Intel seems to be bleeding out ... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 09:16:57 am
content: It seems that the 13th and 14th generation have serious problems, from very serious bugs in the microcode that cause random crashes, to potentially defects in the anti-oxidation process of their latest package, which already today seems to mean 10% to 20% defects on millions of CPUs sold, possible damage economies of epochal significance.Risk of significant image damage, plus economic damage that will most likely cause production lines to close with knock-on effects on everything that is not servers.Plus, their new AI chip that is supposed to disrupt, but actually don't even compete with competitors.To me, it soulds, intel is in very, very bad shape, and continues to lose money and customers, it's already been at least 7 months since NOBODY recommends buying Intel CPUs anymore.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 09:27:10 am
content: It looks like degradation rather than outright defects. For example on Minecraft servers with high single thread load 30% fail within 2 months (first two minutes of the video)

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 09:40:30 am
content: Quote from: wraper on July 24, 2024, 09:27:10 amI'm not an Intel fan, today my boss asked me to block the order of new Intel servers, because the 13th and 14th generation ones we got continue to show problems and crashes, and it's not a software problem but rather hardware issues related to the CPU.I follow the orders, she asked me to order other Ampere machines, and I am happy to do so.Even if this means having to spend at least the first three weeks of August to install the new hardware, and migrate the GNU/Linux software, because some things need QEMU/x86, and QEMU needs specific acceleration on the Linux kernel side.Better this way than having to deal with hw crashing.Which probably in September or October, or whenever, we will also send back because it is clearly defective ...

author: BrokenYugo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 01:23:04 pm
content: I'll hazard a guess this is yet another case of what happens when a company cares more about the stock price than the product.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 01:50:23 pm
content: Ruh roh.Loving the 13th gen 24 core i9 laptop I bought in February so far. Runs like the blazes and has never crashed.NZ has good consumer protection laws, so lets see what happens...

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 04:51:57 pm
content: I have been following this story and my understanding is that the problem also affects server processors which operate at conservative voltage, power, and frequency limits, and that the damage is progressive.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 05:12:24 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 24, 2024, 01:50:23 pmFrom what I've heard, 13/14th gen mobile CPUs aren't affected.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 05:16:34 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 24, 2024, 05:12:24 pmIntel lays laptop CPUs are not affected. Others say they are just less often.Quote from: brucehoult on July 24, 2024, 01:50:23 pmUnless you run extensive test suites (apparently they start failing at different tasks) or say play ceratian games for hours, you may not notice it.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 05:19:56 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 24, 2024, 01:50:23 pmIt seems these crashes are mostly starting after a few months of heavy use as a server. So, this might be something for your future. It seems something is degrading over time, so 6 month old servers will no longer pass the commissioning tests they passed at installation time. I saw comments that its only affecting server chips, but that might just be those are the ones that get hammered 24 hours a day, and cause the issues to show up quickly.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 05:27:24 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 24, 2024, 05:19:56 pmIt's not heavy use, they are stressed less than on desktop motherboards with optimistic default power and RAM speed settings. The servers in question run desktop CPUs.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 05:33:49 pm
content: What pisses me off is Intel's PR distraction strategy. First they deny any problem. Then it must be caused by the overclockers. After that they blame the mainboard manufacturers for bad settings. And now they acknowledge the issue partly and want to publish a microcode update. No 13/14th gen CPUs for me! And in future I won't get anything brand new from Intel and let others do the beta testing. After so many lies we can't trust Intel anymore.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 05:47:14 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 24, 2024, 05:33:49 pmIts annoying as a customer, but what did you expect Intel to do? At first they had no reason to believe the problem was theirs, and new parts were testing OK for them. The measure of Intel is how they respond from now on, when they seem to have largely got to the bottom of the problem and it turns out to be entire their own.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 06:06:59 pm
content: When there are many reports about specific issues then the right thing to do is to investigate if the product is bad or if it's just PEBCAKs. So Intel's response should have been: "We received reports about ... and we'll investigate ...". Instead they tried the "There's no problem! You're holding it wrong!" strategy.

author: rteodor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 06:16:00 pm
content: Its just another one from Intel. Let's remember a few:-Intel management engine (ME): having an ARM supervisor processor that runs in the shadow but that can access everything on the main processor and has full network access-Vector instruction extensions: Intel just does not want to standardize this instructions ... because ... its clients says they are ok with those custom proprietary instructions- rememberSpectre&Meltdown? Someone said: Intel went to the same conferences and read the same research papers as any other CPU vendor so they knew - same as everyone else - in what ways caching could be a security problem. Yet they cheated.-ECC DRAM: Intel is the main reason ECC is present only in server market. They pulled hard to keep ECC away from desktop.

author: 3roomlab
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 06:55:47 pm
content: looks like intel is issuing microcode updates for chip corrosion issuesvery powerful microcodes

author: rteodor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 07:42:28 pm
content: Quote from: 3roomlab on July 24, 2024, 06:55:47 pmMaybe they should put that powerful microcode to do EUVL and etching. Oh wait ... maybe those chips are alive and morphing into something ... else ... ?!

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 10:05:04 pm
content: Quote from: 3roomlab on July 24, 2024, 06:55:47 pmI imagine they made changes to how voltage, frequency, and power are controlled.I read somewhere that these Intel x86 CPUs designed to operate at their temperature limit, using throttling to limit temperature, which seems like a bad idea for reliability. I still look for CPU and GPU solutions which limit maximum temperature to the more traditional 65C or so.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 24, 2024, 10:06:12 pm
content: Yes, that's looking bad for Intel. First time they are going through something this problematic in a rather long time. Problem is that it's likely to damage trust beyond these affected series. We'll see.And yes, they can probably adjust the "power profiles" via microcode. Which will inevitably mean decreased performance for better reliability.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 12:06:31 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 24, 2024, 10:06:12 pmIt is not that long:1994 - Pentium FDIV2017 - Atom Clock Signal Issue2018 - Meltdown and SpectreAssorted other Bugs

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 12:44:19 am
content: I suspect it's electromigration, which is mainly a voltage-dependent effect.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 01:25:13 am
content: Quote from: amyk on July 25, 2024, 12:44:19 amElectromigration depends on current density and temperature.There are lots of things which could be causing it, including gate oxide failure like with the Atom failures, which would be voltage dependent.The odd part is that so many parts are failing in the same but very limited way. For instance the insufficient VRAM errors came about because an old and very well tested texture decompression routine was returning bad but consistent data.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 01:32:10 am
content: Quote from: BrokenYugo on July 24, 2024, 01:23:04 pmColor me surprised, could Intel be the microprocessor’s industry Boeing??

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 07:23:06 am
content: Quote from: rteodor on July 24, 2024, 06:16:00 pmMeltdown was a colossal cock up, an actual bug. Every CPU will have some form of Spectre like sidechannel with high resolution timers though.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 07:46:28 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 25, 2024, 12:06:31 amSATA3 ports dying on their 6-series chipsets. Very serious bugs in multiple of their Ethernet PHYs. For example I've had 82579V disconnecting multiple times a day. They were a crapshoot, PHY firmware update released by intel that was supposed to fix the issue did not help but swapping ICs between two motherboards (one had the issue, other did not) resulted in them apparently working fine on both. i225-V is utterly broken and Intel does not give a fuck.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 07:58:53 am
content: I wonder how the Voltage Regulation is actually made, and, especially how the A, V, P is actually measured (in detail) with those CPUs..The bloggers shoot tons of information on those CPU's power consumption in Ampers (like 1-350A range), voltages (like 0.03 to 1.6V range), and powers (like 1-300W range).Imagine, say, a 50-100mVpp noise ripple, an 8bit ADCs perhaps - how they know what is the actual voltage, current and power the CPU is getting?? Especially when the CPUs changes their power consumption in microseconds??Would be great to know more on how the stuff works there..PS: the latest Intel message is there is a bug in their gen13 and gen14 CPU's microcode doing the power regulation (the set voltage is higher than actually required and measured), they prepare a fix (in coop with the mobo vendors).My current understanding is the CPUs (the latest) do include the complete X-phase voltage regulation control circuitry on their chip(s), like they PWM the power mosfets (off the chip) and they measure the voltage and perhaps current by themself (integrated ADCs?)..

