Month: November 2017

A magnifying glass is seen in front of a Google search screen. (credit: Photo by Michael Gottschalk/Photothek via Getty Images)

Canadian courts can't rule the Internet—at least not outside Canada.

A US federal judge has stopped a ruling from the Canadian Supreme Court from going into effect in the US. The Canadian order would have ordered Google to de-index all pages belonging to a company called Datalink, which was allegedly selling products that violated the IP of Vancouver-based Equustek.

When the order came down earlier this year, Google filed a lawsuit in US federal court seeking to render the Canadian order unenforceable stateside. Google called the Canadian order "repugnant" to the First Amendment, and it pointed out that the Canadian plaintiffs "never established any violation of their rights under US law."

Enlarge

According to a report from Bloomberg, chipmaker Broadcom is launching an ambitious campaign to acquire Qualcomm, best known as the default System on a Chip (SoC) and cellular modem vendor in most smartphones. Broadcom has reportedly made an unsolicited offer to buy Qualcomm in a deal valued at $130 billion, which, if it succeeds, would be the largest acquisition in tech history.

It's not a done deal, however. Qualcomm apparently isn't happy with the offer, with Bloomberg saying that Qualcomm thinks the deal "undervalues the company." Publicly, Qualcomm has only said it is "evaluating" the deal.

Qualcomm is best known for its near-monopoly on the high-end smartphone SoC market, with its "Snapdragon" line of chips. At its heart, any Android phone worth talking about has a Qualcomm SoC, which combines the CPU, GPU, RAM, cellular modem, and other components into a single chip. Qualcomm gained this near-monopoly on the back of its 3G CDMA patents, which Sprint and Verizon rely on for network connectivity. When buying a Qualcomm SoC, you get an integrated Qualcomm modem, covering Qualcomm's patent portfolio, while saving space and power thanks to the on-chip solution. If you use a non-Qualcomm SoC, you generally need a separate modem, which is less power- and space-efficient than a single-chip solution. And if you don't use a Qualcomm modem, you also owe the company hefty royalties. By leveraging its cellular patents, Qualcomm made its SoCs the path of least resistance for OEMs. The chips offer superior performance for a lower price while locking out their competition.

Enlarge / Renault, Mercedes, and Ferrari engines power the first three cars off the grid in this year's Mexican Grand Prix. (credit: Clive Mason | Getty Images)

The 2017 Formula 1 season is rapidly drawing to a close. There are two races left to run, though with ever-decreasing stakes. Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton sealed his fourth championship in Mexico at the end of October after a series of component failures, own goals, and general misfortune at Ferrari put Sebastian Vettel's chances to the sword. The really interesting developments in the sport aren't happening on the track but in conference rooms and press releases. The reason? The proposed changes for 2021; specifically the cars' engines and hybrid power units.

Liberty Media (the sport's new owner) and the FIA (which writes the rules) are trying to respond to disenchanted fans, but it's a tricky job. All three engine manufacturers (Mercedes, Renault, and Ferrari) have turned their noses up at the new engine regulations, with Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne even threatening to quit the sport should things not go his team's way.

None of this is new to F1. Power struggles break out every time new regulations or contracts threaten the teams' self-interests as they jockey to retain advantages and not lose out, even for the good of the sport. Bernie Ecclestone showed over several decades that he was more than up to the task, dividing and conquering the paddock in the name of F1. But this will be the first big test for Liberty.

Enlarge

If you've been zealously guarding your money since 2010, waiting for the day StarCraft II would finally be cheap enough to try out, you're in luck. At Blizzcon over the weekend, Blizzard announced the game would be transitioning to a free-to-play model, offering significant portions of the single- and multiplayer content for no charge starting November 14.

As explained on the Battle.net blog, players will be able to download StarCraft II's original "Wings of Liberty" single-player campaign for free. Players who previously paid for "Wings of Liberty" will be able to get "Heart of the Swarm" expansion for free instead, and players who purchased an expansion previously will receive an exclusive Ghost skin and three new portraits.

Players will also be to earn full, free access to ranked multiplayer play, including units from all three of the game's expansions. That mode will be locked until players notch a single unranked or AI win on 10 separate days ("our way to preserve the quality and integrity of the ranked experience," Blizzard explains).

Enlarge / Intel's render of an 8th generation H-series processor. The discrete GPU and stacked HBM2 memory are side-by-side. (credit: Intel)

In a bid to build better chips for gamers and other PC enthusiasts, Intel has announced the 8th-generation H-series mobile processors will have a feature that's nothing short of astonishing: they'll integrate AMD GPUs.

The 8th generation mobile processors currently on the market are U-series chips. These are 15W processors using a revised version of the 7th-generation Kaby Lake architecture. The GPUs of these chips are part of the same piece of silicon as the CPU. In moving from 7th to 8th generation, the number of CPU cores and threads doubled to four and eight respectively. Aside from some minor changes however, the GPUs portions are largely unchanged since the 6th-generation Skylake.

H-series chips have a bigger power envelope; for the 7th generation, the chip can draw up to 45W. In the past, they've used that higher power rating to support more cores and higher clock speeds—they've had four cores and eight threads for several generations now—but they've sported substantially the same integrated GPUs as the low-power parts.