* Posts by P0l0nium

193 publicly visible posts • joined 24 May 2013

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Apple aptly calls its wireless over-the-ear headphones the AirPods Max – as in, maximum damage to your wallet

P0l0nium

Re: Primarily because UK prices include VAT

That's to remind Americans how extravagant and inefficient their state government is.

The UK need MORE of that sort of thing, not less.

I like my bills itemised so I can tell who's ripping me off. It should be added at the very end along with credit card transaction fees.

Let 15 July forever be known as P-Day: When UK's smut fans started being asked for their age

P0l0nium

You can buy a dozen eggs for 7 minutes of minimum wage !!

There are a load of excuses for not feeding your kids but "Austerity" isn't one of them.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

P0l0nium

Business Analyst Needed

My experience with Mpower and Arrow Energy (Names have been changed to protect the "innocent"):

Supplied by Mpower - They insist on fitting smartmeter.

Nice bloke from Lowri-Beck comes and installs new gas and Electric meters.

Smartmeter works well - nice !!

Fixed price tarrif ends, Mpower hikes bill - Change to Arrow Energy.

5 days after changeover Smartmeter loses tarrif information but still displays energy in KWH.

5 days after that smartmeter loses connection with meters and the becomes expensive useless POS.

When God invented the word "F*ckwit" he surely had this lot in mind .

Cray's pre-exascale Shasta supercomputer gets energy research boffins hot under collar

P0l0nium

Re: Major win for AMD

The government always hands these things out in strict rotation. The next one will be "Power" based :-)

PC makers: Intel CPU shortages are here to stay ... for six months

P0l0nium

You should have bought "tomato futures" :-)

Capitalism: It works !!

First Boeing 777 (aged 24) makes its last flight – to a museum

P0l0nium

Re: More than 8 hours

From Pima you should head south of Tucson to the Titan Missile silo (where they filmed "Star Trek First Contact") . That is stupendous (if you're a "cold warrior").

They even let you press the "doomsday button" :-)

P0l0nium

Re: "I thought the 777 was ETOPS 180?"

"the same model of 737 but kitted out with the Rolls Royce engines"

I assure you that no one has EVER bought a 737 with Rolls Royce engines :-)

I think I'm a clone now: Chinese AMD Epyc-like server chips appear in China. What gives?

P0l0nium

Nothing stops any Dell competitor slapping an X470 board in a box and marketing it as a superior product.

Nothing forces you to buy from Del/HPl if you can secure better value elsewhere.

I'm sure HP and Dell would sell you a Ryzen box if they thought it was profitable.

Uber self-driving car death riddle: Was LIDAR blind spot to blame?

P0l0nium

Intimidation ...!!

How long will it be before Joe Public discovers that you only have to present a "hazard" to a self-driving car for it to stop or avoid you.

Soon we'll be able to stagger drunkenly across motorways with impunity :-)

UK's data watchdog seizes suspected Scottish nuisance caller's kit

P0l0nium

60metres a second.

Not at Banavie they aren't ... more like 10M/S max.

The only 100Mph train at Banavie is the Hogwarts Express.

Sacked saleswoman told to pay Intel £45k after losing discrim case

P0l0nium

Nest question ... WHO HIRED THIS PERSON ??

They should get the "Improvement Required".

Paul Allen's research vessel finds wreck of WWII US aircraft carrier

P0l0nium

Its not a Hellcat !!

Its a Wildcat !

Monday: Intel defector touts Arm server chip. Wednesday: Intel shows off new server chips

P0l0nium

Re: Another day - another ARM server chip startup. Meanwhile at Intel...

Brian : Hey Diane, while you're on sabbatical why don't you sign up with Carlyle group and loose them $Billion.

Diane : Great plan!! That will ensure Qualcomm's Centriq faces even MORE competition and gets shut down earlier and both going bust together will discourage any other ARM server entrants,

Brian : High Five !! - You can be Intel's HR director when the dust settles/

Trebles all round! Intel celebrates record sales of insecure processors

P0l0nium

Level Pegging ...??

"Historically had a 2-3 year lead over competitors and have now reached the point where they are almost level pegging"

Intel launched Broadwell in sept 2014

Foundries deliver first "10nm" product in April 2017

Foundry 10nm is very slightly ahead of Intel 14nm.

Intel's process lead is 2 years 7 months.

Windows on ARM: It's nearly here (again)

P0l0nium

Screen power ....

Since 50-70% of the device power goes to the screen then why would anyone bother having the most efficient SOC at any cost?

And there's no evidence that an ARM SOC is any more efficient than an X86 SOC doing the same work. If there was then the world would be full of ARM servers.

Intel's €1bn EU antitrust appeal: What the heck is the AEC test?

P0l0nium

Re: I also just wonder...

Would you care to name that "certain company" and explain why they didn't offload the extra "free ones" on the grey market..??

Or are you just another "fake news" bot who hates any entity more successful that you ??

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

P0l0nium

Simples ...

