NVIDIA: Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro performance claims are wrong

The Inquirer reports NVIDIA attacked Qualcomm over claims that the dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro beats NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 SoC. Seems like the start of a good old fashioned mud fight, this time not in the discrete graphics card market but in the mobile chip market.

Yesterday Qualcomm's Rob Chandok, SVP of Software Strategy and president of the firm's Innovation Center told journalists at a roundtable that its Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 system-on-chip (SoC) and its newly announced dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro beat Nvidia's five-core Tegra 3 chip in just about every benchmark under the sun. Now Nvidia has fired back, saying that the figures bandied about by Qualcomm are incorrect based on reviews on the web.

Chandok did not mention Nvidia's Tegra 3 by name in his presentation, instead using phrases such as "quad-core 1.3-1.4GHz chip", which anyone with access to a search engine can work out is a reference to Nvidia's Tegra 3 chip. Nvidia clearly thought Chandok's comments were aimed at its burgeoning Tegra 3 chip and fired back claiming the results simply do not correlate with independent reviews.

Full details over here.

NVIDIA: Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro performance claims are wrong - More news at DV Hardware

Gartner claims SSDs to become mainstream in 2012

Gartner claims solid state disks will break into the mainstream in the second half of 2012, when pricing is expected to fall to $1 per gigabyte.

At that point, Gartner expects SSD pricing to reach $1 a gigabyte. For the math-challenged among us, that means even fairly roomy SSD boot drives will fall well below $100�like, say, 64GB for $64. Considering the very palpable boot speed and responsiveness benefits, it does seem likely that many users would make the jump. Gartner expects NAND flash prices to tumble 30% this year and 36% in 2012.

For those who think $1/GB is still expensive, keep in mind that mechanical hard drives were at or above that threshold not long ago. In March 2003, we reviewed a trio of 120GB hard drives from Maxtor, WD, and Seagate that were priced in the $132-188 range.

Gartner claims SSDs to become mainstream in 2012 - More news at DV Hardware