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Yay, Intel has to compete in at least some segments again! Progress for everyone.
I've seen an analysis of the comparative AMD/Intel architectures and the only place AMD won't be a major competitor with Intel is in massively parallel supercomputers. In every way they've aimed squarely at Intel's most profitable market segments. Also, even the very capable AMD motherboard chipsets are supposed to be in mobos that are cheaper than current Intel ones most likely due to Intel price gouging there, too. Finally, the new AMD GPUs appear to be real winners.

AMD Ryzen Full Lineup Prices, Specs & Clock Speeds Leaked – 8 Cores Starting At $319, 6 Cores At $229 & 4 Cores At $129

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-full-lineup-pricing-clock-speeds-leaked/

AMD Ryzen Architectural Deep-Dive – Ending The Intel Monopoly

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-architecture-detailed/
 
Particles from outer space are wreaking low-grade havoc on personal electronics

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-particles-outer-space-wreaking-low-grade.html

Excerpts:

When cosmic rays traveling at fractions of the speed of light strike the Earth's atmosphere they create cascades of secondary particles including energetic neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles. Millions of these particles strike your body each second. Despite their numbers, this subatomic torrent is imperceptible and has no known harmful effects on living organisms. However, a fraction of these particles carry enough energy to interfere with the operation of microelectronic circuitry. When they interact with integrated circuits, they may alter individual bits of data stored in memory. This is called a single-event upset or SEU

There have been a number of incidents that illustrate how serious the problem can be, Bhuva reported. For example, in 2003 in the town of Schaerbeek, Belgium a bit flip in an electronic voting machine added 4,096 extra votes to one candidate. The error was only detected because it gave the candidate more votes than were possible and it was traced to a single bit flip in the machine's register. In 2008, the avionics system of a Qantus passenger jet flying from Singapore to Perth appeared to suffer from a single-event upset that caused the autopilot to disengage. As a result, the aircraft dove 690 feet in only 23 seconds, injuring about a third of the passengers seriously enough to cause the aircraft to divert to the nearest airstrip. In addition, there have been a number of unexplained glitches in airline computers - some of which experts feel must have been caused by SEUs - that have resulted in cancellation of hundreds of flights resulting in significant economic losses.

An analysis of SEU failure rates for consumer electronic devices performed by Ritesh Mastipuram and Edwin Wee at Cypress Semiconductor on a previous generation of technology shows how prevalent the problem may be. Their results were published in 2004 in Electronic Design News and provided the following estimates:

A simple cell phone with 500 kilobytes of memory should only have one potential error every 28 years.
A router farm like those used by Internet providers with only 25 gigabytes of memory may experience one potential networking error that interrupts their operation every 17 hours.
A person flying in an airplane at 35,000 feet (where radiation levels are considerably higher than they are at sea level) who is working on a laptop with 500 kilobytes of memory may experience one potential error every five hours.

As transistor sizes have shrunk, they have required less and less electrical charge to represent a logical bit. So the likelihood that one bit will "flip" from 0 to 1 (or 1 to 0) when struck by an energetic particle has been increasing. This has been partially offset by the fact that as the transistors have gotten smaller they have become smaller targets so the rate at which they are struck has decreased.

More significantly, the current generation of 16-nanometer circuits have a 3D architecture that replaced the previous 2D architecture and has proven to be significantly less susceptible to SEUs. Although this improvement has been offset by the increase in the number of transistors in each chip, the failure rate at the chip level has also dropped slightly. However, the increase in the total number of transistors being used in new electronic systems has meant that the SEU failure rate at the device level has continued to rise.


particlesfro.jpg
 
Introducing Handle

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/boston-dynamics-handle-robot

[video=youtube;-7xvqQeoA8c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c[/video]

Tesla Model S Battery Teardown

Looks like there may be 30 modules in the battery from a junked Model S, they pay the junkyard $10k for the entire battery (price found in the comments), charge $1,375 for each module = 30 x $1,375 = $41,250; $41,250 - $10,000 = $31,250 potential profit for a day's work. Not bad.

[video=youtube;NpSrHZnCi-A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpSrHZnCi-A[/video]

The sale page for the modules:

https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=463&osCsid=rp0cj2i33tp2j88tnj80dto4e5
 
[video=youtube;aBfKoKHEzPQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBfKoKHEzPQ[/video]
 
Outstanding price/performance from AMD once again:

[video=youtube;ARHbkFYBGgU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHbkFYBGgU[/video]
 
Brand NEW (NOS) IBM PC AT with Model M Keyboard Unboxing, Case Opening, Setup, & Pacman clone game play

[video=youtube;nLy_jEbuY-U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLy_jEbuY-U[/video]
 
Intel has maintained a certain price structure over the last few years with retail , boxed products in each Price tier.