You stun a pigeon and fry it up on your travel iron*. Problem solved :-)

(* Dilbert- c1999)

Intel stuffs extra cores into latest mobile Series U Core i5 and i7 chips

P0l0nium

Re: OK, I'll bite

How are these "new" chips better?

Well .....

-They deliver more instructions per clock.

-They use less energy per task,

-They will live in a 15W power envelope.

-You get 8MB L3 Cache.

-They can access faster memory.

-They have a much better IGP.

Apart from that , no difference at all really, ;-)

Atomic bonds: Gigabyte, Supermicro fire out boosted Atom CPU range

P0l0nium

Re: Stats

FYI ... The Avoton C2730 (nice slow-clocked 8 core Silvermont Atom) was the single most efficient CPU on the planet.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8357/exploring-the-low-end-and-micro-server-platforms/17

Its what killed "ARM server" before they got started :-)

Core-blimey! Intel's Core i9 18-core monster – the numbers

P0l0nium

Bragging rights ...

The "high end" of this HEDT thing is all about bragging rights: Intel scrambled to release an 18 core part because they weren't about to have AMD deliver "moar coars" .

So now they have problems getting the heat out of this thing and the AMD part has an advantage there because its "heat generating area" is larger and distributed (because it has 2 or 4 widely spaced die under a bigger slug of copper).

So I guess we're about to find out if Intel's "process advantage" is real ... right ??

Toshiba chip biz auction: Picks Japan-Bain fund bid

P0l0nium

Soon ALL semiconductor factories will be government owned.

What could POSSIBLY be wrong with that ??

EPYC leak! No, it's better than celeb noodz: AMD's forthcoming server CPU

P0l0nium

Re: "...real competition to the Intel elephant? That seems unlikely,..."

An alternative reading of the same facts would say:

1) Zen is a core that is 20% down on both IPC and frequency vs Skylake.

2) GF's yields suck and they can't (cheaply) build anything bigger than 200sqm.

3) In a contest between a large die and an MCM - the monolithic solution always wins.

4) You know nothing about Intel's yields (and neither do I , these days:-)

I'm sure that YOUR needs can be met with an AMD processor.

P0l0nium

Re: Can AMD be bought?

AMD loses their right to use X86 if they experience a "Change of Control" ... And that doesn't apply to the other party's use of AM64 (Intel).

Only the entity that has a "Change of control" loses its license.

It was done to prevent any large entity (e.g, a government) strong-arming their way into PCs.

(Which has effectively now happened anyway with all these ARM smartphone SOCs being built in government sponsored 14nm Fabs).

Intel to Qualcomm and Microsoft: Nice x86 emulation you've got there, shame if it got sued into oblivion

P0l0nium

Re: Tough Times at Santa Clara

"We are not pretending that our calculations are 100% accurate, but they should be close enough."

That comment was made re a decision whether the X86 Avoton or the X86 Xeon was more efficient. The ARM part was one third as efficient.

Here's another hopeless but much hyped ARM server product:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9956/the-silver-lining-of-the-late-amd-opteron-a1100-arrival/3

" The expected performance and power consumption are most likely not competitive with what Intel has available".

And that's from Johan DeGelas - a long time ARM server cheerleader.

P0l0nium

Re: Tough Times at Santa Clara

There is no evidence that an ARM server is any more efficient than an X86 server. Quite the reverse, in fact.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8357/exploring-the-low-end-and-micro-server-platforms/17

There's no evidence, but there is a LOT of marketing :-)

P0l0nium

Re: Tough Times at Santa Clara

Re: 4 small chips = 1 big chip ... If this was true then the world would have been full of Muti-Chip-Modules many decades ago: And its not :-)

And who says that 8 Cores in 200sqm marks the best price-performance compromise ??

Makes you wonder why Intel invested all those billions in defect reduction, doesn't it ??

Germany to Facebook, Twitter: We are *this* close to fining you €50m unless you delete fake news within 24 hours

P0l0nium

Does this apply to posts in Welsh ??

And what happens when I post "fake news" in Navaho ??

Microsoft: Can't wait for ARM to power MOST of our cloud data centers! Take that, Intel! Ha! Ha!

P0l0nium

So why don't you show the world where you can buy an i7 6900K for $700 ...

Not here

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-6900K-Processor-FC-LGA14A-BX80671I76900K/dp/B01FJLAIG0

And still listed at $1000+ on ARK.

https://ark.intel.com/products/94196/Intel-Core-i7-6900K-Processor-20M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz

If there was a checkbox for hyperbole , you'd get some informed upvotes.

P0l0nium

Re: You've come a long way, baby

ARM is now owned 75% by the Japanese and 25% by the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/03/08/softbank-sell-25pc-arm-giant-tech-fund/

Don't get TOO patriotic :-)

Intel's dying Atom chips strike again: Netgear recalls four ReadyNAS, Wi-Fi management lines

P0l0nium

Re: Based on my empirical data

I would speculate that its a "capacitative load" issue caused by driving a large copper track up and down with a fast transistor. The inrush current spikes can get very large and cause elecromigration in the power rails. The QA meeting must have been interesting:

"You overloaded the output transistor"

"No we didn't"

"Yes you did ... for 3 Nanoseconds every clock pulse :-)"

Would explain why costs are being shared. Cisco took a $125M hit last quarter on this issue. Intel's share was undisclosed but large.

