Posts by confused and dazed

Last week Intel killed Optane. Today, Kioxia and Everspin announced comparable tech

Re: Interesting development

Intel just sold off Solidigm - it's NAND division. This is not their direction of travel.

SK Group pledges $22b for US chip, battery manufacturing

Re: It's all very well

Samsung have had a fab in Austin for many, many years. I agree though that the history of semiconductors in the UK has mostly been take the money, and eventually, leave.

I think the Koreans did it best with their "joint ventures" with the Japanese DRAM guys. LG, who became Hyundai who became SK Hynix did very well our of their partnership with Hitachi IMHO.

Chinese smartphone sales sink to levels not seen since 2012

Why would you ?

With the world economy looking grim, it's easy to hold off buying a new phone that does pretty much the same as your existing one

Totaled Tesla goes up in flames three weeks after crash

Re: Deja vu again

Scrappy's in the UK are unrecognisable from those of my childhood.

Balancing on an old Maxi - 4 cars up with my dad to get bits off it was a rite of passage

Power outage at Hiroshima facility may hit DRAM supply

Re: Idea

I can agree on the STEM piece, but we are talking about a fab in Japan here.

I believe the real reason for failure in this area is the astonishingly high sums of cash involved and the far from certain returns that we might make.

Intel details advances to make upcoming chips faster, less costly

Good

All sounds very sensible and logical to me. Yes they have milked their leadership in the past, but we need this competition

Germany makes new move to attract chip manufacturers

Missed opportunity

Germany used to Have Hitachi DRAM, Mitsubishi DRAM and Siemens DRAM amongst others. They all eventually failed. While I think this is a good idea, there has to be a plan to keep pace this time

Arm China CEO refuses to go despite SoftBank taking control

too late

Shame the UK Tory party were not more interested before Softbank bought them ...

'Bigger is better' is back for hardware – without any obvious benefits

death spiral

Absolutely agree, the use-case for recent Mac Studio Ultra is pretty much niche.

Wafer fabs need to shrink and ship large quantities of wafers to stay viable. hardware vendors need to trump the other hardware vendors for sales. Users don't need the extra compute. The result must be that things last longer. I'm writing This on a 4 year old machine and feel no need to change it. Once every house is saturated and there is no new app, then there will be a culling

TSMC sees slowdown in demand for PCs, smartphones

I don't think I'd want that chip after those tweezers have finished with it either ....

Just two die for: Apple reveals M1 Ultra chip in Mac Studio

Re: The Apple price

I had some sympathy with this stance until the M series products came along. Now there is a valid functional/performance justification to have no memory upgrade possible. So long as you know it, you either choose an apple and plan accordingly or you go elsewhere. It's your choice.

Internet backbone Cogent cuts Russia connectivity

Re: Smart guys in Russia

It's always the young and the poor that disproportionately die in these things. Conscripts in Russia, civilians and volunteers in Ukraine. Poor people where job opportunities are limited to the armed forces.

It's just a tragedy. I sincerely hope the Russian soldiers do put down their weapons - that would be heroic.

Intel buys Tower Semiconductor to expand fab business

Re: "Intel ... to expand fab business"?

Not really - fab certainly is part of Intel's business

EU directs €11bn toward European Chips Act to build homegrown semiconductor industry

I've never understood the staff overhead angle. In the grand scheme of funding a fab you can pay your top workers what you want ?

Absolutely fabless: Chip startup funding reaches record $20bn in 2021

Re: Supply chain

AMD seem to be doing OK ?

death spiral

even if I had access to gazzillions of $ I'm not sure I'd invest in wafer fabs. You need to have nerves of steel. It's fine now while cash is rolling in, but it's inevitable that a glut and associated crash will come. I've seen many household names fail after the boom. Yes this boom is extreme, but you'll have to adapt quickly when all these new fabs come on line.

Logitech Signature M650: A mouse that will barely emit a squeak or a clickety-click

Sticky ?

Buy an apple Magic Mouse - they're great

Samsung wheels out new silicon that turns cars into 5G-fuelled entertainment hubs

Don't buy it

I can see why Samsung want to push this stuff, but we don't need to buy it.

