Author: batteryforpc

Apple Inc.’s 15-year relationship with Intel Corp. will officially begin to unwind next week when new Mac computers are revealed.

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant said on Monday that it will hold an online event dubbed “One more thing” on Nov. 10. That “thing” will be Macs with main processors designed by Apple for the first time, replacing Intel chips that have been a mainstay since 2006. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple and overseas suppliers are ramping up production of three Mac laptops with Apple processors: new 13-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros and a new 13-inch MacBook Air, according to people familiar with the matter. Foxconn, known also as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is assembling the two smaller laptops, while Quanta Computer Inc. is building the larger MacBook Pro. The smaller models are further ahead in production and at least those two laptops will be shown at next week’s event. Beyond the processor switch, the devices won’t have significant design changes.

Apple has less than 10% of the market for personal computers, so the direct impact on Intel sales may be limited. However, the change highlights a crisis engulfing the world’s largest chipmaker. It has delayed a new manufacturing process, giving rivals a chance to catch up. These problems are at least partly behind Apple’s decision to move to in-house chips, although the company has been steadily shifting to this approach for years.

The partnership between Apple and Intel started in 2005, when Steve Jobs outlined a move away from PowerPC processors. Intel helped Apple catch up to Windows computers, some of which were more powerful at the time. In tandem, though, Apple was working on more energy-efficient chips for mobile devices based on Arm Ltd. designs and continues to use those to power the iPhone and iPad.

On Apple’s recent earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook hinted at the Mac launch by saying, “without giving away too much, I can tell you that this year has a few more exciting things in store.” The company generated a record $9 billion in revenue from the Mac in its fiscal fourth quarter.

The first Mac processors from Apple will be based on the A14 chip found in the latest iPhones and iPad Air, and tests inside Apple indicate improved power efficiency over the Intel parts they are replacing. The new machines will also have Apple-designed graphics and machine-learning processors.

Apple said in June that the transition away from Intel chips will take two years. After updating its laptop line, Apple will still have until 2022 to update desktop computers — the iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro and Mac mini — with its own processors.

The company is already at work on a redesigned iMac, the company’s all-in-one desktop, and a new Mac Pro model, Apple’s highest-end desktop, other people familiar with the company’s plans said.

Apple engineers are currently developing a new Mac Pro that looks like the current design at about half the size. It’s unclear if that Mac will replace the current Mac Pro or if it’s an additional model. Apple’s chip designs could help the company reduce the size of its computers due to increased power efficiency, but the current Mac Pro is large, in part, to fit components like additional storage drives and graphics chips.

Apple’s test Mac for developers to write apps for the new processors is a Mac mini with an iPad Pro processor, but the company will still need to roll out a proper update to that model with a Mac-specific chip. The new Macs require macOS Big Sur, a redesigned Mac operating system that makes the software more like iPhones and iPads.

When announcing the transition in June, Apple said the move would provide a common architecture across all of its devices. That means future iPhones, Macs, iPads and Apple Watches will run a variation of the same chip. That will allow devices to work together better and let iPhone apps run natively on Macs for the first time.

Bloomberg first reported on the transition away from Intel in 2018 and again in April. The new Macs will mark Apple’s third major product release this fall. In September, the company announced new Apple Watches and iPads. The iPhone 12 and HomePod mini lines debuted in October.

The world of smartphone design is starting to get pretty wild, with manufacturers looking to deviate from the the candy bar form factor thanks to new tech like flexible panels and under screen cameras.

LG, however, is setting itself apart from the foldable devices that are becoming the new standard with its Project B handset, set to sport a rollable display and following in the footsteps of its uniquely designed swivel smartphone, the LG Wing. 

LG has been working on a rollable display for a while, and we initially heard about its Project B smartphone last November, with its extendable screen, as opposed to flexible, foldable display like the Galaxy Z Fold 2, or Galaxy Z Flip.

Now, LetsGoDigital reports, the company has been awarded a patent for a device with the retractable display.

At first glance, the handset looks like a standard smartphone, but the frame can be pulled out to both the left and the right to double the screen real estate. This is achieved thanks to an inner, flexible frame that slides out of the device’s metal housing. 

The design has some advantage over foldable phones on the market now, with the biggest one being the absence of a hinge or crease; a panel with a fold in it will see the crease put under strain, potentially affecting the structural integrity of the display. 

What’s more, the rollable can adapt to how the smartphone is being used – in much the same way as the LG Wing. In landscape mode, for example, expanding the screen while playing a video or streaming music could reveal the controls so that your viewing remains uninterrupted. There’s also the option of multitasking with a split-screen mode.

LG is reportedly skipping straight over the foldable trend, and is looking to launch its rollable smartphone in March, 2021 according to Neowin. It’s possible that the handset will only be extendable on one side, as opposed to both as depicted in the patent, but it’s a radical concept and we’re intrigued to see a company bucking the foldable trend to try something new.

