AMD today publicly disclosed its strategy and roadmap to recapture market share in enterprise and data center servers by unveiling innovative products that address key technologies and meet the requirements of the fastest-growing data center and cloud computing workloads.

Additionally, AMD revealed details of its 2014 server portfolio including best-in-class Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), two- and four-socket CPUs, and details on what it expects to be the industry's premier ARM server processor. This is on the heels of announcing the general availability of the AMD Opteron X-Series processor, code named "Kyoto," which dominates the small-core server market on every performance benchmark. These forthcoming AMD Opteron processors bring important innovations to the rapidly changing compute market, including integrated CPU and GPU compute (APU); high core-count ARM servers for high-density compute in the data center; and substantial improvements in compute per-watt per-dollar and total cost of ownership.

The HSA Foundation has released Version 0.95 of its Programmer's Reference Manual. The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a not-for-profit consortium dedicated to developing architecture specifications that unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in most modern devices. This is the first output from the HSA Foundation, who have been collaborating on this project since its founding in June 2012. It represents an important step in the development of the HSA Foundation's ecosystem because it enables software partners to develop libraries, tools and middleware and to code high performance kernels.

The Programmer's Reference Manual provides a standardized method of accessing all available computing resources in HSA-compliant systems. This enables a wide range of system resources to cooperate on parallelizable tasks. It has been specifically designed to perform in the most energy efficient way without compromising on performance. The goal is to enable a heterogeneous architecture that is easy to program, opens up new and rich user experiences and improves performance and quality of service, whilst reducing energy consumption.

Mionix, the Swedish manufacturer of professional high-end gaming accessories today unveiled the new AVIOR 8200 high performance ambidextrous gaming mouse. "We developed the AVIOR 8200 to offer maximum customization and engineered with the best technology. Weather you are right or left handed. Use a claw or palm grip we have created the most ergonomic ambidextrous mouse on the market, suitable for any gamer." says Peter Nygren, CEO at Mionix.

The AVIOR 8200 is a sleek rubberized 9 button ambidextrous mouse. The unique designed shape of the mouse allows for right or left-handed use, with either a full palm or claw grip. The 32-bit ARM Processor, the 8200 DPI laser sensor and the other high-end components, will ensure great power, accuracy and durability. Together with the software this provides access to customize the buttons, sensor, LED colors, advanced macros and profiles. While gaming you will feel the smooth, responsive and accurate quality of the AVIOR 8200.

Innodisk, a designer and manufacturer of SSDs for commercial and industrial applications, announces a release of the industrial-embedded industry's first SATA device in accordance to SATA µSSD standards - nanoSSD.

Through the integration of a control chip, flash memory and peripheral power components into a single ball grid array (BGA) package, Innodisk has managed to reduce the size of the nanoSSD to approximately 1% the size of a 2.5" SSD. With dimensions of only 16 x 20 x 2 mm (WxLxH), a weight of only 1.5g, SATA III support, capacities ranging from 4 to 64 GB and both x86 and ARM compatibility, nanoSSD can be incorporated into a wide variety of applications where a small form-factor and high transfer rates are important, including industrial mobile devices, embedded systems, tablets, high-end smart phones and Ultrabooks.

TSMC and ARM today announced the first tape-out of an ARM Cortex-A57 processor on FinFET process technology. The Cortex-A57 processor is ARM's highest performing processor, designed to further extend the capabilities of future mobile and enterprise computing, including compute intensive applications such as high-end computer, tablet and server products. This is the first milestone in the collaboration between ARM and TSMC to jointly optimize the 64-bit ARMv8 processor series on TSMC FinFET process technologies. The two companies cooperated in the implementation from RTL to tape-out in six months using ARM Artisan physical IP, TSMC memory macros, and EDA technologies enabled by TSMC's Open Innovation Platform (OIP) design ecosystem.

