Amazon to reveal 10.1-inch tablet before year-end

DigiTimes writes Amazon is likely to outsource the production of its upcoming 10.1-inch tablet to Foxconn and that shipments are likely to begin before year-end. The site also heard that Quanta landed the 7-inch Kindle Fire orders because Foxconn was too busy with manufacturing Apple's iPads.

Amazon is expected to outsource the production of 10.1-inch tablet PCs to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), and shipments of the 10.1-inch tablets are likely to begin before year-end 2011 for holiday-season demand, according to industry sources. Foxconn declined to comment on market reports.

Foxconn has been a long-term contractor for Amazon's Kindle e-book readers, and market watchers had expected the company to also land orders for 7-inch Kindle Fire tablets.

Amazon to reveal 10.1-inch tablet before year-end - More news at DV Hardware

Intel to reveal three new Thunderbolt controllers

Earlier this month Intel revealed plans for two "Cactus Ridge" Thunderbolt controllers at the IDF, and now word has reached VR Zone that the chip giant is also working on the L2210 "Port Ridge", a low-cost device only controller. Full details over here.

However, the controller that caught our attention is the tiny 5x6mm Port Ridge or L2210, it's a single channel controller that has been designed specifically for low-cost Thunderbolt devices. Due to its single channel design it only supports two lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth and it lacks support for pass-through connectivity. That said, there are plenty of PCI Express x1 devices that could easily be adapted for use in an external enclosure combine with Port Ridge and we can see this becoming a hugely popular Thunderbolt controller from Intel if it's priced accordingly to its functionality. Port Ridge should be in production before the end of the year, so hopefully we should see a raft of more affordable Thunderbolt devices early next year.

Intel to reveal three new Thunderbolt controllers - More news at DV Hardware