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 08:54:16 am
content: New twist in the story. Rumours claim that Intel did know of the microcode issue much ealier and delayed things on purpose to provide the microcode fixes after the release of AMD's Zen 5. It's assumed that the microcode fixes will decrease the CPU performance and Intel is afraid that Zen 5 might take the lead when media outlets publish first benchmarks. Users would compare Zen 5 to unpatched Intel CPUs before the microcode fixes will slow them down. Now to the latest from AMD:- AMD delays its Ryzen 9000 launch due to unspecified quality issue (https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-delays-its-ryzen-9000-launch-due-to-unspecified-quality-issue-new-launch-in-august-chipmaker-pulls-back-all-units-shipped-globally-for-quality-checks)Is there really a quaility issue or are they trying to counter Intel's move?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 08:57:54 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 25, 2024, 12:06:31 am1994 was 30 years ago. And while it didn't look good, it wasn't that bad in practice. It was easy to work around, and FP division was not really a performance bottleneck for any of the common uses for this chip.I never heard of the Atom clock thing, can't tell how bad it was, but I don't remember it making that much noise compared to the current situation.As to exploits, almost all vendors of modern CPUs have, or will face similar issues. New ones appear on a regular basis. It's very hard not to with speculative execution. And while again this didn't look good, there's a workaround that works fine without degrading performance that much.So IMO, the current situation is much worse, because it doesn't have to do with a "silicon bug" that is easy (if costly) to fix and/or can be worked around easily in software (and I'm not sure their "microcode" mitigation is gonna make the chips as reliable as the previous generations). This is potentially going to erode trust in a much more severe way, in a market that has changed as well and in which competition is much more severe.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 09:19:00 am
content: Quote from: madires on July 25, 2024, 08:54:16 amThis is what I asked above - how do they measure the actual (on the fly - while running the cores) I, V, P and Temperature in their CPUs?? Both AMD and Intel push their silicon to the absolute limit without knowing the actual A/V/W precisely, imho.My bet their measurements are +/- 20% easily (again - you have to measure 1-350A, 0.03-1.6V, 0-300W, on chip 25-100+C temperature with perhaps 8-10bit on chip ADCs pretty fast). Therefore AMD is rather double checking the voltage regulation stuff before the launch (also messing with their microcode only as the new silicon will not be ready by mid August "this year" if any fix needed).

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 10:45:22 am
content: ^AMD says it's packaging, not silicon issue.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 12:22:46 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 25, 2024, 10:45:22 amPackaging will not be the matter for elaborating the "quality problem" with mobo vendors, I would say. Also it is perhaps not the silicon issue, rather the similar annoyance as the Intel is facing..While topping the clock speeds the elevated temperature may degrade the chip's metalisation/bonding, heatsink-die attachment material, etc. Now, the big question is how trustworthy the Intel and AMD chips show the die temperature and how they measure the I/V/P.For example you may set the microcode such their CPUs report lower values, while in reality it is all over the edge and the chips will die after a couple of months. None blogger is able to measure the real values, btw., they just comment what they see in HWinfo or AIDA, etc..Something similar to the Dieselgate..It could be both Intel and AMD decide to start showing real numbers and both will go down with the benchmark figures then. And the chips will happily live forever

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 12:32:52 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on July 25, 2024, 12:22:46 pmDo you understand what chip packaging means? It's not about cardboard box.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 01:32:20 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on July 25, 2024, 12:32:52 pmI think I do understand the meaning of the chip packaging..As the bloggers report the "AMD is cooperating with mobo (aka motherboard) vendors" to resolve the issue.. So it is not about the chip packaging but the microcode..PS: Moreover, you cannot solve a "chip packaging issue" 25 days prior the release, no way..AMD is simply setting up the new more conservative values in their microcode engines for the temperature vs core(s) frequency vs V/I/P settings, as they know the Intel will do the same (Intel wrote that) till the mid of August this year (the as of today by AMD indicated new release date of their new Ryzen 9000 series).

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 02:05:44 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 25, 2024, 08:57:54 amThat's only a partial list, though. There were two generations of chipset in the 1990s that ran Windows 95 just fine, but crashed very quickly running Wiindows NT or SCO Unix, because their more complex access patterns showed up bugs that Windows 95 didn't. There was the SATA3 ports failing after a new months problem about a decade ago. If I spend a few minutes I can probably think of some more.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 25, 2024, 04:19:32 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on July 25, 2024, 01:32:20 pmAMD pulls back already supplied chips and ships chips with later production date instead (what mobo vendors have to do with replacing the chips?). Does not look like they're fixing the design, rather looks like it could be a bad batch. Nor did AMD say anything about motherboard vendors at all. In other words you spread FUD.Quote

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2024, 04:04:59 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 25, 2024, 01:25:13 amCould be lack of timing margin in one area due to process variations combined with design that wasn't fully verified at the limits, sort of like the 32-bit multiply bug on the early revisions of the 386:https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/qm7FVR_YV4A/m/VKR47yLoUdEJ

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2024, 04:17:58 am
content: Quote from: madires on July 25, 2024, 08:54:16 amPerformance marginality again?

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2024, 06:36:33 am
content: My current (company paid) Computer has an Intel Core i9 13900K.During working hours it is used for CAD/CAM/CAE application.While the computer is really fast (best benchmark scores in our company), I did have an issue with one simulation software, which aborted on certain tasks. This could be reproduced and did not happen with other computers I have.To make a long story short: after much research I found that it had to do with this issue. After setting BIOS settings according to instructions, no more crashes of that software. Note that it was just the software that crashed (got terminated), not the OS.Meanwhile Asus launched a new BIOS, which I flashed. It includes the lates Intel fixes and settings.I do worry about longevity of my CPU, but other than that, the computer never crashed again. I run it 24/7, by the way.I always preferred Intel CPU's over AMD ones, after realising many years ago, that some CAD/CAM/CAE software is as not specified for AMD and would crash more often with them.Hopefully Intel gets it's act together...

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2024, 10:36:46 am
content: Is this guy reading this thread??Quote from: iMo on July 25, 2024, 07:58:53 amQuote from: iMo on July 25, 2024, 12:22:46 pm

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2024, 09:49:34 am
content: The latest:There is no fix for Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs — any damage is permanent (https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/26/24206529/intel-13th-14th-gen-crashing-instability-cpu-voltage-q-a)

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2024, 07:36:31 pm
content: limited lifetime by design allows to get more money, because these who bought that processors will need to buy a new one very soon... Just a business..

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2024, 07:45:43 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 27, 2024, 07:36:31 pmDamn, Apple is soooo stupid.Every single Macintosh computer I have from the 80s, 90s, or 00s that I didn't sell when I upgraded (or that I bought used cheap later when they were obsolete) still works.I expect they'll be going out of business soon, with bad planning like that.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 05:47:13 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 27, 2024, 07:45:43 pmHave you ever been to The Steve Jobs Theater, located at Apple Park in Cupertino, California?That auditorium ***can seat 1000 people*** and its architecture is an awesome outstanding of "we can do this, because we have the money", including a glass elevator that is 13m high and rotates 171 degrees.As much as Ihate their strategy as a userbecause Apple forces me to change computers every 4 years only to software planned obsolescence, I have to admit that from a marketing point of view it is very effective, in fact Apple is one of the companies that since 1984 has been making a lot of money ...... the facts speak for themselves, like that auditorium, and I'll tell you more, Apple can afford to throw millions of euros into the (secret) project of a phantom "Apple Car", and then say "well, nothing's coming, project deleted"2000 engineers can go home, and they will be reinstated in other roles in the company ...if Apple was less strong economically, they would have told them "you are all fired, go home, and find another desk" ...Like SONY did ...

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 05:58:36 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 27, 2024, 07:45:43 pmmy PowerBookG3 ...... back to the early 2000s, Apple had established that you could install MacOS from v10.1 to 10.3 but not 10.4!And this was not a limitation of the hardware or anything.I asked a friend to lend me the PowerBook G4, with which I installed MacOS 10.4 on a 2.5" pATA disk connected to the USB port.Then I mounted that disk inside the PowerBookG3 and ... to my great surprise, MacOS 10.4 worked very well on a laptop for which the installer had blocked saying "your hardware is too old, I cannot continue with the installation"what?The exact same thing happens with Apple Silicon And even worse.It happens with programs like FinalCut, which strictly need a version of MacOS ...The problem is ... with the new Apple { MacMini, MacStudio, ... } you cannot remove the SSD and use the trick I described above.The mobo is tied to the serial number of an SSD ...So if you work professionally and need to work with updated versions of sw for MacOS, expect to have to replace your Mac every 4 years.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 07:08:43 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on July 28, 2024, 05:58:36 amOf course I was talking about "physically works, with the original supported software"QuoteThese soft restrictions are not because the hardware physically can't run the new OS, but because it's slow and has little RAM and is missing things that the new OS wasn't to take advantage of such as SIMD, Firewire, or better GPUs. In the case of 10.4 Lion Apple drew the line at 400 and 500 MHz G3 Pismos, though it probably worked much better on a G4.It's not "it won't work" but "you probably won't have a good experience".And yes you can install both 10.3 and 10.4 on unsupported G3s and probably even 604e and so forth by using the "install it on a newer machine" or more simply by using XPostFacto to trick the installer.My G3 PowerBook is a PDQ 266 MHz that originally came with 64 MB RAM. I think it has 192 MB now. It's running OS X 10.2.8 but quite honestly that runs badly enough that I'm tempted to revert it to OS 9.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 09:40:27 am
content: Quote from: madires on July 27, 2024, 09:49:34 amWho will get the Pulitzer for this Intelgate story?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 11:42:39 am
content: @brucehoultthat dude may have the answer

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 11:46:06 am
content: Quote from: iMo on July 28, 2024, 09:40:27 amthat's why my boss is very worried ...

author: BrokenYugo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 02:26:00 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 27, 2024, 07:36:31 pmThey're not that smart, it's just shortsighted greed and bad management. No conspiracy is required.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 02:40:05 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 27, 2024, 07:36:31 pmThis is paranoid nonsense. Everyone designs around a lifetime goal, but you will usually find its longer than most people expect from negative comments like this one. Most of the time engineers are struggling to keep the lifetime up to a reasonable figure, while keeping costs under control. When things fail really fast is usually bad engineering, or rushed engineering, or things being used in ways the engineers didn't anticipate.In the server chip world they still seem to be using more conservative design rules for CPUs than they do for comparable consumer parts. This is a tradeoff. The conservative parts have a longer expected life, running hard 24 hours a day, while consumer parts from the same family usually run up to higher clock rates. This is regardless of the number of cores packing into a single package. The current Intel problem seems to be with consumer parts in hard working servers. There have been some issues with this in the past, although I can't remember specific cases off the top of my head. Have there been any issues with the most recent Xeons?

