Posts by Nater

Microsoft: Don't overclock Windows 8 unless you like our new BSOD

Re: Sooo...

Probably has more to do with people not knowing what they're doing and all the new fangled "overclock it for me" utilities. I've never used one, but I'd guess such utilities are heavy handed with the vcore. I've been running a Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz for the last five years without issues. The only BSODs were due to RAM issues, which as we all know, are all too common these days. In those five years I've probably been through three sets of DIMMs because one or both in a set failed. The memory, for what it's worth, is running at stock speeds and timings. I don't see a reason to mess with it.

Time to replace the old beast, though. I'd have never thought I'd have used it so long back when I built it.

'Super-powerful' Flame worm actually boring bloatware

Why bother attacking Kharg Island with a worm? My friends and I have been blowing the shit out of that place for the last six months in AH-1Zs and Abrams tanks.

Cray's Q4 whacked by AMD's Opteron delays

When is Cray going to see the light and switch to intel? I think the only thing keeping Cray with AMD is their significant amount of effort put into HyperTransport. I'm not certain, I haven't been keeping up lately, but I believe HT still might offer some advantages over QPI. That also might be another reason for Cray staying with Advanced Misadventures and Disasters.

Eventually Cray is going to start running parallel equipment development on QPI and then AMD's days will be numbered. It's probably already started.

I like how AMD fanboys always whine about how "intel rips people off". AMD only sells their CPUs cheaply because they have to. I remember buying Opteron 270s and paying an assload of money for them, prices equivalent to intel 2S CPUs now. AMD is a corporation just like intel, they'll charge whatever they think they can get. They're not "the nice guy".

Yes, they really should have bit the bullet and purchased nVidia. nVidia was, and still is, way ahead of ATi (now AMD of course) in GPGPU. Considering that AMD still has some influence and cache in the HPC world, I think nVidia would have been a much better pairing in the short and the long term.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

I wonder what America (or increasingly Britain) would have to do in case of an epic war. Obviously, fat people are no good for war unless you're going to use them as bullet sponges. Probably not something you could get away with, even with massive propaganda.

Just think if the US had to draft millions of conscripts today. It'd have to run fat camps to get them prepared to go into boot camp. I'm sure at some level, the US military is very worried about this. The US military, at least the ground pounders that fight, have always been some of the most fit human beings on the planet. This generally being the opinion of French or British military brass who have needed them to beat equally large and scary Teutonic super men.

OFFICIAL: Last Western Black rhino snuffs it

Powdered Rhino horn for $20 a gram? Do people snort it? I'm just asking.

UK's first Stealth fighter in successful catapult test

Development time

I find it strange how much longer it takes to build and test aircraft these days. How many years did it take from RFP to IOC with the F-15A? I don't know when the RFP went out for the F-X program, but the Air Force chose the Eage December 23, 1969. The F-15A reached it's initial operation capability January 6, 1976. That's seven years.

The YF-22 was chosen as the winner of the ATF program on April 23, 1991. Unlike the F-15, the plane had already been built and flown in competition with the YF-23. The F-22A reached it's initial operational capability December 15, 2005. That's over 14 years.

It's as if Lockheed-Martin decided to milk the US Government on the already expensive F-22A. I know that the Raptor is a technically advanced air craft, but so was the Eagle. The Eagle was the first fourth generation fighter aircraft. It represented as much a leap forward in it's day as the Raptor. It took half as long to develop and deploy.

I'm sure if you look at the development and deployment of the F-16 and F/A-18 and compare it with the F-35A and F-35C, you're likely to find very similar time lines to the F-15A and F-22A. A defense contractor milking the US, and in this case, foreign taxpayer.

ASBM

It depends on how advanced the ASBMs are and what kind of defenses the carrier group has. The US, in particular, is known for it's very advanced Aegis destroyers and cruisers. The SM-3 and Aegis combination has a certain level of ABM capability. If this is enough to counter the Chinese ASBM threat, no one knows. What is likely, however, is that future systems will be developed and deployed with this threat in mind. I would assume both missile systems and directed energy systems.

With a nuclear warhead, you really don't need a dedicated anti-ship ballistic missile. Any ballistic missile with enough range would work assuming it could be fired fast enough and had a warhead with sufficient yield.

£1.1bn Royal Navy warship finally armed, sort of

Haha

Most advanced, least useful destroyer in the world. No cruise missiles, not anti-ship missiles, no close-in anti-missile defense. Not even a token ABM setup. I'm sure the US could re-do an Arleigh Burke with super-advanced technology and make it useless to actual war if they wanted to, but they're smarter than that.

Intel outs future Xeon chip porn

Sandy Bridge-EP

I would guess it'll be available in Q3 or Q4. The high-end desktop processors, based on the same design, are supposedly slated for Q4. Intel might launch the server versions first to knock AMD's Bulldozer down a notch. That, or they could launch them after the desktop parts which has been the tradition the last few times. I'm doubting it, that would mean a launch in Q1 12 which seems a bit late.

