According to Barrons, Joseph Moore, for it was he, rated Intel as an underweight and set a $20 price target for its shares, saying that the outfit could hold its own against competitors in the battle for tablets based on Microsoft's Windows 8.

Tragically that will not help the company's bottom line much. He said that last week's Silvermont CPU core announcement for mobile devices suggested that people should be a lot more optimistic about Intel.

He claimed that the company is more competitive with licensees of ARM microprocessor architecture, such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Nvidia.

Moore praised Intel for making great strides in optimising its Atom architecture for the performance per watt needed for ultra-mobile devices and expects Intel selling 50 million of its Atom line of processors for tablets through 2015. This is four percent above current expectations.

He believes that sales of tablets next year will be $282.8 million and will rise in 2015 to $327.5 million, respectively. Moore said that about 13 percent in 2014 will be based on Microsoft's Windows 8, and 16 percent in 2015. The rest will be Apple and Google gear. The Atom might take almost eight percent of Android shipments, and 75 percent of Win 8 tablets, and the combination, 36 million shipments in 2014 and 50.2 million in 2015, would produce $722 million and $1 billion, respectively, in revenue, at an average price of $20 per chip.

For Chipzilla to get any real meaningful financial uplift from mobile devices, the company must see success with its higher priced Haswell based chips in Ultrabooks and hybrid computers.

He was curiously optimistic about Intel's progress in ultra mobile. If Intel can use new form factors to mitigate tablet cannibalisation altogether it will allow them to maintain traditional profits, which are unmatched by any other semiconductor end market, he reckons.

But he thinks that higher end Ultrabooks are "somewhat challenging" as $200 for touch panels, SSDs, and thin form factors, providing high end detachable and convertible form factors is a lot of money.

"If Ultrabooks are going to return the industry to growth, there is implicitly the assumption that PC ASPs will rise, which historically speaking has been a difficult proposition," Moore wrote. 

According to The Genesis Block, the network recently passed 1 exaFLOPS (1,000 petaFLOPS), making it a force to be reckoned with.However, some experts might be crying foul, as FLOPS aren’t exactly the right metric to gauge Bitcoin performance.

Bitcoin relies on integer calculation rather than floating-point operations, which also explains why some GPUs and custom designed ASICs are pretty good at it. In any case FLOPS can still be used to see how other supercomputers measure up to the rebellious Bitcoin crowd. 

By comparison, IBM’s Sequoia churns out 16.3 petaFLOPS, which makes it look like a featherweight compared to the Bitcoin network. Fujitsu’s K computer is capable of 10.5 petaFLOPS. 

Although Bitcoin is still more or less an oddity, the sheer size and performance of its network should raise a few eyebrows in the tech community. While this doesn't exactly mean the days of costly and exotic supercomputers are numbered, it does demonstrate it's possible to get exceptional performance from a large network of dedicated machines, rather than confined to a single facility.

In a report, Linley Group analyst  Linley Gwennap has said "Moore's Mountain" will sort out the men from the boys and favour Intel in the long run.

Gwennap said that Moore's Law is not running out of steam, but the increasing cost of producing smaller and smaller transistors faces some companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing with huge bills.

Gwennap uses a case study of the fairly routine shrink from 40nm LP to 28nm LP, TSMC and other foundries rolled out high-k metal-gate (HKMG) technology, which reduced leakage power.

The HKMG process is more expensive than the standard 28nm version, but both have the same transistor density. At 20nm, HKMG becomes mandatory, because otherwise the leakage of the tiny gates would be overwhelming. Double patterning is also needed at this node, adding more cost. FinFETs, another technology to reduce power, compound the cost problem. TSMC is adding FinFETs to its 20nm process and calling it 16nm FF, but the transistor density remains unchanged, Gwennap wrote.

While other foundries have a similar plan for their first-generation FinFETs, wafer cost will more than double between 28nm LP and 16nm FF, but the transistor density will only double. This means that the cost per transistor will increase during this transition.

What we have seen in the past is that wafer costs have risen gradually while transistor counts have doubled every two years.

These trends have slashed the cost per transistor over the past 40 years, leading to chips integrating hundreds of millions of transistors but selling for less than $10.

Gwennap thinks that Nvidia, Broadcom, and Qualcomm can pass along the higher costs of more expensive transistors, while those selling into markets for cheaper devices may not be able to afford the most expensive process technology.

But the real winner will be Chipzilla which is in a better place to use its process technology advantage to deliver on Moore's Law.

Gwennap wrote that Intel seems immune to the troubles that the foundries are facing. It has been shipping PC and server processors built in its 22nm FinFET process since last year and plans to begin production using its 14nm FinFET process by the end of this year.

Thanks to the huge amount of cash Intel has chucked at process development, it can move from node to node, outpacing TSMC and others.

