Qualcomm Inc, the largest maker of semiconductors that run mobile devices, has introduced a new chip design that it says will help maintain its dominance in smartphones.
The company is to begin testing the next line of chips based on the new Kryo processor design in the second half of the year, the San Diego, California-based company said yesterday.
Qualcomm’s advanced chips have made it the key supplier of technology to the smartphone industry. More than 80 percent of phones connected to the fastest 4G networks last year were based on Qualcomm’s products, according to researcher IDC.
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It is now facing increasing competition as companies such as Samsung Electronics Co, MediaTek Inc (聯發科) and Intel Corp add features to their offerings.
“This will advance our premier line,” Qualcomm president Derek Aberle said during a presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Highlighting the increasing focus on lessening the industry’s reliance on Qualcomm, Samsung said on Sunday it had chosen to use its own design as the brains in its newest flagship Galaxy phone.
Qualcomm is also using the Barcelona event to try to reassert its leadership in areas of mobile technology that consumers will immediately feel a benefit from.
The new design, in the form of its top-of-the-line 820 model, aims to bring features such as computer vision — the ability to recognize objects within pictures.
The new features may also add the ability to automatically connect to whichever wireless network has the best connection and better speech recognition.
The San Diego-based company also showed off new wireless capabilities in its chips, which mean that future phones and networks can use additional airwaves that are typically used by other wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi and cordless telephones.
That is an advancement aimed at speeding up data downloads and lightening the data traffic in frequencies owned by mobile operators.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained