From X-bit Labs: Globalfoundries, the contract manufacturer of semiconductors controlled by Advanced Micro Devices and Advanced Technology Investment Company, said on Monday that it would make a major announcement next week at the Globalfoundries Technology Conference.

"GTC 2010 will feature several major announcements about our technology roadmap, manufacturing operations, and long-term vision - and much of this news will be shared for the first time with onsite attendees," the company said in its statement on Tuesday.

Globalfoundries did not elaborate about any details, but it is likely that the firm will unveil certain details about its sub-28nm process technologies, e.g., 22nm and 20nm. Another important update will likely concern the progress with different 28nm fabrication processes.

The GTC 2010 will bring together numerous executives of Globalfoundries along with semiconductor industry execs, including those from AMD, ARM, ST Microelectronics. Besides, the company also invited executives from companies that develop software for creation of computer chips.

The GTC 2010 forum will take place on September 1, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. PDT in the auditorium of the Santa Clara, California, Convention Center.

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From X-bit Labs: More details transpire about the hardware inside the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS portable video game system. The chief executive officer of Marvell Technology, one of the world's largest makers of various application, communication, multimedia and other special-purpose processors, said during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts that one of Marvell Armada processors powers a major new gaming platform.

"Approximately 15% of the sequential increase was due to the initial production revenue from our Armada application processors, primarily as a result of a major customer preparing to launch a new gaming platform," said Sehat Sutardja, chief executive officer of Armada.

While Mr. Sutardja did not directly point to Nintendo 3DS, the latter is the only major company to release a new game platform in the near future. There is a possibility that a new player on the mobile gaming market will roll-out its own game console, but given the market realities, there would have been leaks about the project in advance.

It is unclear which exactly Armada chip is used. One of the likely candidates is Armada 500 that uses ARM v7 CPU core running up to 1.2 GHz, vector floating point (VFP) v3 and 512KB L2 cache, 1080p video decode, 16MT/s/3D graphics, WUXGA LCD resolution support, security acceleration and consumer/embedded oriented I/O's (PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, SDIO, DDR2/DDR3, S-ATA, MIPI CSI and more). Another possibility is usage of lower-power Armada 600 chip that has ARM v7 CPU core at up to 1GHz, VFP v3 and 256KB L2 cache.

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From DailyTech: We first brought you news of the Dell Aero, formerly known as the Mini 3, back in January of this year. Now, AT&T is finally making the smartphone available on its network.

Unfortunately, the Dell Aero's specs may seem a bit on the light side compared to the other Android phones on the market. The Aero features a 624MHz ARM processor, 3.5" (360 x 640) screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 2GB of internal storage which can be expanded via a microSD card (up to 32GB), and a 5MP digital camera.

In what seems to be an unsettling trend for Dell, the Aero ships with the cobweb-filled Android 1.5 operating system according to Gizmodo whereas the latest smartphones on the market ship with either Android 2.1 or Android 2.2. If you recall, Dell's 5" Streak also ships with an outdated version of Android (in its case, Android 1.6).

On the other hand, the price is most definitely right if you're looking for a budget Android device. The Aero is priced at $99 with a two-year contract and at $299 off contract.

"The Dell Aero is built with a focus on style and performance to help people find new ways to connect with friends and express themselves socially supported by the nation's fastest mobile broadband network," said Ron Garriques, president of Dell's Communication Solutions.

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From DailyTech: Sony has unveiled several new digital cameras today in its Alpha D-SLR range. The first of the new cameras are the SLT A55 and SLT A33. Both of these new cameras are the first to use the new Sony translucent mirror design, which is where the SLT (single lens translucent) name comes from.

The a55 camera is a 16.2-megapixel camera and the a33 is a 14.2-megapixel camera. The cameras both offer fast shooting with the capability to grab continuous shots at up to 10 fps with precision phase autofocus. The cameras are also the first cams to offer quick auto focus in HD Movie mode. This provides continuous autofocus during the recoding of movies on the cameras.

The translucent mirror tech allows the cameras to split the optical path to send the image coming into the camera to both the main image sensor and an additional phase-detection autofocus sensor. The cameras also have live view with the fast auto focus mode available in live view as well. The rear LCD is a 3-inch unit on both cameras and can tilt and swivel. The only real difference between these two cameras is the resolution. Both use Sony A-mount or Konica-Minolta AF mount lenses.

Sensitivity is ISO 100-25600 and the shutter speed is 60-1/4000 second. Both cameras also have HDMI outputs and store images to SD/SDHC/SDXC and MemoryStick Pro Duo memory cards. The cams weigh about 433g for the A33 and the A55 weighs 441g and both measure 124.4 x 92 x 84.7mm.