Of course, this is assuming that there is a continued demand for ever shrinking chips.

Gwennap and Chipzilla could become unstuck if the industry said "we don't want smaller chips and are happy with these slightly cheaper bigger ones, thanks very much". So far they have not said that, but it is possible that a pain threshold will be reached where manufacturers can't be bothered writing more cheques for shrinks that do not give them a noticeable benefit. 

It is just the latest component to be bolted on to the CPU die, but it has been mooted for years. In fact, Hot Hardware remembers that it was first being talked about in 2005 when James Blunt was causing the world to suffer with his "You're Beautiful" single.

At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel showed the assorted throngs a Pentium M 738 with a CMOS voltage regulator on-package. It claimed that this allowed the company to save large amounts of power by shifting to low power states much more quickly. At the time the technology was half-baked and now apparently Chipzilla has got it working.

The Haswell VRM on-die allows for multiple voltage rails and controls voltage for the CPU, on-die GPU and a system I/O, integrated memory controller.

It has dubbed all this a FIVR (Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator) as in "lend us a FIVR until payday".  It is supposed to kill off all voltage ripple and be significantly more efficient than a traditional motherboard VRM. It is a 50th the size for a start.

Hot Hardware thinks that this means Haswell will draw less power than Ivy Bridge. It'll enter and exit power-saving states more quickly, which allows for more aggressive throttling, and it should run extend system battery life.

However, FIVR will hurt CPU temps and stop overclocking at higher clock speeds. According to leaked spec sheets, the upcoming HD 4770K series holds the line on base and turbo clock speeds compared to the 3770K, but increases TDP to 84W, up from 77W.

This does not mean the system's power consumption has changed, but a component that used to exist in a separate domain is now being cooled by the CPU heatsink+fan and sits within the same socket.

So it could be that Intel might need to stuff up CPU overclocking performance. FIVR could become a little hot if it is processing too much and this will limit overclocking. It is a step in the right direction for notebooks, tablets, and smartphones where the load is lighter and power consumption is more important.

While Intel is using Haswell to debut the technology it is not clear if Chipzilla wants it under the bonnet of Silvermont yet. But if it does work then Intel will use it as a the icebreaker to get it into traditionally closed to x86 due to high power consumption. 

According to VentureBeat, the Santa Clara, California, chipmaker reported first-quarter revenue rose to $954.7 million which was slightly down from $924.9 million in the year-ago quarter.

The company said that its revenue in the current quarter would be $975 million, plus or minus 2 percent.

Given that the PC market is still pants at the moment, Nvidia has much to be proud of. Analysts were expecting revenue of $941 million for the quarter ended in April and $1.0 billion for the quarter ending in July.

Its first-quarter net income was $77.9 million compared to $60.4 million at the same time last year.

Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia said that the company did better because of the success of Kepler-based GPUs within and beyond the PC .

He said that Kepler is capturing share among gamers, strengthening Nvidia's workstation and supercomputing segments. It will fuel new growth opportunities for GRID server graphics solutions too.

Jen-Hsun added that Tegra 4 devices and Tegra 4i certification on the way and he is expecting the company to return to growth in the second half.

The Tegra 4i chip, combines a 4G LTE modem with a mobile processor, could give Nvidia an advantage in mobile devices the future. Of course that could all go pear shaped in the future. So far Nvidia has not let reviewers benchmark the Tegra 4 and we only have numbers supplied by the company to suggest it might be OK.

Project Shield which is Nvidia's upcoming handheld game device could end up doing well, as it does have its fingers on the pulse of trends in the industry. Of course it could also be a total turkey. 

The new plant will offer FinFET transistor technology at 10nm and 7mm nodes and it should be completed in 2016 or 2017. The company also expects to adopt extreme ultraviolet lithography for the 10nm node by 2017. 

The company said that it will invest a record $1.5 billion on research and development this year, marking a new record. TSMC’s R&D spending totalled just over $1 billion in 2010, it hit $1.36 billion last year and it will continue to go up over the next few years. The company is speeding up 16nm and 10nm development and it hopes to start building 16nm FinFET chips next year.

Although some optimists were hoping to see 20nm parts from TSMC by the end of this year, CEO Morris Chang said the company will start volume production of 20nm products in 2014, reports Digitimes.

However, TSMC will not ditch 28nm anytime soon. In fact, it is still expanding 28nm capacity and it hopes to increase capacity to 100,000 300mm wafers by the end of the year. Chang said TSMC will expand its 28nm capacity threefold in 2013 over 2012.

According to eeTimes it is a myth that Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel are the top mobile chipmakers.

Quoting a Strategy Analytics report, last year 2012 Chinese vendors grabbed 20 percent volume share of the tablet application processor market between them.