ARM and TSMC's collaboration produces optimized, power-efficient Cortex-A57 processors and libraries to support early customer implementations on 16 nm FinFET for high-performance, ARM technology-based SoCs.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced additional enhancements to the foundry's 55-nanometer (nm) Low-Power Enhanced (LPe) process technology platform – 55nm LPe 1V – with qualified, next-generation memory and logic IP solutions from ARM. The 55nm LPe 1V is the industry's first and only enhanced process node to support ARM's 1.0/1.2V physical IP library, enabling chip designers to use a single process that supports two operating voltages in a single SoC.

"The key advantage of this 55nm LPe 1V offering is that the same design libraries can be used whether you are designing at 1.0 voltage or 1.2 voltage power option," said Bruce Kleinman, Vice President of Product Marketing at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "What it means is that same set of design rules and models can be adopted, with no extra mask layer or special process required. This translates into cost saving and design flexibility without compromising on the power and optimization features."

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced today that Bernd Lienhard, 48, has joined the company as corporate vice president and general manager of its Client Business Unit, reporting to Dr. Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager, Global Business Units. In his role, Lienhard will apply his 22 years of experience in the semiconductor industry to lead AMD's client business as it expands its product lineup to include differentiated system-on-chip (SoC) solutions targeted at high-growth mobility and traditional client markets.

"A pivotal part of AMD's ability to win in high-growth markets is having the right leadership team in place with a diversity of semiconductor industry knowledge. Bernd's track record and experience translating business strategy into operational execution across large teams makes him the ideal leader for our client business," said Dr. Su. "Bernd's deep background of growth across a wide range of markets will accelerate our client business as we bring our strongest-ever line-up of APUs and first SoCs to market in 2013 and continue our expansion into ultraportable and ultra low-power form factors."

Futuremark released the newest installment to its 3DMark franchise. It's the first 3DMark to lack a version name, making it a "reboot" of sorts. For starters, the new 3DMark is a collection of three independent benchmark suites, each with its own demos, game tests, physics tests, and combined tests, and scoring.

Among the three suits are "Ice Storm," designed for tablets, mobile devices, and entry-level desktops, which needs nothing more than a DirectX 9.0c GPU to get going; "Cloud Gate," for notebook and home desktops, which needs a DirectX 10 feature-level GPU; and "Fire Strike," an over-the-top suite designed for today's gaming desktops, which can make even the fastest graphics cards sweat (for example, our GTX 680 in the screenshots below). The physics tests of each of these can benefit from having multiple cores and advanced instruction sets. TechPowerUp is a premier launch partner, hosting downloads on behalf of Futuremark. Grab yours below.DOWNLOAD: 3DMark (2013)

According to a new market research report, "Global Micro Servers Market (2013 - 2018), By Processor Type (Intel, Arm, Amd), Component (Hardware, Software, Operating System), Application (Media Storage, Data Centers, Analytics, Cloud Computing) & Geography (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Row)", published by MarketsandMarkets, the total market for next generation memory is expected to reach $26.55 billion by 2018 at an estimated CAGR of 62.3% from 2013 to 2018.

In a simpler terminology, micro servers can be termed as servers that multiple mobile processor chips, consume low power, use less space and are specifically used by small to medium - sized businesses. Micro servers find their major application in media storage and internet data centre especially for applications like lightweight web serving, simple content delivery nodes and low end dedicated hosting. It was identified that cloud computing and analytics are some other applications of micro servers which are growing rapidly. Micro servers presently account for 2.3% of the total server sales however looking at the current growth rate, in the next five years it is expected to reach 25 to 30% per cent of the global server market.

One Laptop per Child Association (OLPCA), the world-renowned project to provide a modern education to children through a connected computing device, announced today that it will introduce at CES three new products. OLPCA will unveil for the first time the XO Learning System, an Android compatible software suite for child-centric learning, which is available by license to computer manufacturers, governments, NGOs and content providers such as book publishers. Tablets under such a license will be called the XO Tablet, the second product announcement. Third, OLPCA will show the fourth generation of its iconic green and white laptop with both a keyboard and a multi-touch screen using Neonode technology.

Every child has dreams and XO Learning directs the child's passion, creativity and energy for these dreams into a new user interface that has 12 dreams. Such dreams include "I want to be" an artist, a musician and a scientist. Each dream features a rich learning experience and applications, books, games and videos that allow children ages 3 to 12 to naturally explore their dreams and learn at the same time.

