics-chip supplier hints at future iPad (Q&A)

Imagination Technologies, a graphics-chip designer that supplies the graphics tech in the iPad and iPhone, offers some tantalizing insights into what could power the next iPad.

CNET spoke Wednesday with Tony King-Smith, vice president of marketing at Imagination Technologies, about what's coming down the pike. While he would not confirm what's inside future iPads, it's a safe bet that Apple -- which has a 9.5 percent stake in the U.K. company -- will continue to tap its technology.

Q: Imagination chips are inside the newest iPad and iPhone, correct? King-Smith: The [graphics] core currently in … Read more

Intel ex-CEO looks back at biggest blown call: Missing out on the iPhone

Paul Otellini passed up one of the biggest opportunities in Intel's history -- supplying chips for the first iPhone, the chipmaker's former CEO said.

Otellini "decided against doing what it took" to make the chips for Apple's smartphone, The Atlantic reported, based on an interview with the newly retired executive. Here's what he told the publication:

We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we'd done it. The thing you have to remember … Read more

HP goes Android with x2 hybrid

Hewlett-Packard has a newfound affinity for Android.

After announcing the Slate 7 in February, HP announced Tuesday that it is adding a second Android tablet, the SlateBook x2.

The SlateBook takes its well-received Envy x2 design and loads Android 4.2.2 and Nvidia's brand-new Tegra 4 chip inside a sleek 10.1-inch tablet that can double as a laptop.

An Android laptop, mind you, not a Chromebook.

"With an advanced magnetic hinge design and dual battery system -- one battery in the base and one in the tablet -- users can easily switch from notebook to tablet … Read more

NEC laptop is one of the first with Intel's 'Haswell' chip

NEC has apparently jumped the gun, releasing the full specs of a laptop based on Intel's 4th Generation Core processor, aka, Haswell.

That processor, along with a crush of new systems, is slated for rollout on June 3 at Computex in Taiwan.

But NEC is talking specs already in Japan.

In addition to the Haswell chip (about which NEC provided little additional data), the LaVie L will sport a 15.6-inch IPS touch screen (1,920x1,080 resolution), 8GB of memory, 1TB hard drive with a 32GB solid-state drive cache, Windows 8, and Microsoft Office Home and Business.

The … Read more

As Android disrupts, tablets beat cheap PCs: Nvidia

Nvidia is banking on new computing devices to replace "cheap" PCs and Android to drive that disruption, according to comments from the chipmaker's chief executive on Thursday.

"A great tablet is clearly better than a cheap PC," said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang during the company's fiscal first quarter conference call.

"New computing devices are becoming increasingly like your personal computer, [so] performance matters and this is where we can add a lot of value....disrupting the entry-level PC," he said.

Nvidia sees Android as the agent of disruption. "Android is really … Read more

Qualcomm walks fine line between privacy, connected devices

NEW YORK--Qualcomm is walking a fine line between enabling the "Internet of Things" and protecting users' privacy, the chipmaker's chief executive said Tuesday.

Paul Jacobs, speaking at the Wired Business Conference in New York, said that nearly everything people interact with will be connected to the Internet in the future, but that also means companies have to figure out a way to make such technology less intrusive.

For example, department stores or restaurants can detect when someone is walking by and send them coupons, but not all people may want to receive those offers. So Qualcomm and … Read more

Ex-Palm chief joins Qualcomm's board

Qualcomm has added a former mobile chief to its board, naming Jonathan Rubinstein as a new director.

Rubinstein brings more than 30 years of experience in the mobile, computing, and consumer electronics industries, the chipmaker said, most notably as CEO of Palm. Rubinstein joined the company as executive chairman in 2007 and took over the role of CEO from June 2009 until it was bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2010.

Rubinstein then continued at HP, most recently leading product innovation for the personal systems group after the company largely wound down Palm's operations. Earlier in his career, Rubinstein ran Apple'… Read more

Intel's new mobile chip to boast up to 8 processor cores

Intel needs to make waves in mobile computing. That's exactly what the first overhaul of the Atom chip design intends to do.

The new Silvermont Atom micro-architecture -- the first major architectural change since Atom debuted in 2008 -- delivers a "significant reduction in power [consumption] and a significant increase in performance," Dadi Perlmutter, an Intel executive vice president, said in a conference call Monday.

Perlmutter was quick to point out that the two -- performance and power efficiency -- are not incompatible. A slide (below) showed Silvermont Atom performing at twice the level of the previous … Read more