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2024, 11:07:50 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 28, 2024, 02:40:05 pmNo. All modern electronics lifetime equals to guarantee period. So you can expect that it will be broken just after guarantee period expiration. And it really fails just when guarantee period expires. Old electronics usually has much more lifetime and worked much longer than guarantee period. This is because there was no technology to precisely predict lifetime for a short period. Modern technology allows to use materials with predictable lifetime.For example, modern mixer uses plastic gears inside which wear out and fails after 1-2 years (guarantee period). Old mixers were made with metal gears and can works for years with no fail. This is how programmable lifetime works...

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2024, 05:13:05 am
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 28, 2024, 11:07:50 pmThis also happens in the world of bikesThe simplest example is the inner tube: the modern ones in latex - 30 bloody euros per inner tube - are offered with a 2000km guarantee, and you can be sure that at 2000+1km the valve will pop and they will have to be thrown away and buy again.Luckily, compared to computers, you just have to not buy them, and use the good old technology of butylene inner tubes - 8 euro per inner tube - which are still made ...... if only there was this possibility with computers

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2024, 05:20:30 am
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 28, 2024, 11:07:50 pmWeibull distribution+ research and development conducted byGooglewhen they were using cheap computers and components and had to figure out when to replace components before a failure occurred, this to minimize both the expense and the downtime.They did a lot of research on continuous probability distributions

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2024, 07:29:42 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 28, 2024, 11:07:50 pmOf course there is some of this going on. I suspect a lot of the motivation to get mains voltages out of many products, and confine them to a wall wart, was so they could use rapidly degrading plastics to house the main product. I find it suspicious that when people like the EU started bitching about plastics not degrading in landfills we suddenly had a lot of product cases becoming brittle and break easily not long out of a fairly short warranty. Surprisingly, the wall warts don't do this, as that would cause manufacturers safety liability issues.That said, most of the manufacturers I have worked with set life targets which aren't that awful. Like most TV makers seem to target 8 years of trouble free operation, which isn't too horrible a target. Many places will throw in a 5 or 6 year warranty as a sweetener, even if the manufacturer's warranty is just one year, because failure rates up to 5 or 6 years just aren't that bad, unless the designers messed up on a particular model.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 12:23:26 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 27, 2024, 07:45:43 pmAll of the PCs that I built for myself going back to the Pentium II Celeron 300A still work. The Pentiums that I build immediately before that failed because the embedded lithium batteries in the clock and CMOS chips ran dead.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 02:24:24 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 30, 2024, 12:23:26 pmSo we are in agreement that the vast majority of consumer products (especially electronics) don't just die for no reason after a couple of years.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 04:11:13 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 30, 2024, 02:24:24 pmThere are some exceptions, even with my still working PCs. Incidentally, all of these PCs have ECC memory, which is not something commonly found in consumer products. I never had memory problems, but if I had, then it would have been detected. The one PC that I did not build, a Fujitsu laptop, died a couple months after the warranty expired, and this was AFTER two motherboard replacements.Some of them have been through 3 or 4 power supplies. I have had a couple of Corsair and EVGA power supplies which just spontaneously quit, but this was within their warranty period. I had a bunch of identical Vantec power supplies which all failed at about the same time not long after their warranty expired because their output capacitors dried out. I am sure that a careful manufacturer could design a product to reliably fail after a given number of hours of operation by tuning the operating life of the aluminum electrolytic capacitors.Fans regularly wear out.Every nVidia card I had quit after its warranty expired. Just one of many Radeon cards failed outside of its warranty, but most never had problems but became unusable with operating system updates. One Radeon card had a poorly designed cooling solution causing it to fail after a couple years, but with a lifetime warranty, XFX replaced it with a better one.

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 11:04:22 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 30, 2024, 02:24:24 pmChinese guys can made chips which can dead just after several month of relaxed usage... I have no idea how they doing it, but it just stops to work...It's entirely possible that Intel is introducing a new technology that makes the life of chips even shorter

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 12:02:16 am
content: Regarding self-destructing chips....When I was a wee engineering student, we designed chips and had them manufactured on these free MOSIS "tinychip" runs. Later, at real fabless chip companies, it was possible to get your design added to a low-cost "shuttle" run.In both cases, the parts came back unpassivated. They worked for a few weeks/months, then died. Good enough for a student, good enough for testing a design, but when you want to make some chips to sell, you good pay for your own very expensive mask set.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 01:29:53 am
content: Intelplans to cut thousands of jobsto finance a "recovery". Stock -40% this year. Yes, bleeding out.The 13th and 14th gen CPU crashing and failures, they're still for sale... Everyone is jumping over to AMD for now.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 04:11:56 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on July 30, 2024, 11:04:22 pmEverything is consistent with a design error, like with the Atom processor failures around 2017, or a process related problem.My recollection is that in the past, Intel high performance processors were designed for a 20 year operating life, chiefly limited by temperature, which led to operating temperatures of about 70C at most. Many processors are now operating at 90C which makes me wonder if they are designed for a 5 year operating life.

author: mengfei
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2024, 05:59:32 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on July 31, 2024, 01:29:53 amdang! how are those around 15K goon cope up this with this kind of economyNever thought this will happen to the CPU leaderhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/8/1/24210656/intel-is-laying-off-over-10000-employees-and-will-cut-10-billion-in-costs

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2024, 11:08:56 am
content: And more news:- Legal eagles target Intel for class action over cooked Raptor Lake CPUs (https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/01/intel_raptor_lake_lawsuit/)- Intel announces two extra years of warranty amid chip crashing and instability issues — longer warranty applies to 13th- and 14th-Gen Core processors (https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announces-an-extra-two-years-of-warranty-for-its-chips-amid-crashing-and-instability-issues-longer-warranty-applies-to-13th-and-14th-gen-core-processors)Two more years of warranty won't cut it.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2024, 09:14:12 am
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 02, 2024, 05:59:32 amSo, you know nothing about Intel's history.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2024, 08:03:14 pm
content: https://abingtonlaw.com/class-action/consumer-protection/Intel-Processor-Issues-class-action-lawsuit.html

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2024, 09:24:18 pm
content: So yes, that's looking really bad. I wonder what they call "non-essential work". Did they take some advice from Boeing? Maybe.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 03:23:05 am
content: It's going to be 15% or 15,000 people gone to save the target $10Bthe memo of doomand moresource.Intel will do what all losing corporations do - fire as many engineers as possible, then replace them with salesmenand pay the salesmen in wage AND bonus as much as the engineers earned lol. Many such cases.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 03:55:57 am
content: It's early August, and there's very serious news: Intel has lost 35% of its stock value, and is about to lay off 20,000 people

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 03:59:22 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on August 04, 2024, 03:23:05 amactually they are 20,000 for 2026.not to mention the crappy way they interact with journalists

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 05:51:49 am
content: The new fab in italy?what about the other plants they were planning to build in europe?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 06:08:23 am
content: Good question. They may have flagged them as "non-essential" too.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 06:37:58 am
content: It could be easily their cpus architecture, silicon process and technology, company organization, company processes, amount of "none essentials", etc. reached a point pushing Intel into a steep "decline" phase, or something the shareholders would name "a loss of momentum", etc.It happens in all large companies after several decades of a grow, a success, when the company and its products have passed the phase of "maturity" (see the picture).. The Maturity phase for Intel could be the 25 years from 1990 to 2015, imho..Btw., 125000 employees w-w is really too much for what Intel is doing, imho. They will go down to some 40000-60000 within next 5 years, my bet (I worked at 4 large w-w corps, 3 of them did the same decline, the 4th will do as well)..PS: in the graph you may see that typically during the maturity phase the cash/revenue holds, but the profit declines - that is because the companies usually hire more and more employees (usually sales and marketing, management and other none-essentials), and/or they start to dig into the biz areas which are not their core business..PPS: FYI - AMDalmosttripled the number of their employees since 2016 (to 26000 as of the end of 2023), thus having today 5x less employees with 2x more revenue per employee compared to Intel..

