Samsung's Stephen Woo at 2013 CES: Join us Wednesday, 9 a.m. PT (live blog)

Join CNET for live coverage of Samsung Electronics' CES 2013 talk by company President Stephen Woo, which starts at 9 a.m. PT Wednesday. Our live blog will bring you news updates, photos, and running commentary.

Samsung says Woo's talk will bring a number of announcements related to its memory, display, and chip operations.

Woo will be joined by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who is also slated to speak. Samsung gave Clinton its Hope for Children Ambassador Award in 2011.

You can tune into the blog here:

CNET's live coverage of Samsung's 2013 CES press conference … Read more

Touch will be 'mandatory' for next-gen Intel ultrabooks

LAS VEGAS--Your next laptop may be touch whether you like it or not.

"To be an ultrabook with 4th generation core [processors], it will be required to have touch," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president of Intel's PC client group at the keynote today, referring to laptops based on Intel's upcoming "Haswell" chip.

That means all ultrabooks coming later this year -- likely in the summer timeframe -- will have touch, not as a feature, but as standard.

This will be a way for suppliers of Windows 8 ultrabooks to demonstrate that they have something … Read more

Qualcomm debuts chips with 75 percent better performance

LAS VEGAS--Qualcomm, the company that supplies processors for the majority of the world's cell phones, on Monday unveiled two new families of mobile chips with performance up to 75 percent better than their predecessors.

The Snapdragon 600 and 800 series processors are geared at premium mobile and computing devices. Importantly, the highest-end chips, the 800 series, include Qualcomm's newest 4G LTE technology that offers speeds up to 150 Mbps. That's a sharp increase from the prior-generation's data rate of up to 35 Mbps.

Both new processor lines also include the newest generation of mobile Wi-Fi connectivity, … Read more

Intel gets serious about power-sipping silicon

LAS VEGAS--Feeling the heat from tablet and smartphone rivals, Intel demonstrated today at CES today that it is more concerned about low power than high performance.

Kirk Skaugen, GM of the Intel PC Client Group, made a surprising disclosure when he said the current third-generation "Ivy Bridge" processor will now run at a rated 7 watts and will appear soon in super-skinny tablet-laptop hybrids from Acer and Lenovo.

Power efficiency like that wasn't supposed to happen until the upcoming fourth-generation "Haswell" processor based on a new micro-architecture.

To put that into perspective, mainstream Intel mobile … Read more

Intel CES preview: Quad-core 'Bay Trail' coming

LAS VEGAS--Intel plans to emphasize power efficiency and better performance in small devices, among other new tech at its Consumer Electronics Show event in Las Vegas this afternoon.

Here are some key technologies that Intel expects to talk about:

Bay Trail: a 22-nanometer system-on-a-chip processor sporting a quad-core design. In short, it's a redesign of the Atom processor boasting better performance. Power-frugal Ivy Bridge: The Ivy Bridge chip in virtually all new PC models today is being tweaked so it can be slipped into high-end tablets and skinnier ultrabooks and convertibles. Intel calls it "sub 10-watt." Haswell: … Read more

Nvidia Grid pushes gaming to the cloud

LAS VEGAS--Nvidia took the wraps off Nvidia Grid, the company's first fully integrated system to enable customers to access their games via the cloud.

Launched tonight at CES, Nvidia Grid pushes the limits of cloud gaming in a server stack that's designed to optimize computer graphics. In the works for five years, the stacks, which are packed full of GPUs, or graphics processing units, enable 3D gaming that can render graphics directly to the cloud.

The upshot is that you'll be able to start playing a game on one device, like a tablet, and pick it up … Read more

Intel at CES 2013: Join us Monday, 1 p.m. PT (live blog)

Join CNET tomorrow afternoon for live coverage of Intel's keynote presentation at CES 2013, where the company is expected to talk about -- you guessed it -- chips galore.

The keynote kicks off at 1 p.m. Pacific from the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino. Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel's PC Client Group, will be presenting, along with Mike Bell, general manager of the Mobile and Communications Group. They'll include an "update" on the company's third-generation processors and its mobile device strategy.

You can tune in to the blog and video stream here: … Read more

Nvidia at 2013 CES: Join us Sunday, 8 p.m. PT (live blog)

Nvidia starts the 2013 International CES early with a press conference at 8 p.m. PT (11 p.m. ET) on Sunday, Jan. 6, and CNET will be there to cover it live. We'll have a live video stream, along with a blog full of news and analysis, as it happens.

You can tune into the blog and video stream here:

CNET's live coverage of Nvidia's 2013 CES press conference

Nvidia has been pretty quiet about any possible announcements at CES, but the graphics chipmaker is likely to talk up Tegra, its processor for mobile devices. The … Read more

Special Intel 'Ivy Bridge' chips to enable new laptops, tablets

Intel will talk more about limited-run versions of its Ivy Bridge processor next week at the Consumer Electronics Show. Those chips are expected to be used by select laptop and tablet vendors, as the chipmaker tries to take on rivals with increasingly power-efficient Core series silicon.

"Limited SKUs" of Intel's 3rd Generation processor, aka Ivy Bridge, will have a power rating below 10 watts, allowing the processor to throttle down to a sub-10-watt power envelope, an Intel spokesperson told CNET. This "will enable new ultrabook designs" and the chip is "coming very soon," … Read more