Broadcom Pays $164 Million for Renesas 4G Wireless Chip Unit

Wireless chipmaker Broadcom said today that it will pay $164 million to buy the LTE wireless chip assets of Japan's Renesas Electronics.

Under terms of the deal, a team of chip designers based in Finland, the United Kingdom and India will become Broadcom employees, though the companies aren't yet saying how many people are involved. Bob Rango, Broadcom's executive VP and general manager of its mobile and wireless group, said the group of employees is largely composed of a batch of ex-Nokia chip designers who did some of the early work on setting 4G wireless standards. "This is a very experienced group of designers, many of whom were at the table when the 4G standards were set," he told me.

Broadcom had previously been seen as lagging rivals like Qualcomm in the development of chips for 4G phones.

Renesas had announced that it would stop developing its 4G wireless in June. Rango said the chips are already certified for use by several carriers, including AT&T in the U.S.; Vodafone, Orange and EE in the U.K.; and NTT DoCoMo in Japan.

Broadcom said the deal will cut into non-GAAP earnings to the tune of 12 cents a share when Broadcom reports its results of the quarter ending Dec. 31. It also expects the acquisition will cut into its fiscal 2014 earnings by 10 cents to 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis, but that it will be accretive to earnings starting with the 2015 fiscal year.

The company also boosted its outlook for the quarter ending Sept. 30, saying it now expects to report revenue in the range of $2.075 billion to $2.175 billion, and for gross margins to rise as much as 10 basis points.

Broadcom shares rose in premarket trading by more than one percent, to $25.51 per share.

Chromebook Pixel can boot into Ubuntu and Linux Mint, just like a real laptop

There are plenty of reasons to not want to spend $1450 on the Chromebook Pixel, but most of them are an extension of the fact that Chrome OS hasn’t grown up enough to replace a traditional OS. Fortunately, Google’s new BIOS makes it easier to work around the native operating system than any Chrome OS hardware before it.

The main appeal of the Samsung Chromebook and its ilk has been price. For $250, you could afford to pick one up and see if you were going to like it. You could give one as a gift to that family member who considered it a biological imperative to click on every link they came across, leaving you to scrub the shame off of their hard drive the next time you were over for a visit.

It seemed, for a while, that the whole point of Chrome OS was to offer something for those who rely on the web exclusively. When offered with inexpensive hardware, this all makes perfect sense. When you offer that web-only experience in one of the most expensive (non-Apple) consumer laptops on the market, the least you can do is make it so power users don’t have to work too hard to get more out of that gorgeous hardware.

Like all Chromebooks before it, the Pixel offers a Developer Mode. It’s triggered by a simple toggle switch which, if flipped, allows the user to sit outside of the Chrome OS sandbox and get creative. This version of Chrome OS takes things further with a semi-writable BIOS. Unlike all previous Chrome OS hardware, the Pixel offers a secondary BIOS that is not Read Only, and is accessible in Developer Mode. This means that installing other operating systems is as simple as booting from an SD card or USB stick with a Linux image and then installing, just like you would on any other computer that’s not “protected” with Secure Boot.

So far, several users have taken advantage of this, and in a short while there were mostly functional versions of Ubuntu and Mint running on the Chromebook Pixel. You lose that luxurious trackpad until someone gets it working in Linux, but the rest of the OS works just fine.

An alternative solution is to use Linux in a virtualized manner. Crouton is a tool developed by a Googler to allow for Ubuntu to exist virtualized, but allow you to use the alternative to Chrome OS as though it is running naturally. Crouton is specifically for Ubuntu right now, with a publicly available GitHub that explains in detail how to install and use this new OS on your Chromebook. Ubuntu will be given its own file system to run in, with applications that run in its own environment, just like a virtual machine.

