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  Chipmakers Spar Over Title Of ‘World’s First’ Quad-Core Mobile Processor
  In the race to build a faster smartphone, the ability to tap mobile processors that have multiple cores, much like PC processors, is paramount. The high stakes are pushing multiple companies, including Freescale, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to be first to debut a mobile processor with four CPU cores. The quest dominated chip news at Mobile World Congress, the big telecom trade show being held in Barcelona, Spain this week. Quad-core processors represent a technological leap over dual-core processors, which are the current gold standard in phone chips. Nvidia says its quad-core processor boasts five times the computing capability of its dual-core chip. That translates to twice-as-fast web browsing and three times the frame rate found in Nvidia’s speedy dual-core processor.
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  Smartphones, Tablets Boost ARM's Profits
  Strong demand for smartphones and tablets helped U.K. microchip designer ARM Holdings PLC deliver a sharp rise in profit in the fourth-quarter, ARM said Tuesday. The U.K.-based company, which produces microchip blueprints that can be found in most mobile phones, said net profit rose 71% to £29.7 million ($47.58 million) in the fourth quarter, from £17.3 million a year ago. Revenue rose 34% to £113.9 million, ahead of expectations of £104.5 million, from £85.2 million a year earlier. Revenue in dollar terms, which is closely watched by analysts as the group generates the bulk of its sales in dollars, rose 28% to $179.6 million. Chief Financial Officer Tim Score said on a conference call that the semiconductor industry will see more typical growth levels in 2011 in the "mid-single digits" after last year's strong rebound. The company said it is well-positioned to continue to gain market share and therefore expects group dollar revenues for the full year "to be at least in line with market expectations" of around $696 million.
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  Qualcomm eyes Europe growth via acquisitions
  While Qualcomm was looking to grow organically in Europe, it would not pass over acquisitions should the opportunity arise, Gilbert said. Gilbert also said he was not flustered by Intel Corp's recent purchase of the wireless operations of German chipmaker Infineon. "The acquisition ... proves we are on the right track with our strategy," he said, adding that the surge in mobile data services would by far have the most growth potential in wireless communication.
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  Report: LightSquared collaborating with Qualcomm for satellite/terrestrial LTE chips
  LightSquared, the Harbinger Capital-owned startup with plans to deploy a nationwide, wholesale LTE network using satellite and terrestrial spectrum, reportedly is collaborating with wireless chip giant Qualcomm to build dual-mode chips that would support the hybrid satellite/terrestrial network, according to an article in Forbes.
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  ARM ups ante with new mobile processor core
  ARM Holdings unveiled a new mobile processor core architecture, the "Eagle" Cortex-A15, and said it will deliver five times the performance of today's high-end smartphone processors with comparable power consumption. ARM said its Cortex-A15 will deliver five times the performance of today's high-end smartphone processors.The processor, part of ARM's Cortex-A family, will be able to deliver a processor running at 2.5 GHz. The technology likely will make its way into new high-end devices over the next several years, and will enable more processor-intensive applications like enhanced augmented reality. Additionally, Android, Linux, Symbian and Ubuntu will feature application compatibility with the new offering. Although Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is not named in ARM's release, the company is an ARM licensee and could use the new technology; ARM's architecture is in the Apple iPad.
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