I usually have gone for the $200ish Core i5 .. next time around may just buy the 4ghz CPU.. it has been 8 years for my last purchase.

Kenny
 
New tour of an impressive discrete component CPU:

[video=youtube;EMO3dZAizb4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMO3dZAizb4[/video]
 
Unfreakingbelievable! An easily fixed, mint physical condition, 32 GHz DSO in a dumpster!

[video=youtube;d_S9YsD9Y0c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_S9YsD9Y0c[/video]
 
Browsing the 2017 WWW using a 56k dialup modem:

[video=youtube;17zfz017s9A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17zfz017s9A[/video]
 
Monster6502 Update #1

[video=youtube;HDMkw6lnzmI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDMkw6lnzmI[/video]
 
256gb on a micro sd that is the size if a fingernail

Wow

Kenny
 
When I went to engineering school it was fairly common to do integration and differentiation using op-amps.

The lab for my control systems course was all with analog computers. We worked in teams of three. We had one guy that was a whiz at deriving the control equations, and I wasn't half bad at that eigher. That guy couldn't patch the computer panels to save his life though. I could fly through the patch panels. The third guy was f'n useless for anything, but he shared the grade, of course.

Heathkit had an analog computer kit in the '60's. Would be cool to find one of those.
 
The lab for my control systems course was all with analog computers. We worked in teams of three. We had one guy that was a whiz at deriving the control equations, and I wasn't half bad at that eigher. That guy couldn't patch the computer panels to save his life though. I could fly through the patch panels. The third guy was f'n useless for anything, but he shared the grade, of course.

Heathkit had an analog computer kit in the '60's. Would be cool to find one of those.

I didn't even know about those. Here's the manual:
https://archive.org/details/HeathkitEC1AnalogComputermanual



Steve Shannon
 
[video=youtube;tQIwS2GzXLI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIwS2GzXLI[/video]
 
Current Intel and AMD CPUs use 14nm technology, claim to be going to 7nm as early as 2018.

IBM unveils world’s first 5nm chip
IBM Created a Chip the Size of a Fingernail That Holds 30 Billion Transistors
Built with a new type of gate-all-around transistor, plus extreme ultraviolet lithography

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/ibm-5nm-chip/

IBM says that, compared to commercial 10nm chips (presumably Samsung's 10nm process), the new 5nm tech offers a 40 percent performance boost at the same power, or a 75 percent drop in power consumption at the same performance. Density is also through the roof, with IBM claiming it can squeeze up to 30 billion transistors onto a 50-square-millimetre chip (roughly the size of a fingernail), up from 20 billion transistors on a similarly-sized 7nm chip.

GAAFETs don't necessarily have the 5nm node sewn up, though. As always with the semiconductor industry, chipmakers prefer to tweak existing fabrication processes and transistor designs, rather than spending billions on deploying new, immature tech. Current silicon-germanium FinFETs will probably get us to 7nm, and the use of exotic III-V semiconductors might take the finFET a step further to 5nm.

Rare shot of IBM, SUNY, ASML Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine:

ibm-suny-asml-euv-machine.jpg


A side-on shot of the completed gate-all-around transistors. Each transistor consists of three nanosheets stacked on top of each other, with the gate material all around them.

Nanosheet5nm.jpg


A few possible paths towards 5nm and 3nm transistors. (Top right shows GAA, but with vertical nanowires rather than the horizontal nanosheets discussed here.)

different-transistor-topologies.jpg


[video=youtube;ny5qenUddY4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny5qenUddY4[/video]
 
https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html

We stumbled across this message while examining the scribe lane on a Digital CVAX microprocessor used in the MicroVAX 3000 and 6200 series computers. Chip designer Bob Supnik tells us that the text is Cyrillic using Russian words for the phrase:

"VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best "

Apparently this quotation was gleaned from a sign on a purloined VAX 780 used by the Soviet military and was intended to send a special message to Russian chip designers determined to reverse engineer Digital's designs.


russians.jpg
 
Commodore 65 clone on FPGA:

Commodore 65

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_65

The Commodore 65 (also known as the C64DX) is a prototype computer created at Commodore Business Machines in 1990-1991. It is an improved version of the Commodore 64, and it was meant to be backwards-compatible with the older computer, while still providing a number of advanced features close to those of the Amiga.