As for the article, I highly doubt intel would be going to 28nm. Their next node is 22nm. I remember back before Nehalem-EX was released, everyone assumed it's 32nm follow-on would have 12-cores and 24-threads, not 10/20. I'm guessing intel ran into some heat/power or maybe yield issues and had to scale it back.

Microwaved hard disc, run-over PC and other data disasters

The Town

In the opening band heist scene in 'The Town' one of the guys microwaves the security camera hard drives. I guess that might not be enough.

SGI forges overclocked servers for Wall Street

Huh?

What in the name of god are you talking about? Run older chipsets? The only chipset that works with these processors is the Tylersburg chipset. Maybe by chipset you mean processor, in which case the answer is no. Older processors, larger fabrication size. They'll not only not run as fast, they'll draw more power and dump more heat doing it. Sticking the systems in a freezer is also a pretty bad idea from a power standpoint.

Assuming that they're using 95W processors to being with (they may be using 150W processors, who knows?) and they overclock them 20% they'll probably get 50% more TDP (worst case scenario). Again, assuming the use of 95W CPUs they'll have to dissipate 142.5W of heat per socket. That's nothing out of the ordinary, intel sells Xeons with 150W TDPs. It get's a little bit more tricky if they are in fact using those 150W processors, but it's still possible to dissipate up to 250W per socket with massive heatsinks with powerful fans or with water cooling. They don't need any exotic cooling methods to get it done.

EVGA

I was somewhat surprised when I saw EVGA's ginormous SR-2 motherboard in Appros system. Then again, unless you design it yourself where else are you going to get a 5520 motherboard that allows you to overclock? When I saw the headline, I figured this beast would be running EVGA's motherboard and I wasn't disappointed.

I seriously hope EVGA does this again for Sandy Bridge-EP processors. It would be awesome to have 16-cores and 32-threads all running at 4.5GHz. Too bad I wouldn't be able to afford it...

Nvidia and HPC's second act

MIC

If you think that you're not going to have to recompile/rewrite a large portion of your x86/x64 code to run on intel's MIC architecture, you better think again. Not to mention that it's not out yet, the first generation is supposedly only going to be for software development, and we have no real idea how it will perform.

Fusion reactor eats Euro science budgets

Not that much really...

I wish the US had spend the trillion dollars we've blown invading Iraq on fusion power. I think longer term, it would have been a much better investment.

Toshiba announces world's biggest 2-platter drive

SAS 6Gb/s Notebook drive?

Those things won't work in a notebook. First off, I'm unaware of any, ANY mobile that has a SAS controller onboard. Even those ludicrous portable workstation models. That said, they're for servers.

I'm sure you meant to say 10k and 15k 2.5" hard drives.

LHC boffins crank beams to 3.5 TeV redline

International Space Station

Everytime I see the International Space Station I remember the SSC. The Superconducting Super Colider. The US was supposed to build this beast, nearly three times as powerful as the LHC and it would have been done by now.

The difference between the SSC and the ISS? The later was actually for science.

Intel preps new Xeons for March 16 launch

I'd rather have a Beckton...

It's hard to tell what kind of power draw/heat output AMD chips have since they switched to using 'make believe' numbers on their server chips awhile back. In reality, they'll probably suck down a little less power than a Xeon 76xx but with lower performance. The memory buffers? Those are a necessity when you're dealing with 16 DIMM slots per processor. That 4S Tyan motherboard AMD is giving away, it has 16 DIMM slots on the entire motherboard. At least intel isn't requiring them on systems that don't need them (Nehalem-EP/Westmere-EP).

The Magny Cours Opterons seem like a real kludge compared to the Beckton Xeons. It's pretty funny that AMD launches an MCM chip after berating intel for their non-monolithic quad core design for so long (when AMD only had dual cores). That said, the new Opterons will probably be a quite competitive kludge. intel took their sweet time with Beckton, no doubt because of the system's complexity. I wonder how far out the supposed 'Eagleton' processor is? It packs 12-cores/ 24-threads and 36MB of L3 cache onto one continuous die that fits into the same LGA1567 socket.

Oh, and Crysis

Seriously, get over it. It's not too much to ask a Core i5 750 with an HD 5870 to run Crysis at 1920x1200 with high levels of visual quality. I have no trouble running the game with a Q6600 and GTX 275 on a 24" panel. The reason Crysis was so hard to run for so long was due to AMD's lack of a competitive product and nVidia resting on it's laurels because of it.

Operation Eagle Claw nets 18 Nigerian spammers

Eagle Claw?

Wasn't 'Operationg Eagle Claw' the code name for the overly complicated, horribly failed attempt to rescue the Iranian-held hostages in 1979? Hopefully this mission wasn't planned by committee as well.

Scotch lovers asked to cough up £10,000 per bottle

Americans

We only drink Whiskey and Coke with that second rate Bourbon that we produce, it's not done with Scotch Whiskey. At least I've never seen it, and I've been in plenty of bars...