While these vendors might be manufacturing at the low end of the market it is a market that by value grew 83 percent year-on-year to reach $2.7 billion.

Sravann Kundojjala, senior analyst with Strategy Analytics, pointed out that in China the top seller is dual-core ARM chips which sell for $4 or $5 and quad-cores at $8 or $9. This is less than half what Nvidia is selling its equivalent chips for and so probably the Chinese vendors, while significant in volume, do not yet have 10 percent of the market by value.

While Apple had about 48 percent revenue share of the tablet processor market in 2012, since its chips are only used in the iPad this limits their market share. Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Samsung and Qualcomm made up Strategy Analytics' top-five ranking of vendors.

Strategy Analytics reckons Nvidia led the non-iPad tablet market with 27 percent revenue share in 2012 having scored high-profile design wins in the Google Nexus 7 and the Microsoft Surface RT.

Strategy Analytics would like you to buy a $6,999 report but it is not difficult to guess who the behind the scenes Chinese chipmakers who are winning in the current market. There is Allwinner, Rockchip, Amlogic, Infotmic, Ingenic, Hi-Silicon, and NuFront.

EETimes claims that Allwinner, Rockchip and Amlogic are probably responsible for more than half the Chinese supply of tablet processors in 2012. Allwinner clearly has about 10 percent of the global supply by volume.

This would mean that it made more than Intel and Qualcomm who missed the tablet processor boat in 2012 and captured less than five percent volume share in the tablet applications processor market.

The figures show how far Chipzilla in particular has to go before it has made an impact, but also how close the Chinese chipmakers are to being household names. 

The Seagate 600 series is aimed at consumers and ODMs. It will come in a range of capacities up to 480GB and a range of multiple z-heights, including 5mm. Usually 2.5-inch SSDs measure 7mm at the waistline, making Seagate’s 600 the thinnest 2.5-inch SSD to date. It incorporates a SATA 6Gbps interface, so it shouldn’t be a slouch, either. 

The 600 Pro is an entry-level enterprise SATA drive designed for cloud system builders, datacenters, cloud service providers, content providers, virtualised environments and other high performance niches. Seagate stopped short of disclosing the full specs - there is still no word on read/write speeds, although the company promises to deliver the highest IOPS/watt, as the 600 Pro consumers on just 2.8W of power.

The Seagate 1200 is a different beast altogether. It is a 12Gbps SAS drive for enterprise storage and servers, which the company claims will deliver the "ultimate in speed, consistent performance and highest levels of data integrity". The drive is also backwards compatible with 6Gbps SAS environments, and will ship in capacities of up to 800GB, in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors.

Last, but not least, Seagate rolled out a PCIe memory card, dubbed the Seagate X8 Accelerator. The name sounds pretty mean, but luckily the marketing department wasn’t writing cheques the drive can’t cash. It delivers up to 1.1 million IOPS and it is twice as fast as the closest competitor, according to Seagate. In fact, Seagate says it is closer to DRAM performance than storage. Its top capacity is 2.2TB and, although there is no word on pricing, we’re not that sure we’d like to hear a quote. 

For years Atoms were built using ancient architectures and off the shelf chipsets, but Silvermont is a different beast. It is a 22nm system-on-a-chip and it is the first Atom to use out-of-order execution. It also features 3D tri-gate transistor technology and a very scalable design, which means Intel could theoretically come up with eight-core parts. Some Silvermont parts will use graphics derived from Intel’s HD 4000 core, used in Ivy Bridge chips, which means they should end up quite fast. 

Basically Intel crammed Silvermont with the latest tech it has to offer, and that’s what makes it significant. Intel is finally taking ARM seriously.

In terms of performance, the new microarchitecture is three times as powerful as the cores used in current Atom SoCs, which are already capable of holding their own against many ARM chips. Silvermont chips can wipe the floor with the current crop of ARM SoCs with relative ease. 

The added performance doesn’t come at a price. In fact, Intel says the new chips can cut power consumption five times compared to existing Atoms running at the same performance level. Performance per watt is crucial in smartphones and tablets. It was Intel’s undoing for years, but it seems to have nailed it at last. 

Silvermont will appear in several flavours. Merrifield chips will cater to smartphones, while beefier Bay Trail chips are reserved for tablets. Avoton will take care of microsevers. Merrifield and Bay Trail should basically deliver the performance of three to four year old PC chips to tablets and phones, which sounds very impressive indeed. It has the potential to transform Microsoft’s fledgling Windows 8 into a proper tablet operating system, which means Silvermont is yet another nail in the Windows RT coffin.

The bad news? We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see what Intel has cooked up for the ARM gang. Silvermont phones will show up sometime next year, which means ARM will continue to dominate the market for the time being. Bay Trail tablets are expected later this year, running Windows 8.1 and Android.