https://hackaday.io/project/11096-mega65-open-8-bit-computer

FPGA clone specifications:

Fits original case (not necessary to use as there were only 200 C65s made)
HDMI out using ADV7511
Analog VGA DB15
Serial Port DIN-6
Cartridge Slot
Dual JOY DB9
Power Switch similar to original
Reset button similar to original
Flex connector for keyboard
Duplicated keyboard connector as IDC connector
3.5" floppy disc connector
One 50 Pin XMOD Connector, 42 FPGA I/O
3 PMOD's
RJ45, Ethernet 100Mbit (optional feature)
Audio output 3.5mm Jack

[video=youtube;nCyBoulxdj8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCyBoulxdj8[/video]
 
Due to AMD's brilliant Infinity Fabric design which allows a number of multi-core dies to be tied together as one on a single chip carrier whereas Intel tech requires one die with multiple cores, resulting in HUGE dies with associated low yields and necessarily HUGE prices (up to $9000!), unless Intel spends huge sums and much time in a total redesign of their high end CPUs, they are toast... for now.

AMD’s Infinity Fabric Detailed – The Innovative, Real-World Implementation of The Company’s ‘Perfect Lego’ Philosophy

https://wccftech.com/amds-infinity-fabric-detailed/

You're beaten, Intel

"Intel are about to pay the price of years of tech stagnation, lack of innovation and a previously-friendly tech press who finally woke up to their greed."

[video=youtube;L3l9vZD7h_8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3l9vZD7h_8[/video]

Naked AMD Epyc (32 cores (4 8-core dies), 64 threads):

article-630x354.90c8d2d6.jpg


Capped:

AMD%20Ryzen%20Threadripper%20CPU_2.jpg
 
Reminds me of when AMD went hypertransport but Intel was still stuck on frontside bus.

Sure, QPI came along and evened things up a bit but a quad-quad AMD board could do things not achievable by Intel at the time (and now that all fits in a single socket).

Yay competition! Hopefully the regulators pay closer attention for underhanded tactics this go-round.
 
The Athlon all over again!

I bought a 500MHz Slot-A Athlon when they first came out and had it overclocked to 700MHz. That was fast back in tha day.

[youtube]MK0hU0OYvCI[/youtube]
 
Reminds me of when AMD went hypertransport but Intel was still stuck on frontside bus.

Sure, QPI came along and evened things up a bit but a quad-quad AMD board could do things not achievable by Intel at the time (and now that all fits in a single socket).
Looks like it's time for me to finally upgrade to the AM4 socket from the AM3 I'm using with an Athlon II X4. I don't really need to since I'm not a PC gamer, but some CAD software I use will run faster, not that it's cripplingly slow right now anyway. Before buying, I'm going to wait for BIOS optimizations/debugging on the AM4 motherboards, a process which looks to be well underway. The mobo manufacturers say the problem with early BIOS versions is due to the fact that AMD was too secretive prior to the Ryzen and AMD mobo chipset release.

The Infinity Fabric architecture which allows them to do this multi-die bit with their CPUs is also used with their graphics processors, potentially giving them a cost advantage over Nvidia, too. Right now the higher end AMD graphics boards are in very short supply not only because people are upgrading to the AM4 mobos and Ryzen and while doing so upgrading their graphics cards, but because the new non-Bitcoin crytpocurrencies are more productively mined on the AMD graphics architecture.

Yay competition! Hopefully the regulators pay closer attention for underhanded tactics this go-round.
Exactly on both points. Fanboys on either side confuse me. Who wants to watch, say, a sporting event with only one team? And Intel's track record should mean a very close eye should be kept on them.
 
The Athlon all over again!

I bought a 500MHz Slot-A Athlon when they first came out and had it overclocked to 700MHz. That was fast back in tha day.
I'm still running a (much later) Athlon II X4 @ 2.6 GHz myself. That was the last AMD architecture which had a major price performance advantage without a huge watt dissipation. I haven't upgraded due to no real need for it and out of a hope to eventually support AMD once again through a purchase if and when they became competitive with Intel again simply because I believe in the need for competition.
 
Detailed tour of beautiful, new Canadian supercomputer facility

[video=youtube;3RqF8m65r8g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RqF8m65r8g[/video]

Quantum computer manufacturer tour:

[video=youtube;60OkanvToFI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OkanvToFI[/video]
 
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