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 06:21:43 pm
content: While some seem to be amused with what is happening to Intel (and wish them the worst), I am very worried, instead.What are real alternatives to Intel Core i7 and Core i9 desktop processors?AMD Ryzen? What if you need to run professional CAD/CAM/CAE software that was only certified for Intel processors?Can one be sure that i.e. simulation will produce the 100% same result if run on an AMD CPU (not certified) as opposed to an Intel CPU? We had problems in the past in this regard...My Core i9-13900KF is a powerhorse. The workstation runs 24/7 (not constantly on load, of course) and it is used for NC toolpath calculation and NC machine simulation, among other tasks. The speed is incredible compared to former Intel CPU's and the fact that there are plenty of cores, means that I can run several tasks in parallel.What if my CPU dies? What are my options? Another Core i9? Switch motherboard and move to AMD Ryzen? Will that be compatible with all the software I need to run?What about all our customers who all use Intel CPU's with their CAD/CAM/CAE software and will call us because the software crashed...I sincerly hope that Intel gets their act together, fixes the manufacturing issues and provides propper replacement to all customers without much of a fuzz. It will be expensive for them, but do they have an option?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 06:58:48 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 06:21:43 pmCan you specify software with that limitation?QuoteI would immediately abandon any such software as untrustworthy, myself. That should not occur unless they're playing dirty tricks with undocumented and therefore unpredictable features.

author: harerod
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 08:16:41 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 06:21:43 pmIf this is a business machine with a socketed CPU, you are in a rather comfortable position. Should you encounter BSOD before the updates from Intel reach your machine, you simply swap the CPU and continue working. Surely the money for the CPU is nothing compared to lost time? So maybe just buy a spare CPU in advance? Then file for a refund by Intel, should the BSOD happen.The only PITA could be software licensing, node locked to the CPU's serial number. If you are running actively supported software, this shouldn't be too bad, though.In comparision: I have a complete set of spare components for my i7-4770k workstation. However, losing the CPU would most likely trigger issues with several older permanent Adobe and Microsoft licenses. Since that CPU is plenty fast for the software that I am running on it, I already throttled the peak power to make that machine last. (if I understand the issue correctly, this would not work for the current CPU's with the faulty microcode)

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 08:57:46 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 06:21:43 pmBoth hardware and software need to do their best to be compatible. Intel and AMD do a fine job. Your software vendor sounds suspicious if they're whitelisting CPUs. Worst case their software depends on timing quirks (race conditions) of certain CPUs and they don't want to fix it. Best case they simply have not bothered testing on other CPUs due to cultural limitations in their company.Onus is on the software company to fix this problem, not you. If they don't "certify" new stuff or fix the bugs that prevent their software being compatible then they'll be scaring and pissing off their users. The users should not be expected to fix this problem unless they are given a way to test "certify" a CPU themselves.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 09:30:24 pm
content: In the past, specifically when running SolidWorks95 (yes, long time ago), it would crash with AMD CPU and the reply was that the AMD was not 100% binary compatible with Intel. Never touched AMD again since then.The limitation is simply this: if you run the software with non-certified hardware and it crashes, you don't get support, because the crash is considered to come from non-certified hardware.Also, consider that in certain industries it is mandatory to use certified hardware, specific driver versions, etc., so that there is a chain of liability if things go wrong. Imagine you determine through FEA simulation what thickness an aeronautic component need to be. The component then fails. Did you do something wrong in the CAE software? Is there a bug in the CAE software? Is there a bug in any driver? Is there a bug in the floating point unit of the CPU?So what you do is to only use certified hardware and drivers, allowing to exclude these when things go wrong. Also, the software manufacturer can hardly test his software with all possible hardware and driver combinations.Anyway, I would love to live in the parallel Universe where Intel fixed its problems and launched the Core i9-15900KF without any planned obsolescence or manufacturing defect...And yes, my computer being a company computer, if I get to a point where working on the PC gets annoying, I will purchase a new Core i9-14900KF and send the old i9-13900KF to RMA. When it gets back, I keep it as a spare. Right now, the only things I noticed is that with one simulation software, the process would be terminated (can't remember the error code in Event Viewer). This was repeatable. When I redefined BIOS settings according to instructions (and later through BIOS update), these crashes stopped happening (same project now simulated correctly to the end). Note that only the simulation software crashed. All other processes and Windows continued to work fine.Yesterday I had two non-reproducible crashes of a different software, with the same error code. This software uses the CPU to 100% for like 10 minutes and I think this is what randomly crashes this application. Perhaps further limiting the BIOS would fix this, too, but I did not have the willpower to reboot into BIOS and randomly test settings...I will wait for the mid august BIOS update and then decide what to do.

author: Zoli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 09:54:19 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 09:30:24 pmThat's a fine way to say that some Intel compilers was used to build the product; I wouldn't be surprised if the cracked version wouldn't crash, processor check(as part of the protection) being patched out

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 09:59:27 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 06:21:43 pmDIY? intel 12 series.Business? Xeon w7 workstation ?

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 10:02:12 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 09:30:24 pmIf it already crashes, your CPU likely is already irreversibly toasted.QuoteFunnily enough Intel uses 64 bit instruction set it licensed from AMD. As of that problem, sounds like very shitty programming and not properly checking which instruction set extensions particular CPU supports, they change over time for both Intel and AMD. Also it could be it had nothing to do with CPU in particular and was just a shitty GTFO response. Also later Solidworks versions worked fine on AMD AFAIK.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:45:20 am
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 09:30:24 pmThe problem with this theory is that was the i386 instruction set, owned by Intel.The 64 bit instruction set you're using today is owned and developed by AMD, Intel only has a license for it.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 04:10:18 am
content: It may have been as simple as using ISA extensions without testing for them beforehand. AMD lagged behind Intel with things like MMX or SSE.But avoiding AMD today because of something that happened in the 90s is a little extreme...

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 05:39:04 am
content: I don't think there will be much choice for many who will need to buy x86 CPUs in the coming months.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 05:42:00 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 05, 2024, 02:45:20 amBut doesn't AMD in turn have a license from Intel to use the x86 ISA? So that's probably still a net gain for Intel. But I don't know the whole licensing mess between the two.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 07:43:59 am
content: Quote from: Bicurico on August 04, 2024, 06:21:43 pmDo not expect Intel goes bankrupt and the CPU production stops.Intel will issue new microcode, sets the parameters to more conservative values, and your PCs will show 45000 instead of 50000 in the Cinebench..And their CPUs will get a little bit cheaper for time being.In parallel,Intel has to reorganize itself a bit, downsize, etc., asthe numbers the shareholders may see today are really concerning..Intel will stay the technology leader, but it requires a dramatic facelift..

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 08:14:03 am
content: Kind of amusing really that people with desktop high TDP chips are going to end up with performance not that different from my i9-13900HX laptop chip (maximum turbo 5.4 GHz, vs 5.8 for the i9-13900K).

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 08:29:02 am
content: Yes that sucks. In our company most of us have laptops, so we are not really affected.The reason I have a desktop PC, along with a laptop, is because I work mainly from home and have multiple monitors and extra boards installed.Plus more memory and at a cheaper price. Add a more powerful GPU and it makes sense even if CPU performance is the same.I don't believe Intel goes bankrupt, either. They are too important - like Boeing. But they really need to restructure...

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:09:09 am
content: The issue with those large strategic corporations and institutions (ie. IBM, HP, Intel, Boeing, etc. - which contribute to the national Defense or to the strategic national infrastructure or to the other national governmental services) is they are organized and managed differently compared to the private owned corporations. Many positions and divisions are created for people coming from politics, defense and other gov bodies.So they do not adhere to the "free market rules" fully, they are more-less the "state owned" companies.. Thus even their stocks are traded, their results are not taken dramatically, as they may get a $$$ injection from the government anytime (ie Intel got $8.5billion from pres. Biden in March this year, that is almost 10% of their current market value)..Quote from: Bicurico on August 05, 2024, 08:29:02 am

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:53:43 am
content: Some statistics from Puget Systems:https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2024/08/02/puget-systems-perspective-on-intel-cpu-instability-issues/Surprisingly high failure rates for Intel's 11th Gen (Rocket Lake), AMD's Ryzen 5000 and 7000.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:32:23 pm
content: Quote from: madires on August 05, 2024, 11:53:43 amI wonder what the correlation is like between how well the package design manages heat extraction and failure rates?

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 10:25:10 pm
content: AMD got rights to the various SSE versions as part of the x86-64 cross-licensing agreement with Intel. Back in the MMX days it's not unlikely AMD processors had bugs since they were based on reverse engineering.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:00:36 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 05, 2024, 12:32:23 pmI have wondered the same thing, because newer lower powered processors are running hotter than older higher power processors. I think this is because of an increase in junction to case thermal resistance from the newer processors having less silicon area.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:15:37 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on August 05, 2024, 11:00:36 pmIt feels like they take the heat extraction less seriously for the lower parts in a particular generation, so every chip in the range runs at a similar die temperature.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 01:47:35 pm
content: Additional Warranty Updates on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop Processors:https://community.intel.com/t5/Processors/Additional-Warranty-Updates-on-Intel-Core-13th-14th-Gen-Desktop/m-p/1620853#M75727

author: hap2001
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 02:05:05 pm
content: Does this affect previous CPUs, like those 5-7 gens?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 02:40:45 pm
content: Not sure what the problem is here. Intel's bread and butter is the mid-range and low end CPUs delivered by the millions to OEMs to chuck in laptops and desktops. The noise is about enthusiast CPUs and custom builds. Not only that the issue is identified and there's a solution. And once a company has had an issue of this scale it'll not want to repeat the same mistake again.Note: I work for a company with literally thousands of their processors without any issues.The best thing this is this and the recent market collapse has tanked share price. So I put money on Intel.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 04:17:37 pm
content: Quote from: madires on August 06, 2024, 01:47:35 pmIntel will replace all that CPUs, the gamers etc. will be happy..Intel in turn sells those returned processors underclocked to less demanding customers - ie governmental customers, schools..bd139 buys cheap Intel stocks....so at the end everybody will be happy..

