The Linley Group recognizes 2021’s top products in the categories of data center, PC, embedded, mobile, processor IP, and related technology. And the winners are…
Intel disclosed dozens of new Alder Lake products for both laptop and desktop PCs. The 12th Generation products offer sizable performance gains over earlier models, but often at higher prices.
In 2021, image processors (ISPs) became a hot topic in smartphone processors. 5G became an essential feature for midrange and premium phones, but CPU improvements are taken for granted.
Amazon recently revealed its third-generation server processor, with instances now in preview availability. Graviton3 uses Arm’s Neoverse V1 CPU while maintaining the 64-core count of its predecessor.
Desktop PCs had a big 2021, thanks to two new Intel releases and that company’s introduction of hybrid technology. Meanwhile, Apple converted most of its Mac lineup to hybrid Arm-compatible processors.
The startup is sampling an integrated base-station processor with a DSP that uses the RISC-V instruction set. The SoC is suited to 5G small cells and remote units.
With its new Catapult CPUs, Imagination Technologies has become the largest IP vendor to announce RISC-V products, helping position the open-source instruction set as the leading alternative to Arm.
In the past year, new CPU cores from Arm and SiFive targeted high-performance applications in the data center and communications infrastructure. Many IP startups instead focused on edge AI.
Storage giant Western Digital added Linux and Android support to its Swerv line of RISC-V CPU in its new EHX3. The company is licensing the new CPU, which targets low-end application processing.
Marvell announced several products under its new Brightlane automotive brand. The 88QB5224 is a unique chip for bridging MIPI CSI-2 cameras to an Ethernet-based automotive network.
In 2021, edge AI continued propagating far beyond the cloud; smart speakers alone were up 12% from last year. Increased demand attracted investors to edge-AI-chip startups, creating several new unicorns.
SiFive added a new flagship CPU to its RISC-V “Performance” line that raises integer performance compared with its predecessor through additional execution resources, larger caches, and microarchitecture tweaks.
