Samsung is Apple’s chip partner with its ARM-based A4 and A5 that have been the brains of the latest iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV devices. Of course, the two companies aren’t friends in the legal realm right now, so perhaps Apple is just looking for a new friend with a factory.

The Taiwanese Economic News reports that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) has allegedly started trial production of Apple’s A6 chip, which will likely be used in future generations of Apple mobile devices.

TSMC is lending its 28nm process with 3D chip stacking technology to Apple’s A6 chip, with plans to be taped out in Q1 2012. The A6 could hit real products as soon as Q2.

Sadly, there are not any details yet regarding the chip, but hopefully it’ll give Nvidia’s quad-core Kal-El a run for its money. Probably?

Hangout video sharing is one of Google+’s more appealing features — not that we use it often, but when it comes to things to do in an online social gathering, watching YouTube clips would certainly rank near the top. Now you can launch Hangouts directly from YouTube, rather than heading over to Google+ and pasting in a link. Sure, it’s a simple tweak that probably took less than an hour to code, but it’s a clever addition nonetheless.

SOURCE via Slashgear

Recently, Kia officials let it slip that the Korean automaker would be debuting some sort of “coupe-like” rear-wheel-drive concept at this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, and just a few days later, we now have our first glimpse at that very car. The unnamed concept stands true to everything we were told earlier: it has rear-wheel drive, is a swoopy four-door “coupe,” and looks like it will slot in between the Hyundai Genesis and Equus in terms of size.

“I believe the car is a strong statement from Kia: We are ready to fast forward to an all-new chapter,” says the automaker’s design chief, Peter Schreyer.

Could this be a conceptual version of Kia’s upcoming K9 flagship sedan? Sounds right to us, and with such a bold styling direction, it’s clear that the Koreans are looking to take on the swoopy sedan segment that contains players like the Audi A7 and Mercedes-Benz CLS.

Global revenue for mobile DRAM hit $2.07 billion during the first three months of this year, up 10% from $1.88 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010. IHS noted that the sequential increase of $190 million between Q4 and Q1 was equivalent to almost the entire mobile DRAM market in the first quarter of 2009. Q1 2011 revenue was up 150% over Q1 2010.

“As mobile devices consume more memory to carry out an ever-expanding range of highly sophisticated tasks, shipments of mobile DRAM likewise are set for outstanding growth,” said Ryan Chien, researcher for memory and storage at IHS. “Unit shipments and densities for mobile DRAM will increase sharply during the coming years.”

Chien forecasts smartphone DRAM densities to grow by a factor of six between 2010 and 2015. However, while only 43% of handsets in 2010 used DRAM and there is an enormous opportunity still available, IHS believes that tablets will be a major source for mobile DRAM growth. “Given the expected proliferation of 8 Gb and 16 Gb chips during the next few years, mobile DRAM densities will rise by a factor of almost 14 for tablet devices,” the firm said. “Unit shipments of mobile DRAM also can be expected to grow, given that tablet shipments are projected to multiply 15 times between 2010 and 2015.”

Samsung was the top mobile DRAM manufacturer in the first quarter with revenue of $1.13 billion, followed by Elpida with $434 million and by Hynix with $391 million.

In a mobile, app-driven world, Sony is convinced that gamers will flock to the PlayStation Vita. Based on the official specs alone, Sony could be right. Then again, Nvidia’s Kal-El is also around to corner, so we’ll have to see how this turns out.

In an interview with GameSpot during Gamescom 2011, Sony’s director of hardware marketing John Koller said that gamers will discard their smartphones and tablets for the company’s delayed handheld console, the PlayStation Vita. The comment isn’t surprising given that Sony is trying to push a very expensive piece of hardware, but given that consumers typically only want to carry one device as it is, the idea seems a bit naive in an app-controlled, mobile world.

“When you look at the type of consumer that’s playing cell phone games currently, it’s someone that enjoys smaller ‘kill time’ gaming and has not gravitated to the larger, richer, deeper experiences that true handheld gaming provides,” said Koller, adding that Sony has done “a lot of quantitative and qualitative research to back this up.”

Let’s stop right there. This mobile gamer demographic seemingly consists of two groups of consumers: those who play games to kill a little time while waiting at the doctor’s office or burning flesh at the beach, and those who enjoy games both on and off mobile devices. It’s highly unlikely the first group will purchase a $249 PlayStation Vita.

However, the second group may not purchase the PlayStation Vita because (1) the price (as seen with the Nintendo 3DS which actually soared in sales once Nintendo sliced off $80) and (2) they want to carry one device. Honestly, what hardcore gamer wants to carry around a smartphone, a bulky PlayStation Vita and possibly even a tablet? If anything, the Xperia Play seems to be a perfect example of where gamers are on the mobile market: they wants their games, their telephone, their Internet, their music and their movies all on one unit in their pocket.

But Sony seems convinced that gamers will want otherwise once they get a taste of the PlayStation Vita. “You’re going to see PS Vita expand what a lot of people believe to be true about handheld gaming, and you’re going to see a lot of those current mobile phone and tablet gamers come over to Vita,” he added. “We’re very convinced of that.”

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Google has just added native client (NaCl) support in Chrome 14 beta, which enables developers to leverage C and C++ interfaces for their web applications.

NaCl is integrated as a sandboxing technology, which allows the browser to safely execute platform independent and untrusted code without being a threat to the browser itself, even if the software may be harmful.

NaCl was integrated for the first time in Chrome 5 behind a flag and is enabled via Pepper, a collection of APIs that can connect C and C++ code to modern websites that run HTML5 technologies. “This means that once you’ve ported your code to Native Client, it will work across different operating systems, and you only need to maintain one code base,” Google said.

According to the company, NaCl supports Pepper APIs for 2D graphics, stereo audio, URL fetching, sandboxed local file access, and asynchronous message passing to and from JavaScript. Down the road, Google plans to add support for hardware accelerated 3D graphics (OpenGL ES 2.0), fullscreen mode, and networking such as WebSockets and peer-to-peer connections.