It wasn’t only Intel that shed some light on its forthcoming processors this week, as Qualcomm also revealed details on its Snapdragon system on chip (SoC) roadmap. The company announced its upcoming Snapdragon SoC built on a 28 nm process. The Qualcomm MSM8960 SoC boasts two next-generation processor cores (clock speeds not disclosed), with the company promising a whopping five times performance increase over the current Snapdragon CPU.

 

In a seperate announcement Qualcomm shed light on its future graphics path, with the company revealing its next generation Adreno 3xx GPU, that will be employed in SoCs from 2011-2013 on a 28 nm process. Qualcomm is stating that Adreno 3xx will deliver graphics performance on a similar level as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3), with Qualcomm believing that smartphones in 2011-2013 will feature game graphics that are on par with today’s best consoles.  

 

 

Looks like the rumours around a second generation Nexus aren’t as far fetched as it first appeared, as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt showed off what Engadget as well as other tech news sites are calling the Nexus S at the Web 2.0 summit, that took place this week in San Francisco.

 

Schmidt showed off the “unannounced phone” from an “announced manufacturer” running on the T-Mobile mobile service. He revealed that it has near field communication (NFC) features, a technology that enables the smartphone to act like a debit/credit card, which he thinks will eventually replace credit cards. Google’s CEO also stated that Gingerbread (the next version of Android) will be available “within the next few weeks”.

 

 

 

Last month Nvidia revealed that the world’s fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, utilises 7 168 Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPUs along with 14 396 Intel processors. Nvidia (and Intel)’s main rival, AMD, then responded this week by providing its very own claims to supercomputing fame. Now Nvidia has responded again stating that the only petaflop systems in the top 10 of the Green500 list, which is a list of the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers, make use of its Nvidia Tesla GPUs. We'll be waiting for the next supercomputer claim to fame soon.

 

 

Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, has conceded that he thinks Android will become the dominant smartphone platform of the future in a similar way that Microsoft’s Windows OS went on to dominate the PC landscape over the Mac systems. According to Engadget, Wozniak said during an interview with the De Telegraaf newspaper in the Netherlands that the iPhone has “very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems. In terms of quality, the iPhone is leading.”

 

He went on to say that “Android phones have more features,” as well as offers more choice for mobile users and over time he thinks that Android’s quality, consistency and user satisfaction will go on to match iOS. He concluded by taking a poke at Nokia referring to the world’s largest phone maker as “the brand from a previous generation” that must release a new brand for the young consumer.

 

 

According to NokiaUsers, a team from Nokia’s research lab in Tampere, Finland, have managed to create a touch-screen made out of ice. This team cut several blocks of ice, stacked them together and then seamlessly merged them together using heat-guns to create an ice wall. They then used infrared, optics and electronics, in order to bring this unique (and seemingly of no real practical value whatsoever) touch-screen to life. The creation was christened Ubice, which stands for ubiquitous ice.

 

“This was a playful experiment, but one that we think showed interactive computing interfaces can now be built anywhere,” said Jyri Huopaniemi at Nokia’s research lab in Tampere. (Video follows after the break)