2013 International CES - Advanced gesture recognition and sensing technology is coming to the 2013 CES! Etron Technology, Inc. (Taiwan GTSM: 5351) launches its innovative Cougar Platform, a hardware-based USB3.0 Depth-Map Controller Platform with two cameras that enables gesture/skeleton control and 3D-video/image capture and works with various middleware and application software. Since the data size of captured images is too large to be managed by motherboard CPUs, Etron developed this platform for intensive data computation immediately post-sensing with a hardware-based depth-map engine. As a result, Etron's Cougar Platform works smoothly with X86-based systems and ARM-based systems. It also provides synchronized dual HD (High Definition) video/image capture through a USB3.0 (uncompressed) or USB2.0 (compressed) interface. Etron will demonstrate its Cougar Platform at Booth No. 35114 in South Hall 4 at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) from January 8th to 11th.

Etron's Cougar Platform supports both short-distance (0.5 - 1.5 m) recognition, such as gesture control, and long-distance (1.5 – 4 m) recognition, such as skeleton control. It realizes full-range recognition by mapping different sensor/lens resolutions with various base lines (i.e., the distance between two sensors).

Advanced gesture recognition and sensing technology is coming to the 2013 CES! Etron Technology, Inc. launches its innovative Cougar Platform, a hardware-based USB3.0 Depth-Map Controller Platform with two cameras that enables gesture/skeleton control and 3D-video/image capture and works with various middleware and application software. Since the data size of captured images is too large to be managed by motherboard CPUs, Etron developed this platform for intensive data computation immediately post-sensing with a hardware-based depth-map engine.

As a result, Etron's Cougar Platform works smoothly with X86-based systems and ARM-based systems. It also provides synchronized dual HD (High Definition) video/image capture through a USB3.0 (uncompressed) or USB2.0 (compressed) interface. Etron will demonstrate its Cougar Platform at Booth No. 35114 in South Hall 4 at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) from January 8th to 11th.

ROCCAT will be showing its new product developments in gaming peripherals and software at CES in Las Vegas on January 8 - 11, 2013. Some of the ROCCAT highlights at this year's show will include the brand's first-ever mechanical keyboard and the first software project for the company from Hamburg, Germany – the Power-Grid app, which has now passed Beta testing. In addition, several ROCCAT products at CES are newly available to US gamers, including the gaming mice Kone XTD and Kone Pure along with the multicolor gaming keyboard Isku FX.

ROCCAT founder and CEO, René Korte, on the significance of CES for the company: "We announced ROCCAT's entrance to the American market here exactly 12 months ago. The feedback from gamers and media worldwide has been overwhelmingly positive and we're here again to prove that ROCCAT sets the rules when it comes to gaming peripherals."

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient computing platforms, today announced tit enables medical OEMs to take advantage of the exciting growth opportunities in the medical market by offering the widest selection of low-power x86 and ARM based solutions on the market. VIA provides fully customizable application ready platforms together with extended software and firmware services which medical OEMs can leverage for a wide range of medical usage models and applications including ultrasound, diagnostics, POC (Point of Care) terminals, patient monitoring, therapeutic, as well as exercise and fitness equipment.

With a long history as a full-service medical OEM solutions provider to many of the top industry players, VIA provides a robust medical roadmap which includes a full range of COM Express, ETX and QSeven system on modules, embedded mainboards in Mini-ITX and Pico-ITX form factors, and embedded systems based on VIA AMOS and VIA ARTiGO designs, as well as a full line of medical-grade touch displays with the VIA ALMA-3000 series. VIA also offers unparalleled longevity support for increased lifecycle management, support for a wide range of software and board operating systems and support for critical medical standards including UL-60601, EN-60601 and medical QMS (Quality Management System) ISO-13485. This enables customers to deliver products with unique feature-set advantages and a faster time-to-market.