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 09:49:43 pm
content: Still sucks having to go through the RMA process and be left without a CPU for weeks - which means buying a second replacement CPU.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 10:47:53 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 06, 2024, 02:40:45 pmI'm not sure I'd describe the i9-13900 and i9-14900 as "enthusiast" or "custom". The HEDP CPUs see a lot of use by professionals who want a workstation for themselves or a server for a small group, without the crazy expense of an official "workstation" or "server" system.In 2017 I got the first 18 core i9-7980XE (which cost $2000 for the chip!) as a server for the project I was working on. While it's an expensive PC, the complete machine cost -- I don't remember how much exactly -- $4000 or $5000 vs $20000-$30000 for the official Xeon servers managed by the company IT department. Which were slower for the kind of bursty things programmers do. We put it on the shelf in our own area, managed it ourselves, didn't care about ECC or backups because everything was either standard things from "apt install" or else things we build ourselves and the source code was in multiple git repos. It was also fit in the discretionary budget of my manager.A little reminiscent of professionals in the late 1970s getting Apple ][s on their desk because it was too much bother to get the company IBM mainframe gods to do things for you. Or, of course, a PC or Mac a few years later.The same goes for AMD's ThreadRipper line.And now the i9-11900 -> 12900 -> 13900 line has gone from 8 to 16 to 24 cores (unchanged from 13 to 14) which really makes them sing, and for just $500-$600 for the SoC.I'd say it's got to the point where you'd be crazy not to get one of these for any developer who does local builds of the app or system they're working on. I have an i9-13900HX Lenovo laptop (which fortunately should not be affected) and it's completely brilliant. It's faster on absolutely everything than the 32 core ThreadRipper 2900WX I was using until earlier this year, and quite significantly faster on bursty low core count steps such as autoconf or linking. And all while (comparatively) sipping power, and the machine weighs 2.5 kg instead of 20 kg.Yes, no doubt this is a very minor part of Intel's sales volume. CPUs now completely over-serve most people's needs with many people switching entirely to phones or tablets, and others finding an N100 or the latest Arm SBCs or good enough.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 11:36:29 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 06, 2024, 10:47:53 pmHopefully? It is taken from the same wafters as the affected chips.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 01:46:11 am
content: Quote from: Someone on August 06, 2024, 11:36:29 pmThey say laptop chips aren't affected.I don't think anyone outside Intel really knows whether that's just because they're not run at the same voltage / MHz levels (e.g. 5.4 GHz maximum for this vs 5.8 GHz for the desktop chip) or whether the design is tweaked slightly or made in a different "corner" of the process.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 03:01:32 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 07, 2024, 01:46:11 amThe most detail I've seen so far is:https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2024/08/02/puget-systems-perspective-on-intel-cpu-instability-issues/They run relatively conservative voltages and thermals and are "in" with intel. Pretty sure the HX chips are simply binning, as it was in the past for mobile chips.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 08:25:35 am
content: My conspiracy theory: Intel was experimenting with planned obsolescence, using a slow oxidation process within the CPU.However, they misscalculated the speed of this process at default motherboard/BIOS settings, causing premature failure of the CPU.The goal is to reduce the lifespan of a CPU to around 5-10 years instead of the current >20 years, so that people are forced to buy new computers.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 08:38:54 am
content: In the meantime, RISC_V seems to have officially gone mainstream.Some Youtubers like Jeff not only are annoyingly bigoted about RPI, but keep pointing out how much faster it is than RISC_V

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:22:34 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 07, 2024, 08:38:54 amBecause you can now get a MiniITX motherboard with RISC-V, apparently.Of course some of us have had HiFive Unmatched in a standard PC case since mid 2021. They cost $665 (IIRC) back then (motherboard, CPU, 16 GB RAM) but are now $299. They've still got more RAM and PCIe lanes than most of the others.https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/SiFive/HF105-001?qs=Imq1NPwxi75JBw6ulD0quQ%3D%3DQuoteI have an interesting relationship with Yearling. (He knows I call him that and seems amused) When he says in yesterday's video "A lot of people tell me I shouldn't put much weight on Geekbench, especially on RISC-V, and they're not wrong" ... that's largely me I think :-)Where the Pi 3 is faster than current RISC-V that's because the Pi is running software that uses NEON SIMD instructions, while the RISC-V CPU either doesn't have a vector unit (e.g. JH7110) or the benchmark software hasn't been updated to use it even where it has it (TH1520, SG2042, SpacemiT K1/M1).And don't forget the Pi 3 is limited to 1 GB RAM while RISC-V SBCs can have 8 GB or 16 GB, and have PCIe to GPUs and SSDs and so forth, all of which is often more important to real-world use even if it doesn't show up in a benchmark that runs entirely in cache.Try building a Linux kernel or gcc or something one a "faster" 1 GB Pi 3 and on a 16 GB Milk-V Jupiter (or Banana Pi BPI-F3, or Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A, or a MuseBook, or a Roma II -- all of which use the same SoC) and see what happens.But anyway, Yearling is slowly coming around and is I think much fairer than Gary Explains, though not as focused on where the puck is going as Christopher at Explaining Computers (who he chats with in yesterday's video).

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 04:08:05 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 07, 2024, 08:38:54 amSome people are more interested in available, supported, practical hardware than dev boards, come and go unsupported boards from small fry companies, and dusted off relics from eBay.The Pi is here. It's imperfect but it works, it's low cost, widely used and well supported.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 06:51:28 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 07, 2024, 08:38:54 amMeh shitty poorly designed ISA. The only thing it has going is not having to pay ARM a cut.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 06:54:48 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on August 07, 2024, 04:08:05 pmThat is exactly the whole thing lined up. You know what you're getting with the device, the community, the toolchain, everything.It's the same problem in the server / workstation / desktop market. There are ARM and Power machines out there (excluding Apple of course). But very few people buy them because it's easier to go with the flow.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 07:00:33 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 07, 2024, 06:54:48 pmIt always amazes me how otherwise smart people fail to see that very few people are interested in a component, while millions are interested in a solution.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:55:06 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 07, 2024, 08:38:54 amUh yeah, I dunno, he has presented quite a few RISC-V based SBCs over the past couple years. The fact that the ARM-based ones, even the "modest" RPIs, are still ahead in terms of processing power at a lower cost is a fact and none of his fault. That will change over time.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 01:11:15 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 07, 2024, 11:22:34 amPrecisely. SBC is good, but mobo is betterQuote from: brucehoult on August 07, 2024, 11:22:34 amyes, but since his bigotry wins and he doesn't seem to want to understand it, he always repeats the same things, always the same mistake, always those damn benchmarksQuote from: brucehoult on August 07, 2024, 11:22:34 amPrecisely!Thank God he doesn't use Byte Magazine's benchmarks!At least he doesn't make this mistake!Quote from: brucehoult on August 07, 2024, 11:22:34 amI prefer him.Both for the way he expresses himself and for the fact that it is not fixated on RPI.In fact it thought of running a minimal video editor also on SBC RISC V.(I am running the same ... on HPPA ... well "the same", hacked and recompiled)

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 01:11:56 pm
content: it comes to mind... what happened about 20 years ago, when MIPS cards were all professional, and to buy an Algo4K, an IDT-2x or an Atlas eval board you had to spend over 3000-4000 euros, just for the motherboard, no software, no support, and GNU/Linux did NOT run on them, in fact there were not even kernels and the GNU toolchain itself (gcc-v2.95...v3.0) was a sieve.One fine day, I was having ice cream outside the university, and I spotted a magazine imported from the USA for sale for only 5 USD: on the cover the photo of a small MIPS card promised for only 50 USD (+ customs, shipping, etc) by using one of the provided coupon.Back then if you wanted to get your hands on a MIPS ... and you had no budget, the only option was ... hack a second-hand Playstation1 (MIPS R3K), unsolder the ROM, mount the socket for an EPROM and export the serial by building an RS232 interface.I did it. A lot of work, which only cost you 100 euros. The problem was that there was no way to run Linux on it: the TLB was missing, and 2Mbyte of RAM was not enough! You could only run an RTOS like uc/os2 or XINU, and then ... you missed an ethernet port, so you had to use SLIP/X25 over the second serial line.So you understand the importance of the news: only 50USD, for a small SBC with 100Mbit/s network, one serial, one USB (NEC chip!!!), TLB and 16Mbyte of RAM!!!Too excited, I immediately bought one!Of course, for 50 USD ... it was it was a little 180Mhz clock grinder, very slow if compared to the Pentium1-MMX@200Mhz and Pentium2@500Mhz of the time.(can't comprare it with other RISC development boards+ the ACORN ones cost as much as the Atlas ones+ the Apple Newton cost 1500 euros, and it has never been hackable+ PowerPC eval boards, e.g. 60*, 61*, 75x, 74xx cost more than Atlas eval boardsno choice, at the time)But it would certainly have been wrong to assume that "MIPS" as an architecture ran GNU/Linux (embedded priled) slower than on PC.Sure, that card did, but that was because of the cheapness of ram, cpu, etc.The architecture was promising.Indeed, if you had 50,000 euros, back to 2004, you could get a 4xMIPS R16K@600Mhz workstation, which, thanks to its NUMA solution, was about 4X faster than an PC.Then things changed. Again

