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Sony acquires Israeli chip maker Altair Semiconductor for its LTE chip tech

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Sony will be acquiring an Israeli chip maker called Altair Semiconductor for $212 million, the handset maker announced in an official press release this week. Altair Semiconductor is known for its advancements with LTE (Long Term Evolution) modems. They’ve been working on making LTE chips that are faster, with lower power consumption, all while at a lower cost. This possibly means that Sony can deploy LTE technology to markets that may not have it as of yet. The acquisition is slated to be all wrapped up early by February 2016, just a few weeks away.


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Qualcomm: Next year’s Snapdragon 810 is ‘on track,’ devices to launch in first half 2015

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report from Korea last week claimed that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip, which is almost surely going to power the next generation of Android smartphones, was facing some production issues that might cause some delay in the production of devices like the LG G4, Xperia Z4, and others. Although Qualcomm won’t comment on rumors that the chip is facing issues with overheating and GPU errors and the like, they do say that the chip is apparently still “on track” and that devices sporting the chip are still going to be available in the first half of 2015…


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Google reportedly considering a move to in-house server processor design

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IDF 2011 (slide, All Future Versions of Android Will Be Optimized for Intel chips)

Google could potentially design its its server processor chips in-house some day, according to a new report by Bloomberg. The move would be an interesting one, as Google has typically relied on Intel chips to power its servers. Any major changes are likely several years down the road, but just the idea that the company could switch is a pretty big deal.

Google is considering creating these processors based on designs by ARM, Bloomberg notes. ARM designs are used by many companies for designing in-house processors, including Qualcomm and Apple. Those companies primarily build mobile phone processors, but using ARM technology in a server isn’t a huge technological stretch.


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