Most of it is expensive, unnecessary and have an obsolescence date way shorter than the rest of the car.

Push back on your dealers people !

Server errors plague app used by Tesla drivers to unlock their MuskMobiles

Re: Thermostat

Thanks, yes I had my new thermostat for about a year when I was contacted by British Gas. For the paltry sum of £150 , I could upgrade my thermostat to the latest model.

Not once in my life previously have I thought ...."mmmmm - that dial needs an upgrade"

Thermostat

Seems a bit like my fantastic British Gas wifi enabled thermostat. Instead of having a dial on my wall that was linked to my boiler I have a battery powered monstrosity that has to link to my router and then to the connected boiler controller..... Not once did the old thermostat give me an error code or complained about connectivity. Not once did I need to download an app ....

China plans to swipe a bunch of data soon so quantum computers can decrypt it later

Re: Encrypt data... errr quantumly

That's an interesting point - cheapness of quality science and engineering graduates links to technological leadership ..... maybe. I suppose it depends on whether there is a direct correlation between quantity of those graduates and your dominance.

As for losing the 21st century - we still have a long way to go

Intel claims first Alder Lake chip is the fastest desktop gaming silicon in the world

Re: Point

Don't want to get all Greenpeace on you, but pouring power down the drain isn't good for anyone, desktop or laptop

One-size-fits-all chargers? What a great idea! Of course Apple would hate it

Re: The Apple isn’t green

photos and videos to photos app on your Mac

Apple responds to critics of CSAM scan plan with FAQs, says it'd block governments subverting its system

Re: Think about it the next time you vote

The problem with our versions of democracy (or at least the UK version) is that we select parties. This means that get to choose between set of policies A or set of policies B every 5 years .... that's it. Even if the parties are different on the issue that your care about ....

Re: No upside for Apple, so... draw your conclusions

You may be correct, but then why not say so ?

They look foolish, hypocritical and downright untrustworthy right now. Need I remind anyone that just a few short weeks ago they were shouting "what happens on your phone, stays on your phone".

Re: Match existing hashes or try and understand hats depicted in the photo?

Why does the compare have to happen on the phone then ?

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Re: Trust

Samsung and Sony have not created an entire marketing campaign about the protection of your privacy

Re: How the hell...

My understanding is they're checking the hash of the photo against a known database of dodgy stuff. The issue is who defines what is dodgy ..... and who has the right to check on your device without a warrant ....

Re: re: this seems like a sensible middle ground.

A thoughtful response. But I think Apple are big enough to just say not.

They will not scrutinise what it on your phone, (whatever the method). Have the debate with legislatures out in the open.

Today it's pedos and terrorists, tomorrow it's activists.

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac

Re: Yes but...

Hence the massive growth in data centres and the likes of Graphcore to solve this by more elegant means than pure brute CPU numbers

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Consumption

It's easy to agree that fixing a $2K Mac or a $20K car is worth-while , but when a gadget costs $100, fixes are going to have to be very quick and very simple before they're un-economic and become land-fill.

The issue is that we consume too much, me included. I'm just looking at my wireless phone charger. What was I thinking ? ... it's another totally unnecessary thing, consumes more power that it needs, but saves we the "onerous" task of plugging a cable in...I'm now looking at two 24 inch monitors that I am hoping will break so that I can order bigger ones .....

Anyone for a consumption tax ?

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: two separate comments

I agree, but if you did hoze the engine - like running it without oil or I don't know without coolant ... is it fair to expect the supplier to fix it fo you ?

Re: two separate comments

I understand your concern, but sometimes the software might be there to protect the device. Maybe over-riding the software should negate your warranty ? Dunno - you might be back on shore with a goosed engine.

While I appreciate the legitimate cynicism on corporate behaviour and motivations ....

A contrarian view

Guys,

lots of moaning here, but most stuff is dramatically cheaper than it was and dramatically ore reliable. My Dad used to carry s socket set and a bunch of spares wherever he drove. A lot of the extra stuff helps make things more reliable.