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 01:28:05 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 07, 2024, 10:55:06 pmno, I don't think so: if the so-called "influencers" keep pushing that bloody RPI, and they do it because they get paid to promote the platform, then the same thing happens that happens with non-x86 laptops, i.e. nobody buys them, so there is no industrial interest in creating and supporting different products, and it becomes a vicious circle until someone with a big budget imposes itself on the market.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 04:58:39 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 08, 2024, 01:28:05 pmThe solution is simple: You come to the market with a better product, with comparable pricing, support, no dodgy workarounds and eight year old vendor-hacked kernels, and stand by it.Let me know when you or anybody else manages to do that. It's not a money issue: It's a competency and motivation issue. The former is quite easy to overcome, you only have to beat some ex-Broadcom employees.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 11:11:48 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 08, 2024, 01:11:56 pmgcc 2.95 was reliable, if not generating terribly good code. gcc 3 was buggy as hell until I think 3.06? We stayed on 2.95 for ages.Quote20 years ago? WRT54G. Or in 2005 WRT54GL (which was just a rebadged old model WRT54G) to support third-party Linux, after the new WRT54G switched from Linux to VxWorks.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 11:20:23 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on August 08, 2024, 04:58:39 pmI don't know about the Arm SBC market so much, but no one in the RISC-V SBC market is using an eight year old kernel. A one year or 18 months old kernel, with patches applied to support their peripherals, while waiting for that support to be incorporated upstream, sure. And what is wrong with that? Linux has been around for 33 years, it's not changing radically over the course of one or two years. The changes that you should care about on the SBC you bought ARE the ones that are in the vendor fork.QuoteThose ex-Broadcom employees have put RISC-V cores in the latest Raspberry Pi, announced today. Eben even sounded quite happy about it in the article in El Reg.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 11:57:49 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 08, 2024, 11:20:23 pmAnd in the vendor fork is where they usually remain, because they're ugly hacks which won't get upstreamed. I'm not interested in dealing with those forks, and the half-arsed forked distros which go with them - usually some slightly old version of Ubuntu, which I've no interest in deploying and maintaining for them.RISC-V might be slightly further ahead in this area than the plethora of awful messes created by SoC vendors in the ARM market, but the boards still aren't out there on a competitive level. Until they are, it's not surprising people wanting to get stuff done are biased towards tools which help them get stuff done.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 12:08:22 am
content: That's why I am alone with the teres1(1)='(edit: (1) what?an ARM-based openhw/fw/sw laptop

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 am
content: eBay was not so popular in the early 2000s, and at that time Amazon only sold books.It was about full-duplex modems, data transmission over conventional telephone circuits at data rates up to 19200 bits per second, home Internet was an expensive luxury. I remember I didn't have it at home, and I could only use a limited connection from my university's CDC.Without Internet, you read the news in magazines ... And the magazines I read at that time... I don't know, but they didn't mention many things, indeed the WRT54G, which in the US was used for XINU courses and labs, arrived late in my area, let's say after the end of 2007, when FON imported a large amount of it to Spain to distribute it in Europe, and magazines started to talk about it, or rather promote it.But I was not awere of it untill 2008, and in 2006 I bought my first Linux-compatible MIPS SBC. Diskless, ramrootfs or NFS-rootfs, based on Atheros AR2315A (MIPS32-r2), without expansions! Linux version 2.4.32, compiled with gcc version 2.96, and then 3.4.6.Board I learned about from a magazine, which documented it, and made it possible to buy it. At the time, they provided a CDROM, with the Linux kernel sources, pdfs and the patch, and that was all the documentation I had. For the rootfs, I had to buy a Gentoo CD box set.Gentoo was born in 2005, compared to how it is today it was very different, say more wild, but less rolling-distro due to the limited CPU power of the time (recompiling stuff ... takes time, so you try to be more conservative). At the time it was not used much, especially for PPC there was Yellowdog, while for the PC/x86 world Slackware and Debian dominated. However, someone decided to talk about it in magazines, and so they started to attach CDROMs.Usually, when you decided to buy the full CD box set, CD#1 contained x86 stuff, CD#2 contained experimental stage3s for PowerPC (mainly PowerMacs G3/G4) and MIPS stuff, while the CD#3 and CD#4 the portage and the common distfiles.Then in 2008, the revolution! ADSL with flat rates arrived, you stay connected as much as you want and pay a fixed amount per month, before you paid per use and it was very expensive, now everyone could afford even at home.So, I bought my first "serious" Linux MIPS SBC: the rb532/A, which I still use and support. Still MIPS32-r2, but faster (400Mhz), with more ram (64MB) and with a built-in 4GB microdrive.Thanks to domestic internet, not only I was able to study the documentation on-line, but for the fist time I could download the stage3, portage, and distfiles from a remote gentoo server.What memories...

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 02:11:44 pm
content: If DITBro has his dates right, this is a really damning post about the UK.Quote from: DiTBho on August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 amIn much of the world E-Bay was a mature way to trade by 2000.Quote from: DiTBho on August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 amBy maybe 96 or 97 most places were accessing the internet with V.34/33600bps modems. 19200 modems were getting hard to find by 2000, as everyone was shifting to ADSL or cable modems. I assume by expensive luxury you are referring to the UK's insane local call charges, which massively distorted and suppressed the use of telecoms in the UK for decades. Before fibre it was genuinely expensive to provide out of area phone service, but it was never that expensive to provide local calls. Much of the world never charged for them. It was that easy to provide enough capacity in a Strowger exchange to not need to charge more than a modest monthly fixed fee.Quote from: DiTBho on August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 amThe WRT54G came out in 2002, and was an instant hit. With ADSL deployment exploding, although mostly at only 1.5Mbps, it was just the right product at the right time. By 2007 people had moved on to early 802.11n models.Quote from: DiTBho on August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 amBy 2008 most people had abandoned buying CDs, and just burned their own from what they had downloaded. It took a while to download them, but nothing too awful for the time at 1.5M, 3M or 8Mbps.Quote from: DiTBho on August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 am2008 was the year we got our first 1Gbps up and down fibre internet connection at home. It was available quite a while before that, but the price was high. In 2008 its was under $30 a month, and the market was exploding.Quote from: DiTBho on August 09, 2024, 04:16:29 amThis is just such a sad tale.

author: Postal2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 03:13:56 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 09, 2024, 02:11:44 pmI use ADSL because the integrity of the telephone line is protected by law.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 03:21:16 pm
content: Quote from: Postal2 on August 09, 2024, 03:13:56 pmYour flag says Russia, but your logic is like a lot of people in the US face. The government has a say in US copper lines, as they heavily financed the initial rollout of the phone network. Some operators are offering a nice deal on fibre to the home, but they rip out the copper as they do the installation. Now, they own the fibre, no competitor can use it. On day one any competitor is in no better or worse a position to install their own fibre. As time passes, and the first operator has amortised their fibre somewhat, a gradual barrier to entry occurs.

author: Postal2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 03:26:37 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 09, 2024, 03:21:16 pmYes, you are right. If you sign a new contract and break the old "copper" one, you will lose the line's legal protection.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 03:46:14 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 09, 2024, 02:11:44 pmMeanwhile I only got gigabit this year (could've had it a couple years ago, admittedly) and it costs me £45 a month - and it's only that low because I squeezed a good deal out of them. Also just noticed they've cut upload bandwidth in half for new customers.. it's symmetric XGS-PON, so that's an interesting choice.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 04:02:21 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on August 09, 2024, 03:46:14 pmFor our UK home there is hope of getting fibre by the end of the year. 1G down/something much slower up will be 49.99 pounds a month, although 100Mbps is a more reasonable 29.99 a month. In HK, where we had fibre in 2008, its now about 15 pounds a month, and they usually throw in a second gigabit channel for free. This is often used for a TV over IP service. In the UK we only had our speed raised from a flaky 1Mbps or so about 4 years ago. We can get about 40Mbps from VDSL at the moment. They took so long to get that state funded VDSL in place that it has ended up with a fairly short life, before we get fibre. 1km away they had some of the earliest fibre to the home pilot scheme installs in the UK.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 05:17:50 pm
content: eh, a suburb does not express the same conditions as the nation ...Cities like London, Liverpool, Manchester, ... have always been pioneers of new methods and technologies.You can see it well during the industrial revolution.And it's a genre that is still present in comics too: while the rest of the country uses horse-drawn ploughs, in London there are steam engines, steampunk, andPeople like Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, better known as Ada Lovelace (London, 10 December 1815, London, 27 November 1852), and Charles Babbage (London, 26 December 1791, London, 18 October 1871), which are about to contribute to the next industrial revolution: the computer one.Then there are cities like Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK, hence the nickname "Second City", although it is better known by its nickname of Brum ("Brummagem") for the Brummie dialect, which I am only partially able to understand.Birmingham has been the melting pot of several industrial innovations and the birthplace of the technology that allowed the construction of titanium bicycles, like the Speedwell Titalite which won a couple of very difficult races in Australia.However, since the late 1970s, its industry has suffered a sharp decline, so much so that between 2000 and 2008 less than 10% of its workforce was employed in the manufacturing sector, and the situation has further worsened, so much so that the city has become a major banking, insurance and educational center, with three universities.Sure, if I had studied in Birmingham, I would have had internet at home much sooner, and probably the university itself would have offered me a real "serious" computer to surf the internet, something certainly better than the Tektronix xp217 X11-terminal that I was using, without the possibility of saving anything because it had no media peripherals, no Iomega ZIP/100, no floppy, no burner, no hard drive ... nothing at all, but I would not have been able to pay the rent for a flat near one of the three universities, nor find a part-time job to pay for university. And I know this, because I tried.And while Birmingham is the UK’s second largest city, with its own dark side of the moon, things can get even stranger in the small suburban areas.But let's look at it with a positive perspective: I haven't missed anything, on the contrary, I think I lived the "technological push" that in a very short time brought the internet into everyone's homes, which is a remarkable huge and brilliant investments in telecommunications

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2024, 01:01:26 pm
content: BTW, AMD has fun with SinkClose (CVE-2023-31315,https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7014.html).