Sony has also announced the new A580 and A560 cameras. The 580 is a 16.2-megapixel unit and the 560 is a 14.2-megapixel camera. Both of the cameras use the new Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor and BIONZ imaging processor. The cameras can shoot at up to 7fps in speed priority modes and has the Sony Quick AF Live View system with 15-point phase detection autofocus.

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From InfoWorld: Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday shared details about its next-generation chip architecture code-named Bulldozer, which will form the basis for its upcoming 16-core server processors.

Processors based on Bulldozer will include more cores and perform up to 50 percent faster than chips based on earlier architectures, said Dina McKinney, vice president of design engineering at AMD. The new design squeezes out more performance by bringing flexibility to the way tasks are executed across processor cores.

Bulldozer processors will go into computers ranging from servers to desktops and laptops, McKinney said. The first chips are expected to be server processors code-named Interlagos, which will have between 12 and 16 cores and are scheduled for release next year.

Chip designers like Intel and AMD have traditionally boosted processor performance by adding cores, cranking up clock speeds, or by improving threading capabilities. A new element in the Bulldozer CPU architecture is the ability to improve performance by pairing execution cores and sharing them with components inside a CPU.

The architecture scales performance by sharing components like the floating point unit between two processing cores, which provides a wider pipe to execute more operations per clock cycle, McKinney said.

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From PC World: Arm Holdings will soon release a new processor design that can run virtualization software, a development that could help expand the use of Arm-based chips in low-powered servers, the company announced Monday.

The virtualization capabilities will be introduced with the next version of Arm's Cortex A processor, code-named Eagle, which is "very, very close" to being released, said David Brash, a member of Arm's architecture group, in a presentation at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford, California.

Several companies are already developing hypervisor software for the new chip design, including VMware, the market leader in server virtualization, and other vendors that make hypervisors for mobile and embedded use, according to a slide that Brash showed during his presentation.

Virtualization allows software to run separately from its underlying hardware, allowing several operating environments to be run simultaneously on one computer, each in its own virtual machine. The technology has existed for a long time on mainframes and recently became popular for consolidating workloads on x86-based servers.

Arm chips are known for their low power consumption and are widely used in cell phones -- including Apple's iPhone -- and other embedded devices. Arm doesn't manufacture the chips itself; rather, it designs them and sells the architectures to chip makers like Texas Instruments.

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From DailyTech: Back in February at the Mobile World Congress, Intel and Nokia announced that they were merging their Moblin (Intel) and Maemo (Nokia) Linux distributions into a single distribution dubbed MeeGo. MeeGo was intended both to be an ideal graphics-rich OS for smartphones, most of which run ARM processors. It would also be an optimized OS for netbooks/tablets that sport Intel's Atom (x86) mobile processor, which Windows 7 only weakly supports according to Intel.

Now Intel and Nokia, along with the University of Oulu, have announced that they're opening a joint lab dubbed "the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center" in Oulu, a city in central Finland. Finland is Nokia's home country.

One of the lab's top priorities will be to develop new open source 3-D Linux skins and interfaces. The goal here is to allow the user to employ "real world" gestures to accomplish meaningful tasks. While that objective may seem a little nebulous, you can look to recent Google acquisition BumpTop for an example of how gestures and a 3-D OS skin can improve the user experience. MeeGo's experimental extensions will likely follow a similar path.

Rich Green, Senior vice president and chief technical officer, Nokia comments, "3-D technology could change the way we use our mobile devices and make our experiences with them much more immersive. “Our new joint laboratory with Intel draws on the Oulu research community’s 3-D interface expertise, and over time will lay down some important foundations for future mobile experiences."

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From DailyTech: Like the Droid X, HTC EVO 4G, and other top-of-the-line Android phones that came before it, Verizon's Droid 2 is receiving a minor OS update shortly after its launch (the Droid 2 hit store shelves a few weeks ago).

The update (Version.2.2.20.A955.Verizon.en.US/BP: BP_C_01.09.05P) will include the following improvements:

* Enabled text and picture message scrolling.
* Streamlined set up of Visual Voice Mail feature.
* Improved contact sync with Corporate Exchange categories and groups.
* View accurate contact pictures when reviewing Recent Call Log.

According to Verizon, the download should take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes, and the installation should take an additional 5 minutes.

In other Droid news, Motorola has posted an updated Android software upgrade schedule on its owners' forum. U.S. users can look forward to the following upgrades:

* BACKFLIP (USA) Upgrade to Android 2.1 planned for Q3
* CLIQ (USA) Upgrade to Android 2.1 - testing in process, planned for late Q3/early Q4
* CLIQ XT (USA) Upgrade to Android 2.1 - testing in process, planned for late Q3/early Q4
* DEVOUR (USA) Will not have a software upgrade to Android 2.1
* DROID by Motorola (USA) Upgrade to Android 2.2 currently rolling out in phases
* DROID X by Motorola (USA) Upgrade to Android 2.2 planned for late summer.

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