The real issue is that stuff is too cheap. 200 quid for a washing machine .... of course it's not going to last 20 years. Try making one that does, and nobody will buy it because it's just too expensive. and that's before feature creep.

Maybe we should have to pay more tax on new stuff ?

Royal Yacht Britannia's successor to cost about 1 North of England NHS IT consultancy framework

hard to support

I just think that the days of us waltzing into a harbour and blowing peoples minds with a flash boat are in the past.

Would this really generate a pay-back ? Hard to believe.

Ransomware victim Colonial Pipeline paid $5m to get oil pumping again, restored from backups anyway – report

Re: Criminal to pay Criminals?

I agree, but this isn't your kids .... it's an oil company. I'd have a lot more sympathy if it was someone's kids - that's a tougher call IMO

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

Tolerance

Surely if we desire to live in a diverse and tolerant society, then we should tolerate people with diverse opinions.

He might be a git, but I'd rather work with a git, than live in a society where people are frightened to espouse views that don't meet today's norm.

South Korea creates $451bn semiconductor stimulus package

heck

it's always been an expensive game, but that is a LOT of money ... I love how big the Koreans think.

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

Good Luck

Seems to me that they've left the world a better place than they found it.

In the end that's all anyone can hope for

all this OS vitriol get's on my wick

UK's Competition and Markets Authority sticks probe in SK Hynix's $9bn proposed buy of Intel's NAND and SSD units

Does anyone care ?

I agree that this reduces competition, but why would Hynix and Intel care what the UK govt thinks ?

Scientists stumped by strange X-rays from Uranus

A fine headline

Thank-you, that cheered by Friday morning .....

Samsung aims first 512GB DDR5 DRAM chip built on High-K/Metal Gate tech at HPC, AI markets

Re: Fully Stacked

I don't think this will help much I'm afraid. As far as I understand the M1 memory is already TSV 4 Hi (8Gb or 16Gb) and this is then package-over-package onto the M1 itself. ie 2 packages of 4Hi stacks - albeit DDR4 interface.

I guess they could move it to 8-Hi 16Gb like this to give 32GB, but I suspect costs might become prohibitive in terms of 8 stack yields ?

Micron: We're pulling the plug on 3D XPoint. Anyone in the market for a Utah chip factory?

started with a ta-dah and ended in a wimper ....

The jury is still out on what the first true SCM media will be. The direction is that there may be many - hiding on the CXL bus

Re: Another fab for sale to China?

That won't be allowed

Iron in the kinks, say boffins: Wrinkly graphene could one day make computer chips 'smaller and faster'

Re: How many circuits can dance on the head of a pin?

3D chips are well and truly here ...

Re: "thousands of times faster"

I'm not sure that 7nm is a direct comparison. There is a lot of marketing involved in describing process nodes

Watch this space: Apple offers free repairs for the self-bricking Apple Watch SE and Series 5 wearables

I like mine

I bought an Apple Watch about a year ago. I only bought the 200 quid one, but for me it more than paid for itself when my watch started ringing when I was putting the bins out with the phone in the house, and I ended chatting to my wrist, (not an euphemism) ! Just seemed silly and very space 1999

Maybe lock-down is getting to me ..

President Biden to issue executive order on chip shortages as under-pressure silicon world begs for help

Re: Who is the 12%?

Micron, Infineon, TI, Global Foundries ....

Too Late ?

Seems to me that the US have lost Si process leadership. 2nd place is a terrible place to be, as you need to spend almost as much on R&D and lose all the price gouging opportunities. Re-gaining #1 is going to be a hideously expensive proposition, and how long for ? ..... can we really go much beyond 3nm ?? I know we've said this for a long time but really there are fundamental limits nor far away now.

Maybe advanced packaging techniques and interconnect would generate more bang for buck .....

New year, new rant: Linus Torvalds rails at Intel for 'killing' the ECC industry

Re: Recent AMD mobo

The move to other RAM is ongoing - look at the slew of storage class memories and PMEM coming. The reality is that as a first off-cpu memory where you have to balance latency, density, cost, bandwidth, power and reliability there is nothing superior yet. Not saying that won't change, but even the much trumpeted 3d x-point has not made a dent.