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 01:48:43 am
content: Interesting article from half a century ago...

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 06:47:51 pm
content: Well I'm $1771 up on Intel so far

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 11:42:59 am
content: In the meantime, Snapdragon laptops, equipped with Windows 11, have been launched on the market.Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, Windows 11 ARM(1).While it's not as mature as Apple Silicon, it already proves to have a better performance/battery life ratio than any x86-based laptop(1) Patches for Linux will be released for v6.12, will have to wait until October

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 11:50:43 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 19, 2024, 11:42:59 amI think you mean Windows 11 for ARM is not as mature. Its hard to claim silicon in the Snapdragon family is not as mature as others. The success of these machines will probably rest a lot of how well they emulate an x86, to run a wide range of existing software through a transition period. One thing Apple have done well more than once it to bring old ISA software onto their new ISA hardware. Most people make a total mess of it, as MS has done multiple times.

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 12:27:25 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 19, 2024, 11:50:43 amWho cares about x86? Almost everything can be recompiled into native ARM binaries. Of course there's still a bunch of closed-source junk out there that's either not offered for ARM or is abandoned and never existed for ARM, but, again, who cares, and worst case it can still be run under qemu or whatever.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 12:33:05 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on August 19, 2024, 12:27:25 pm99% of people care a lot. You are the exception.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 01:03:13 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on August 19, 2024, 12:27:25 pmFinalCut is the perfect example, as in a very short time, it was ported to Apple Silicon, and compiled natively, rather than continuing to run x86 stuff in emulation.This makes me understand that not only does it make sense, but it can be done very well, not only as a "principle", but also from a practical and commercial point of view!Adobe/Premiere could be the counterexample, at least I expect Adobe to do something similar for Windows 11 ARM, releasing a native and optimized version for Snapdragon.Otherwise it's very simple: I will go ahead not buing any Premiere or any Snapdragon hardware simply because it is better to invest money on Finalcut for AppleSilicon!In my opinion, this should be the market logic!

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 01:19:17 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on August 19, 2024, 12:27:25 pmis there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:19:14 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on August 19, 2024, 01:19:17 pmNo idea. Is this BS even used outside of computer literacy classes in the elementary school?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:23:28 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on August 19, 2024, 03:19:14 pmThere is an enormous amount of old VB6 code that people still rely on for thousands of niche applications most of us don't even realise exist. They aren't going to be overhauled any time soon. There's plenty of Delphi and other stuff, too.

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:38:16 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 19, 2024, 03:23:28 pmWell, niche applications are hardly a target for an ARM-based laptop. Those will still be fine, as x86 systems aren't going away anytime soon.Going back to the initial question, in all seriousness, ARM systems should be good enough, and will quickly improve, for general home&office work. Those running MacOS (and Linux -- mostly for servers) have been good in this role for quite a while now; Windows-based ones are relatively new, but I don't see why the majority of typical desktop software wouldn't be made available for ARM soon enough.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:48:28 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on August 19, 2024, 03:38:16 pmSomeone buying a laptop in 2024 is buying a replacement, and it needs to run the stuff they use. They might use two machines in an office, but a laptop needs to meet all their on-the-go needs.This is something a lot of engineers, excited by the latest shiny new thing, miss. If you are not offer something utterly new, like the very first computer someone gets, you need to deal with all the baggage of the past. Anything you miss can lead to very low adoption of the shiny new thing. You are limited to early adopters. You see this all the time in various forms of telecoms and computing.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:55:07 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on August 19, 2024, 03:19:14 pmYes, or microsoft should feel the need to release a statement ensuring support for years to comehttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policyWhile all the new stuff i put out is written with Qt, we have many OLD applications in VB6. Old as in as old as myself (well, not quite, but you get the idea as the first inception was with VB5, or maybe even VB4)I have tried to get approval for rewrite over the last 5+ years, but it's a many months job and it will be postponed until absolutely necessary.Also there are a ton of small third party tools to interface to old hardware that are VB5/VB6 applications

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 04:37:17 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 19, 2024, 11:42:59 amCompletely useless.As usual the last decade, Microsoft copies Apple poorly, while not building on its own strengths. Or hell, sabotages it's own strengths while Apple starts copying them (dynamic island is just the mobile evolution of the system tray, animated/interactive widgets are toys but it's funny MacOS started supporting them as Microsoft killed Live Tiles).System level control (x86 bios settings are generally ridiculous, etc), LPDDR on MCM (or HBM), some low powered cores to do video rundown tests (no practical use, but it's good PR) and the ability to spend money on die size to run the iGPU at lower clocks and to buy into TSMC's top node. All those matter far more than ISA. ARM is a distraction for Microsoft on desktops.They should use that effort to work on Win32-v2, so they can deprecate WinRT (COM indirection is slow, not great for power consumption either).

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 05:18:04 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on August 19, 2024, 04:37:17 pmbah, have you tried it?I have(2), and I can say they arrived late, more than five years late, but they got there, and the lenovo I mentioned before I can assure you that as aWindows/business laptopis a thousand times better than any Windows/x86(1) based laptop because the performance is good with batteries lasting almost almost two working days of 7 hours each!(1) cannot say anything about GNU/Linux because patches will be only available for kernel >= 6.12(2) one of my firends is a journalist. He received a laptop from Lenovo for review, so I got to try it out for a couple of days and give him some feedback on what I thought: not as great as the Apple Book Air, but pretty good!

author: rteodor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 05:20:25 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 19, 2024, 11:42:59 amTuxedo announced that they work on a Linux 14 inch Notebook but so far they do not have a date.They say that patches to kernel were pushed as early as 6.8 by Linaro with whom Qualcom works. There is still work to do.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 05:22:24 pm
content: umm, comparing prices ... well .... the Snapdragon laptop I tried costs 2K euro.It's in a price range that's a little higher than what i paid for the Apple Book Air.Here, i'm hoping Lenovo will make some tweaks though.It's the law of the market, anyway, the more widespread a good is, the less it costs.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 05:29:47 pm
content: Quote from: rteodor on August 19, 2024, 05:20:25 pmPatches are mostly about drivers and misc, and they are all "platform-specific" stuff.So you can't just take them from other/similar platforms and think they're good "as-is".Yes, they are definitely similar, so you can adapt them, but there's still work to be done.Either you do it yourself, as I often do (e.g. for the Teres 1.0, and subsequent 1.5 and 2.0, both prototypes, similar to the 1.0).Or you have to wait for someone else to do it.In that case, devs all agreed to release(1) them on public 6.12, and not before!(1) which also implies that Ubuntu and the like distros will have time to integrate them.In the meantime - yes - if you really want and know how to do ityou can still work on development repos, with things that only partially work, because they are being worked on.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2024, 11:28:09 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 19, 2024, 05:18:04 pmFull HD laptop?Some of the 125U get close to the power consumption and in principle if Windows was truly optimized for it, the 155U should be able to run in low power mode exactly the same. I doubt Windows is truly optimized for Meteor Lake though. They have two LP cores on the SOC tile so in theory it can shut off the entire CPU tile, but I know in Linux that's not possible at the moment (can't migrate CPU0 stuff like interrupts). I doubt Windows can do it either. Given Microsoft's tendency to infight, I doubt they are trying very hard to optimize Intel battery life now that they have ARM to want to sell.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 20, 2024, 05:42:25 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on August 20, 2024, 11:28:09 amfull company laptopI don't know what's under the hood, I can only tell you that I used it for two days, taking it with me on the subway, in and out of the office.I wrote and simulated a few vhdl things on it, a not too complex project that takes up 40% of the resources of a spartan3-250. I then wrote the documentation in OpenOffice, and I used wifi a lot because I was connected to remote servers (including ssh), and I massively used pdf reader a lot to read the documentation.Everything worked well, except the printer that wasn't recognized right away and made me suffer a bit.But in all of this I was really surprised by how smoothly Windows11 arm works, how little it heats up, and how long the batteries last.If anything, one thing I really didn't like was a single central fan:- under heavy load, it makes too much noise and creates an annoying thermal gradient- no company laptop uses a single fan anymore, everyone uses two

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2024, 07:15:48 pm
content: "Intel core ultra" ... time

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2024, 08:19:56 pm
content: Senior Intel CPU architects splinter to develop RISC-V processors — veterans establish AheadComputing (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/senior-intel-cpu-architects-splinter-to-develop-risc-v-processors-veterans-establish-aheadcomputing)