Intel's 22 nanometer tri-gate technology, which goes into building today's 3rd Generation Core desktop and notebook processors, and soon the entry-level Pentium and Celeron ones, will make it to mobile SoCs (systems on chips), which will drive battery life-sensitive devices such as smartphones and tablets. Intel announced that development of such chips is in progress, speaking at the 2012 International Electron Devices Meeting. The new 22 nm SoCs could feature anywhere between 20 to 65 percent higher performance than today's 32 nm low-power chips. The new chips will allow Intel to take on mid- and high-grade ARM SoCs. Intel didn't go into the specifics.Source: C|Net

Samsung is reportedly taking interest in ARM's big.LITTLE technology - an SoC design in which high-performance Cortex-A15 cores are combined by low-power Cortex-A7 cores, and the two are made to trade places as the device's CPU, depending on the load. An SoC slated for 2013, which could probably feature in high-end smartphones and tablets, sees a combination of four each of A15 and A7 cores. The A15 cores are clocked at 1.80 GHz, and A7 at 1.20 GHz, with the former featuring higher IPC than the latter. A 2 MB last-level cache serves as town-square for data and instructions going to the various cores. The chip will be built on the 28 nm process.Source: EETimes

FXI, pioneer of the Cstick Any Screen Micro Computer, announced today that it releases a full system solution for ARM Linux and Android developers on its Cotton Candy device platform, targeting developers. The agreement and close collaboration with ARM will enable FXI to take full advantage of the resources of the Mali development community, while providing an easy to use, innovative development platform for Mali GPU developers. Existing owners of the Cotton Candy device can download development versions of Ubuntu Linux for ARM v12.04 and Android 4.0 in both source and binary forms by visiting this page. Developers can get Cotton Candy from here.

FXI is working closely with ARM to take full advantage of the capabilities of the ARM Mali-400 MP GPU (and other ARM technologies). The Cotton Candy Any Screen IP enables developers to work with the Cotton Candy device inserted in their PC and develop with their existing tool chains directly on the Cotton Candy. The combination of the ARM Cortex-A9 and Mali-400 MP can be found in a wide range of devices ranging from smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. By using Cotton Candy, which also uses this combination, developers can target a wide range of Cortex processors and Mali GPU based platforms —or for Cotton Candy itself— can develop on actual market leading Mali silicon.

AMD is consulting with JP Morgan Chase & Co., to explore options, that could pull it out of its grim financial situation. These could include a sale. The company is struggling to find itself a role in an industry that's increasingly focused on mobile, away from PCs. On hearing the news, the company stock surged 18 percent before closing for the day at 5 percent up, at $2.09, on the NYSE. Some of these options could include a sale of its portfolio of patents to raise cash. With the emergence of ARM SoC industry, AMD finds itself holding valuable IP that could fetch cash.

In a statement to Reuters, a company spokesperson said: "AMD's board and management believe that the strategy the company is currently pursuing to drive long-term growth by leveraging AMD's highly-differentiated technology assets is the right approach to enhance shareholder value. AMD is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time." Some analysts believe that AMD will not be able to reverse its decline in time, given the rate at which it's laying off engineers, others add that it might be difficult to buy AMD as a whole, since it's considered to be a "legacy company."Source: Reuters

ARM today announced that it is a leading member of Bridge Crossing LLC, a consortium of major technology companies affiliated with Allied Security Trust, which has entered into an agreement with MIPS to obtain rights to its patent portfolio. The MIPS patent portfolio includes 580 patents and patent applications covering microprocessor design, system-on-chip design and other related technology fields. The consortium will pay $350 million in cash to acquire rights to the portfolio, of which ARM will contribute $167.5 million.

The transaction will, upon completion, support continued innovation in system-on-chip design, whilst removing any potential litigation risk presented by the MIPS patent portfolio with respect to the consortium members. The consortium will make licenses to the patent portfolio available to companies not within the consortium.