Remember: if you choose to use your Chromebook Pixel this way, you’re stuck in Developer Mode. This means that your Chromebook will take 30 seconds longer than usual to load every time you start it, because the boot sequence feels the need to take that time to remind you that you’re in Developer Mode. It also means that your laptop is less secure, in that a root exploit can grant any user access to the whole system. There’s no real way to escape this, and while it may seem like a small price to pay for full-fledged Linux on your Pixel, it is also a daily reminder that you’re not using the laptop the way it was originally intended.

$89 ODROID-U2 dev board with 1.7GHz quad-core Exynos now shipping

When it was announced back in December of 2012, the ODROID-U2 looked like a pretty impressive little developer board for just $89. Now that it’s shipping to Hardkernel customers around the globe, early reports from some users seem to indicate that the Exynos-powered ODROID is indeed a very solid performer.

The ODROID boards probably won’t ever attain the same kind of success as the Raspberry Pi. At more than three times the price, the ODROID-U2 is aimed at users that want a little bit more than an inexpensive board for building DIY electronics projects. The RasPi is capable of much more than taking home automation requests from Siri or playing Minecraft, of course, but it obviously can’t match the ODROID-U2 in terms of sheer processing power.

Its 1.7GHz quad-core Exynos chip is still on par with what you’ll find in today’s high-end smartphones and tablets. Android runs quite smoothly on the board, and according to developer Rui Carmo the ODROID-U2 “blows [his] Raspberry Pi setup out of the water in terms of speed and flexibility.” Carmo has a full suite of apps running on his ODROID, including all the top Android web browsers, remote desktop tools, and even the AIDE for building his own Android apps right inside Android (how meta).

Android is, however, designed primarily for touchscreen devices. Certain actions are difficult to pull off using only a mouse and keyboard — like zooming in and out. However, the extra “oomph” provided by the 1.7GHz Exynos and 2GB of RAM means the ODROID -U2 is also quite capable of running Ubuntu or another ARM-based desktop Linux distribution.

For just over $120 when it’s all said and done (you’ll probably want to purchase the AC adapter and an eMMC module), the ODROID-U2 is well worth investigating for kiosk-type setups, media centers, or even for a secondary workstation on your desk. Just make sure the tiny, black heatsink doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

Geek deals: Toshiba Satellite U945 ultrabook, Microsoft Surface RT, more

While some of the more hardcore geeks may scoff at ultrabooks, especially considering how they tend to lack high performance parts and use low-voltage Core i3 or Core i5 CPUs, the reality is that an ultrabook is pretty much the ideal PC for the average user.

Most people simply don’t need an expensive Core i7 processor, a speedy SSD, or battery-draining discrete graphics. With Intel’s 3rd generation of Core processors, aka Ivy Bridge, you get more than enough CPU and graphics performance out of the mainstream Core i3 and Core i5 parts. Browsing web pages and watching videos really doesn’t need quad-cores and a massive GPU.

With focus placed on thin-and-light design, long battery life, solid user experience, and competitive price, the Uultrabook is one of the most consumer-friendly PCs to date. Models like today’s Toshiba Satellite offers a great user experience out of the box and, for the most part, consumers need just look for the Ultrabook label!

The Satellite U945-S4380 is comprised of those aforementioned mainstream parts: a Core i3 low-voltage processor with the new HD 4000 graphics built-in, a 32GB SSD cache that speeds up booting and app loading, a 500GB hard drive for uncompromised storage capacity, and very portable dimensions for a 14″ laptop at 0.82″ thin and 4.1 lbs. It also has goodies like USB 3.0, HDMI output, media card reader, and now Windows 8 preloaded.

• Toshiba Satellite U945-S4380 14-inch ultrabook with Windows 8 for $599.99 + free shipping
  (normally $699.99 | use instant savings | end Nov. 29 or sooner)

Our other top deals:

• Microsoft Surface Windows RT tablet for $499 + free shipping
• Buy an HP Laptop or Desktop ($299 starting), get Free NOOK Simple Touch ($99 value)