• Tree planting schemes are just creating tree cemeteries.  (Vice)
  
  Planting trees in a desert is hard.  Planting trees in England is hard to screw up, and yet that's what they're doing.
  
  But by the time the trees have all died, the people planting them have been paid and moved on to the next scheme.

• You had one job: USB 4 Version 2.0 will hit 80Gbps.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It still uses the same USB-C connector but will require an active cable (read: expensive) to hit that top speed.  Otherwise it will fall back to the current 40Gbps.
  
  But why not just call it USB 5?  Do they have some sort of PTSD related to version numbering?
  
  
  
• Flash memory prices are expected to drop sharply by the end of the year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Predictions are for a drop of up to 35% in the current quarter and an additional 20% in Q4.  Which is a lot.  Component shortages have kept prices up the last couple of years but that is coming to an end for computers, though it still applies to industrial electronics.
  
  
  
•  Micron is investing $15 billion in a new factory near Boise, Idaho.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Interesting that the article gives the expense rather than the price, since this factory will be subsidised by both the state and federal governments.
  
  
  
• The Framework laptop is now open for pre-order in Australia.  (Frame.work)
  
  Including the new 12th generation model.
  
  It's not particularly cheap and it lacks the Four Essential Keys, but on the other hand it's not glued together - all repairs can be done with the single (included) screwdriver - and that counts for a lot.
  
  Actually, since I have spare DDR4 SODIMMs and SSDs - and nothing in this laptop is soldered in place - I could just get the entry level model and upgrade it, which would cut the price nearly in half.

Posted by: normal at Friday, September 02 2022 09:43 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, September 04 2022 03:34 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: licaki at Monday, January 09 2023 11:19 PM (1Wwan)

Posted by: licaki at Wednesday, January 11 2023 11:10 PM (FAFyg)

Posted by: licaki at Tuesday, January 31 2023 10:05 PM (2Nb52)

Posted by: licaki at Tuesday, January 31 2023 10:19 PM (2Nb52)

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• As we head into spring the weather here in New House City is trending towards what would be a chilly midwinter week in Sydney.  But since it never gets particularly cold in Sydney, and this house is built for cold weather, it's actually quite pleasant.
  
  My daily heating bill is coming down too; yesterday it was about half what it was during the coldest days of July.  Which is good because while Australia hasn't had Europe levels of energy crisis - we export LNG rather than import it - it sure hasn't gotten any cheaper.
  
  And the garden is starting to bloom.  At some point I'll have to find out what these plants are.
  
  
  
• The CEO of Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, who looted his customers of $2 billion in crypto assets and fled to Albania, has been caught and extradited and now faces 40,000 years in prison.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Pour encourager les autres.

• Arm is suing Qualcomm and its newly acquired subsidiary Nuvia because although Qualcomm has an Arm architecture license and Nuvia has an Arm architecture license, Qualcomm is not permitted to use Arm architecture developed by Nuvia.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This seems shortsighted by Arm, because it eradicates the whole chip design startup model - build a better CPU and get acquired by one of the big players.
  
  
  
• The Asus Zenbook 17 Fold is a 17" laptop that folds to become a 12.5" laptop.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is one of those things that might be great someday when the technology crosses over a some threshold but right now is an expensive gimmick.
  
  
  
• The first leaked independent benchmark of the Ryzen 7950X looks promising.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Integer performance is 23% faster single-threaded and 45% faster multi-threaded; floating point is 22% and 38% respectively.  
  
  Cryptography is 70% faster single-threaded, which is a huge boost likely attributable to support for AVX-512 - new instructions that can process 512 bits of data per cycle instead of the usual 256.
  
  A couple of interesting things about AVX-512: First, AMD supports the instruction set but didn't bother to increase the hardware to 512 bits - which makes the chip larger, more power hungry, and more expensive.  Instead they use the existing 256 bit floating point unit twice.  The new instructions are still better suited to certain tasks so even with this cheap and cheerful approach they get between 30% and 150% better performance.
  
  Second, AVX-512 is an Intel instruction set, but no Intel consumer CPUs support it.  It's in Alder Lake chips, making those chips larger, more power hungry, and more expensive...  But they've deliberately disabled it.
  
  
  
• Speaking of AMD it looks like the full lineup of Zen 4 server CPUs has leaked.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Up to 128 cores, 1152MB of L3 cache, 4GHz clock speeds, and 400W TDP, though not all at once.
  
  The lineup is divided into single and dual socket Genoa chips with up to 96 cores and optional 3D cache, and dual socket Bergamo chips with 112 or 128 cores at lower clock speeds.
  
  Genoa is built on 5nm; Bergamo will come along a bit later on TSMC's 4nm process.
  
  
  

Posted by: licaki at Monday, January 09 2023 07:43 PM (pImk9)

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