MediaTek launched the Kompanio Ultra as the company's premium Chromebook processor on Wednesday, predicting that it will easily offer the highest Minecraft performance of any Chromebook chip while bringing AI to the platform, too. Essentially, MediaTek launched the Kompanio Ultra to help answer the question: Which Chromebook should I buy? Besides Google's own Chromebook Plus brand, there aren't too many answers. Instead, the list of Chromebooks is a hodgepodge of various processors, including the Intel Celeron, Pentium, and Core processors; AMD's A-series and Ryzen chips, and Arm processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon and the existing MediaTek Kompanio 500 and 800 series. Google launched the Chromebook Plus specification to help clarify matters, but it certainly doesn't help to differentiate the performance each chip can offer.

Qualcomm's 2024 debut of new Arm processors for Windows laptops was arguably the most important PC hardware announcement since the introduction of Intel's 486 processors in 1989. Just as that CPU line heralded an age of Intel-driven x86 dominance, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips have now taken us into a new era of competition. But 2024 was only the preview. Qualcomm's Snapdragon debut was limited, targeting a specific subset of premium, thin-and-light Windows laptops that don't require discrete graphics. I spoke with two expert analysts in the hardware space for insights on how Arm PCs will continue to grow going forward.

Qualcomm's 2024 debut of new Arm processors for Windows laptops was arguably the most important PC hardware announcement since the introduction of Intel's 486 processors in 1989. Just as that CPU line heralded an age of Intel-driven x86 dominance, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips have now taken us into a new era of competition. But 2024 was only the preview. Qualcomm's Snapdragon debut was limited, targeting a specific subset of premium, thin-and-light Windows laptops that don't require discrete graphics. I spoke with two expert analysts in the hardware space for insights on how Arm PCs will continue to grow going forward.

The graph represents a network of 2,061 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained "#CES2023", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets, taken from a data set limited to a maximum of 18,000 tweets. The network was obtained from Twitter on Monday, 20 February 2023 at 16:20 UTC. The tweets in the network were tweeted over the 10-day, 3-hour, 5-minute period from Friday, 10 February 2023 at 13:00 UTC to Monday, 20 February 2023 at 16:05 UTC. Additional tweets that were mentioned in this data set were also collected from prior time periods. These tweets may expand the complete time period of the data.

Semiconductor company MediaTek has announced a smart TV system-on-chip (SoC) with a powerful AI processing engine for premium 120Hz 4K TVs. The Pentonic 700 features AI-powered picture quality enhancements, support for Dolby Vision IQ with Precision Detail, integrated 4K120 MEMC and TCON, and gaming optimizations. "MediaTek's Pentonic series brings more intelligence to smart TVs with a host of AI-powered picture quality enhancements," says Alex Chen, General Manager of the TV Business Unit at MediaTek. "Smart TV brands can count on Pentonic 700 to deliver incredible experiences whether consumers are watching videos or sports, gaming, or using their TV as a control center for their other smart devices." The Pentonic 700's integrated AI processing unit (APU) supports the company's AI-Super Resolution, AI-Picture Quality (AI-PQ) Scene Recognition and AI-PQ Object Recognition technologies for advanced edge smoothing and detail reconstruction.

Sometimes the headline says it all: A chess-playing robot accidentally broke the finger of its seven-year-old opponent during an exhibition match in Moscow. The child apparently moved his piece too soon, and the robot grabbed his finger and squeezed it, resulting in a fracture. A video shows the robot grabbing the boy's finger and holding it for several seconds before a group of people come to free him. The boy competed the next day, finishing the tournament. His parents, however, have reportedly contacted the public prosecutor's office.

Everything in our home is getting smarter. As more devices gain intelligent controls and applications, their interconnected nature will come into play, with many ways to interface with one another: smart speakers controlling lights and locks, security cameras sending video feeds to TVs, and smartphones signaling when you're coming home to open the doors and turn on the air conditioning. As the smart home continues to change, there are some trends emerging that are worth noting. By understanding the direction the market is moving, you'll have a better idea of what equipment is really keeping pace and which is going to become a relic sooner than later. There's a shift toward smarter fitness devices in the home with gear like Peloton and NordicTrack offering equipment you can use to get in shape and stay in shape.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is arriving at pace, enabling new applications and business models across many consumer, enterprise, and industrial sectors. When you attach a "thing" to the Internet, you connect new data sources, which can be costly and resource-intensive to store or upload. As IoT continues to grow, organizations and users alike are finding immense benefit in applying IoT paired with Machine Learning and Azure Sphere. ML is excellent at processing noisy and complex sensor data to determine higher-level insights like "operating normally" versus "cooling unit failed" in a vibration sensor data stream, or "wake word detected" in an audio stream, or "items placed correctly" versus "item out of place" in a video stream. ML can be used on the IoT device itself, in the cloud, or a combination of both.

MediaTek has announced a pair of Chromebook chipsets it says can balance power with improved battery life performance. The company designed the 6nm MT8195 for premium Chromebooks and the 7nm MT8192 for broader use. The four Arm CortexA78 cores handle more resource-intensive apps, while the Arm Cortex-A55 cores take care of background tasks and maximize battery life through power efficiency. A five-core Arm-Mali G57 GPU powers the visuals and the MT8195 includes quad-channel 2133MHz LPDDR4X on the memory side. The chipset can run up to three displays simultaneously, and it supports Dolby Vision and 7.1 surround sound audio.

The integrated S900 supports features including AI voice-user interface and picture quality enhancements, enabling the next generation of smart TVs to deliver a vastly improved user experience. TSMC's ultra-low power 12FFC process leads the foundry segment's 16/14nm generation technologies in reducing die size and power consumption, which is essential for digital TV applications. It provides a sweet spot between performance and low power that is ideal for enabling voice recognition and edge AI capabilities in consumer electronics, wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. "TSMC has been a key strategic partner of MediaTek for a long time, and their advanced processes have consistently enabled MediaTek's industry-leading designs with innovative features which have satisfied the stringent requirements of our SoC solutions," said HW Kao, corporate VP of MediaTek. "TSMC is pleased to have the opportunity to continue our long history of collaboration and working together on such an innovative product as the S900," said Kevin Zhang, TSMC's VP of business development.