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which is supposedly the next GPU to arrive in the Ampere range, could be launched in less than three weeks’ time on November 17, going by the latest speculation.

This comes from MyDrivers (via Videocardz) along with the suggestion that according to third-party graphics card manufacturers, stock levels of the 3060 Ti will be similar to that witnessed with the RTX 3070 that just hit the shelves – in other words, it’ll be very thin on the ground.

But that wouldn’t really be any surprise given that all of Nvidia’s RTX 3000 launches have failed to meet demand by some margin. That said, treat this speculation with a great deal of caution, and indeed this purported launch date.

It is, however, true that the November 17 date more or less falls in line with what we’ve heard from the grapevine previously, after Chinese retailers put the RTX 3060 Ti up for pre-order, and a mid-to-late November timeframe was suggested for arrival.

Rumored spec and cost

The rumor mill reckons that the 3060 Ti graphics card will weigh in at under $400 when it debuts, and it’ll boast 4,864 CUDA cores with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM. It’ll use the same GPU as the RTX 3070 in fact, just a cutdown version (naturally).

As mentioned, the recently launched GeForce RTX 3070 GPU failed to provide sufficient inventory to retailers and sold out very swiftly, just like the RTX 3080 and 3090 before it. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, but hopes were up that the 3070 would fare better given that Nvidia delayed release by a fortnight in order to help resolve stock issues.

If you were wondering where the vanilla RTX 3060 is, this current rumor notes that there is no clear release timeframe yet, but that it will arrive at a later date, which is pretty much what we’ve heard previously (it’ll be based on a different GPU to the 3060 Ti).

We’ve seen the Moto G 5G Plus already this year (called the Motorola One 5G in the US), and if the rumors are correct then the standard Moto G 5G is going to be the next affordable 5G phone to arrive from Motorola.

As per information obtained by XDA Developers and an image posted to Slashleaks, the handset is going to come running the brand new mid-range Snapdragon 750G chipset, with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage on board.

Further information revealed on Twitter points to a 6.66-inch display running at a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, plus a 5,000 mAh battery. As the name suggests, this looks like being a slightly less powerful version of the Moto G 5G Plus.

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The display is said to run at the standard 60Hz refresh rate, though there’s no word yet whether it uses LCD or OLED technology. The Moto G 5G Plus has a 6.7-inch, 2520 x 1080 pixel LCD display, with a faster 90Hz refresh rate.

The 5G future

Around the back there are reportedly three cameras: a 48MP primary sensor, an 8MP telephoto lens, and a 2MP macro lens. As for the front-facing camera, that’s apparently going to be a single 16MP selfie camera.

Also included in the leaked specs is a mention of a dedicated Google Assistant button, which is something we saw on the Moto G 5G Plus smartphone – a button that we found was a bit too easy to accidentally push.

There’s no word yet on when we might see the Moto G 5G appear, though a launch doesn’t appear to be too far off. Motorola has previously been happy to push out multiple handsets in a short space of time, so it might show up before the end of 2021.

Another budget phone with 5G on board would certainly be welcome: at the moment, phones with the next-gen connectivity on board tend to cost significantly more, but that will change over time as the technology becomes adopted more widely.

Intel has traditionally held the single-core performance crown for many generations. AMD did get close to Intel 9th gen Coffee Lake, but Comet Lake once again showed good leads in single-core and gaming. With Ryzen 5000 Zen 3, Intel may not be in a comfortable position any longer.

User /u/losh11 (@loshan1212) first posted CPU-Z results of the Ryzen 5 5600X on Reddit. The OP had since deleted the post, but the results were shared quickly to other subreddits. CPU-Z screenshots and product packaging of the Ryzen 5 5600X were subsequently reposted by @GawroskiT on Twitter.

In the CPU-Z single-thread benchmark, the Ryzen 5 5600X scored 643 points leading the Core i9-10900K by 10% and the Core i7-10700K by 15%. The Zen 3 processor also seems to be 23.4% faster than a Ryzen 9 3900X in single-core, which shows that AMD is leaving no stone unturned in the quest to extract the maximum possible peak performance from the new architecture.

The Ryzen 5 5600X seems to be no slouch in the multi-core either with the processor amassing 4,814 points — 12% faster than the Core i5-10600KF and 14% faster than the Ryzen 5 3600XT.

This is not the first demonstration of AMD’s new found single-core leads, though. Previously, we saw the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and the Ryzen 5 5600X posting impressive single-core results beating Intel’s flagship Core i9-10900K by a significant margin.

While it is always advisable to wait for final reviews before coming to conclusions, these initial scores do indicate that AMD may have a definite winner on their hands with Zen 3 that does not compromise either in single-core or multi-core workloads.