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 27, 2024, 11:01:41 pm
content: Quote from: madires on August 27, 2024, 08:19:56 pmThese seem to have been people who were working on the Royal / Beast Lake project. The instigator of that project, Jim Keller, joined RISC-V company Tenstorrent in January 2021. I think Jim was also responsible for the switch to P and E cores in the latest couple of generations of shipping chips -- as well as for Zen in a stint at AMD.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2024, 10:54:43 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 27, 2024, 11:01:41 pmI've watched Jim Keller talk a few times, and I can never figure out if his key skills are technical, organisational or BS spotting. He certainly seems to have had a very positive impact wherever he has gone.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2024, 11:35:22 am
content: Quote from: coppice on August 28, 2024, 10:54:43 amYeah. He also had a hand in VAX 8800, Alpha 21164 and 21264, AMD Athlon, the design of the amd64/x86_64 ISA, co-founder of PA Semi (developing a PowerPC CPU) followed by a stint designing Arm cores for Apple when they bought PA Semi. And Tesla.Like Musk, Keller has a knack of separating the things that violate the laws of physics from the things that don't, and then saying "Ok, that *should* be possible ... now how do we achieve it?"

author: mengfei
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2024, 04:26:34 pm
content: ..and cutting loss continueshttps://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2024/09/04/intels-new-plant-on-partial-pausehttps://www.nasdaq.com/articles/intel-intc-eyes-strategic-overhaul-potential-sell-alteraAny takers?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2024, 05:20:26 pm
content: It's a shame that Intel has all this trouble right as their processors and GPUs are doing a lot better. Then again, that just shows how bad their process is doing ... buying the best TSMC process and system design are important, ISA is almost irrelevant with laptop or even tablet formats.https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-laptops/these-new-asus-lunar-lake-laptops-with-27-hours-of-battery-life-kinda-prove-its-not-just-x86-vs-arm-when-it-comes-to-power-efficiency/

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2024, 06:16:04 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on September 08, 2024, 05:20:26 pmDo you mean as far as power? ISA sure matters for applications.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2024, 06:35:03 pm
content: Well, an increasing percentage of users download those from "app stores" and don't care(On tablets it's pretty much 100%).And there is emulation. Sure, it's not as fast as native, sure it won't run everything. But I have a Linux ARM laptop and it runs LTspice fast enough to be usable, or Wintel applications for industrial stuff control over RS232 using USB dongles. I haven't booted actual Windows in over a year.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2024, 11:05:39 pm
content: I still use some of the same applications that I used 20 years ago; AutoCAD 2000, Forte Agent, Mathematica, etc. If the computer does not run my old applications, then I am not interested.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 10:45:24 pm
content: I have not bought an Intel processor ever since they forced shops to not sell AMD processors. But I did not keep up with the news, I'm not even sure whether they ever got fined for that.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 12, 2024, 02:11:36 pm
content: Quote from: Doctorandus_P on September 11, 2024, 10:45:24 pmI stopped when they dropped all support of ECC on consumer CPUs. My last Intel system was a Pentium4 2.4C with 875P chipset.In theory some Intel consumer stuff supports ECC now, but it is a maze to figure it out with official sources giving conflicting information.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 12, 2024, 06:09:40 pm
content: That pentium 4 thing may have been around the same time.Also triggers a memory of the intel compiler, at some time, compiled programs ran about 30% or so slower if it could not find the string "genuine intel" somewhere in the registers. It took quite some time before the benchmarkers figured out what was happening. Heck, just giving their competitors newest CPU some undeserved low benchmark results in the first month or two after release must be worth millions or billions.... And that coprocessor calculation bug that gave wrong answers... On itself it should have been just an errata, but they tried to cover it up untill such an outrage was started in the media that they could not deny it any longer.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 12, 2024, 06:47:12 pm
content: You can read the story here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_C%2B%2B_Compiler#Support_for_non-Intel_processorsNote that toward the end, the link says:The FTC settlement included a disclosure provision where Intel must:publish clearly that its compiler discriminates against non-Intel processors (such as AMD's designs), not fully utilizing their features and producing inferior code.In compliance with this ruling, Intel added disclaimers to its compiler documentation:Intel posted the disclaimer as a graphics image so that search engines could not find and index it.

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 12:00:14 pm
content: Just read that they will be working on government contracts. It's a pity, I liked Intel processors. In a way, it's symbolic that Intel is falling apart after the discontinuation of the Z80.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 12:33:52 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on September 14, 2024, 12:00:14 pmIntel is not falling apart.. It just undergo a facelift. They will get rid of the FPGA business, they will sell the production sites to somebody (selling it to TSMC would be a bad move, imho, as TSMC's market share is already too large to be safe considering the geopolitics, new manufacturers in US and Europe are required), and they will cut the workforce to something like 50k within next 5 years. That gives Intel new fresh wind in their sails for working on their architecture improvements..

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 01:24:49 pm
content: Government subsidies have never provided wind in the sails, on the contrary... And nowit's not a surprisethat theyrolled out defective CPU...

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 02:05:55 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on September 14, 2024, 12:33:52 pmTSMC gets so much better revenue out of every EUV machine, who is supposed to buy it?Intel and Samsung can to a certain extent subsidize their fabs, but a pure foundry would have to compete on even playing field with TSMC ... and if Intel and Samsung can't do it, what is anyone else's chance?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 04:53:07 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on September 14, 2024, 12:33:52 pmWhat possible value could Intel's fab network have for TSMC? It wouldn't buy them a bunch of new customers, and those fabs would be a dead weight around their neck.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 08:38:55 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on September 14, 2024, 12:00:14 pmThe Z80 was developed by Zilog, originally a subsidiary of Exxon (the oil company) and was designed to be an improved version of Intel's 8080 series.Zilog discontinued the Z80 in April of 2024; however, they still make the eZ80.Zilog is now part of Littelfuse, along with IXYS.https://www.zilog.com/

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2024, 09:45:36 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on September 14, 2024, 04:53:07 pmTSMC is investing into 12-28nm nodes these days, afaik (ie the ESMC in Dresden, 10billion Euro, 70% owns TSMC), so why not to buy Intel's fabs?

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2024, 07:30:10 am
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 14, 2024, 08:38:55 pmIt was based on the Intel 8080 architecture. It was a well-known architecture and wonderful success at the time. The Zilog Z80 gained its popularity due to its software compatibility with the Intel 8080. Now, the Z80 is discontinued, and Intel has also falling apart. The era of Intel and success of their architecture is coming to an end. This is what I mean...

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2024, 12:54:03 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on September 15, 2024, 07:30:10 amSoftware compatibility and an enhanced instruction set had little to do with the Z80's popularity. What the Z80, and 8085, did have was easier interfacing and a requirement for only a single +5 volt supply. The 8080 required multiple supply voltages and a bunch of external logic for interfacing making it more difficult and costly to use.We switched to using the 8085 for embedded use as soon as we could to simplify hardware. All of our development systems used the Z80, but without any Z80 specific applications.

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 08:58:27 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on September 15, 2024, 12:54:03 pmYes, no need for negative voltage was a significant advantage of the Z80. However, I believe this was more due to the limitations of silicon refinement processes at the time the 8080 was developed. If the 8080 had been designed later, it likely would have also operated with a single 5V supply.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2024, 04:34:34 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on September 18, 2024, 08:58:27 amFor many people the biggest benefit of single rail MOS was not avoiding the need for the 12V and -5V rails, but avoiding the need to have them sequenced, so the -5V substrate bias was present first.

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2024, 08:40:46 am
content: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/20/qualcomm-reportedly-approached-intel-about-takeover.html

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2024, 07:39:19 pm
content: Yes, this is getting fun.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2024, 08:23:51 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on September 14, 2024, 09:45:36 pmIts a popular strategy to buy fabs which are somewhat away from the bleeding edge, and make good money from the low investment it takes to buy and run a fully depreciated fab. Most of the leading edge fab people have sold off fabs in this way, typically to people in the analogue or power areas, who have no need for the finest geometries. Intel has tended to follow a path of leading edge fabs for CPUs, ageing them into fabs for chip sets, ageing into the least geometry sensitive stuff they do, and then selling things on to other vendors who don't need fine geometries. The key thing with all these transfers is the receiving party gets a real bargain. I don't think Intel is looking to raise a little money with bargain basement selloffs of older fabs. If you look at what TSMC is doing for 28nm, you may already find a lot of second hand equipment among their purchases. It really depends on the market of the moment, and which types of IC are hot right now. If 28nm is hot enough the only available equipment may be new.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2024, 10:27:05 pm
content: Besides analog, digital logic which relies on floating gate memory like EEPROM and Flash is limited to larger feature sizes. This applies to a lot of microcontrollers and some programmable logic. I think NOR Flash is just recently down to 28 nanometers?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2024, 10:39:00 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on September 21, 2024, 10:27:05 pmThere are all sorts of things which currently need larger geometries. For example, if your digital product must operate continuously and must have super low leakage, you can't use too fine a geometry. Quite a few fairly complex digital things fall into that category.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2024, 07:37:34 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 21, 2024, 07:39:19 pmNot if you have designed in any Intel components (including Altera FPGAs)... Try and find datasheets for Qualcom parts.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2024, 11:04:43 am
content: Ok so I made $5k on this dying company with faulty products that no one wants to buy