In the coming years, Apple could end its partnership with Intel for supply of CPUs, according to a Bloomberg report, citing Gartner research. The company plans to make a transition from x86 to ARM for its Mac product line, which includes MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac Mini. Such a transition would be similar to the one Apple took from PowerPC to x86 machine architecture, across 2005-06. According to the report, Apple's engineers are confident of designing an ARM-based chip of their own that's powerful enough for mainstream personal computing on Mac products. Apple's engineers foresee a convergence of technologies between mobile devices (such as the iPhone and iPad), and Macs. Currently, Apple designs its own processors for iOS devices, which are ARM-based.Source: Bloomberg

Following last week's announcement of the ARM Cortex-A50 series, SoC designers formed a bee-line to license the ARMv8 IP. Among them is NVIDIA, and not just for its Tegra line of high-performance mobile chips, but also for Tesla, its GPU compute accelerator line. In an interview with InfoWorld, NVIDIA CTO for Tesla, Steve Scott, was quoted saying, "Tegra is going to become GPU computing capable in the not-so-distant future. Sometime this decade we are also going to start bringing integrated CPUs and GPUs together in the Tesla line". NVIDIA perhaps is looking at building Tesla GPU compute servers with the x86 CPU completely replaced with efficient ARMv8 64-bit processors.Source: Tom's Hardware

Weightless, the global organisation responsible for delivering royalty-free open standards to enable the Internet of Things, today announced a new Special Interest Group (SIG) to accelerate the adoption of "Weightless" as a wireless wide area global standard for machine to machine (M2M) short to mid-range communications.

ARM, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, CSR and Neul have today formally signed the 'SIG Promoter Agreement' which details how they will back Weightless's mission to establish a new standard and encourage its adoption worldwide. The Weightless standard this group will define is on track for completion in early 2013.

ARM and eSilicon Corporation, the largest independent semiconductor design and manufacturing services provider, today announced that they have signed a comprehensive multi-year licensing agreement for a broad portfolio of ARM intellectual property (IP). This includes the high-performance, energy-efficient ARM Cortex processor and ARM Mali graphics processing unit (GPU) families, ARM CoreSight on-chip debug and trace IP, and hard macro implementations using ARM Artisan Physical IP. Access to this broad range of ARM IP will enable eSilicon to deliver optimized, complex custom ICs to customers in a variety of markets, including the communications, computer, consumer and industrial segments.

"Our goal is to design an optimized, first-time-right chip for each of our customers and to meet their market timing demands," said Gino Skulick, eSilicon's vice president and general manager of ASIC Solutions. "Through this multi-year agreement, we will continue to provide our customers with access to high-quality, silicon-proven ARM IP. Together we help fabless semiconductor companies (FSCs) and OEMs quickly create highly differentiated products."

Acer announced a delay of its planned Windows RT product line from early-2013 to closer to Q2-2013. The company is keeping a close eye on how Microsoft's recently-launched Surface RT tablet is faring in the market, and could take strides towards its Windows RT-based products, perhaps even redesigning them, based on its performance in the market.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Acer President Jim Wong said "Originally we had a very aggressive plan to come out very early next year but because of Surface, our R&D development doesn't stop, but we are much more cautious," adding "Originally our plan was Q1, but now I don't think it will be earlier than Q2." Windows RT is a version of Windows 8 designed for the ARM machine-architecture, which allows for low power non-x86 tablets that compete with Apple iPad, and various Android-driven tablets.Source: Reuters

The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation today announced that LG Electronics has joined as a member. LG's diverse product portfolio and industry experience are valuable additions in helping HSA and its members reach common goals, ultimately benefiting consumers. With LG Electronics on board, new possibilities emerge as the fusion of HSA and LG's current IP bring a whole new level of interactivity for consumers- from home appliances to entertainment systems, the HSA foundation acquires greater depth in the smartphone, tablets, TV, digital cameras, game consoles and even the E-reader space. This allows for an entire ecosystem of electronics that touch the lives of consumers throughout their day to be enhanced via a common Heterogeneous Systems Architecture.

The HSA Foundation continues working toward developing a single architecture specification that will unlock the performance and power efficiency of parallel computing engines found in many modern devices. These specifications also open up a more simplified approach to software development in heterogeneous environments which will enable a broad range of programmers to drive richer user experiences into their applications.