We burned chips in 2016... but then semiconductor sales got healthy again. Whew

P0l0nium

Those fries look MOST unhealthy :-)

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cancer-roast-potatoes-burnt-toast-starchy-foods-could-cause-cancer-acrylamide-food-standards-agency-a7540916.html

Chinese chip shop looks hot to trot as Tsinghua drops $30bn on factory

P0l0nium

Where is the WTO when you need them ??

How long before Uncle Sam (or Uncle Donald) realises that "someone" is diffusing wafers below cost and imposes tariffs on all products containing Chinese memory ??

And then they can go after anyone else getting their expensive R&D done in state funded "universities" :-)

Prepare for ReRAM speed! Crossbar samples SMIC chips

P0l0nium

Show me the wearout numbers :-)

Low-end notebook, rocking horse shit or hen's teeth

P0l0nium

"Everyone and their mother" already HAS a Tablet... and has no compelling case to buy a replacement.

Tablets and notebooks are in about equal decline...

Ghost of DEC Alpha is why Windows is rubbish at file compression

P0l0nium

The DEC Alpha lives on in China ... apparently.

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

Microsoft aren't alone in coding for the worst CPU on the planet :-)

What should the Red Arrows' new aircraft be?

P0l0nium

A bus to the job centre....:-)

Having the RAs at the end of the show allows me to extract my car from the muddy field early.

And they can put the Tannoy guy on the same bus.

Samsung are amateurs – NASA shows how you really do a battery fire

P0l0nium

Re: Only 96 batteries

Nearly TWO THOUSAND !!

I have witnessed 2 people being killed in a petrol fire and it is not pretty. The limiting factor in the energy release from a fuel tank is the rate at which the air can get to the gasoline.

The limiting factor in the energy release from a battery fire is ... (insert marketing babble here).

Its a bomb!!

Want to use 3D XPoint DIMMs with Intel Purley Xeons? Wait a couple of years for second-gen

P0l0nium

Re: Delays, delays...

The press have a serious case of "Münchhausen syndrome by Proxy" over Xpoint.

Intel said they would be sampling in Q4 and taking revenue in Q1... and they never promised that gen1 Purley would support Xpoint DIMMs

Where's the "bluff" and where's the delay ??

AMD is a rounding error on Intel's spreadsheet and that sucks for us all

P0l0nium

Re: Sigh

They gave AMD a Billion Dollars and the rights to go Fabless.

AMD has existed for nearly 50 years and is now worth less than it was in 1974 having never paid a dividend.

There is something wrong there besides a few years of "robust competition" from Intel.

P0l0nium

Re: Sigh

"It can't be a properly operating market. There has to be a nasty explanation, underhand dealing.."

Well why don't we just skip the "Evidence process" and levy fines ... right ?? :-)

What could POSSIBLY be wrong with that ??

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-20/intel-should-win-fight-over-1-16-billion-fine-court-aide-says

Intel XPoint over-selling criticism surges as Chipzilla hits back

P0l0nium

Lots of opinions but .....

... No data !

Now who'd a thought it? ... on an El Reg vox-pop !! :-)

VW Dieselgate engineer sings like a canary: Entire design team was in on it – not just a few bad apples, allegedly

P0l0nium

I wouldn't be surprised ...

... if somewhere there's an exchange of emails with a "regulator" that says:

- "Is it OK if we pass your stupid test like this ??"

- "Yeah, sure !! - Where's that lunch that you promised us ??

It's OK to fine someone for repeating a historical fact, says Russian Supreme Court

P0l0nium

Re: Or the Russians haven't updated their website yet

"faulty statement."

This is not a "faulty statement" ... Two parties can "jointly invade" Poland without "simultaneously invading" it.

And if the secret protocol of the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact isn't "close collaboration" I don;t know what is.

He missed the bit about the USSR shipping vast quantities of raw materials to Germany in order that they could build the bombs that fell on London.

The calm before the storm: AMD's Zen bears down on Intel CPUs

P0l0nium

Re: The problem for AMD

GlobalFoundries has the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi as a Sugar-Daddy, They just got paid $$Billions to haul away the trash that was IBM Microelectronics and they just got given Samsung's 14nm process for free !!!! Also ...they don't have to publish accounts.

How can they NOT have "the same sort of cash to burn as Intel" ???

Xeon Phight! Phight! Phight! Nvidia says Intel cheated benchmarks

P0l0nium

Re: Same old, same old.

Why would Intel do that when Anandtech already did it for them??... Very comprehensively ... Against all currently available ARM server platforms :-)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium-thunderx-48-arm-cores

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8357/exploring-the-low-end-and-micro-server-platforms

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9956/the-silver-lining-of-the-late-amd-opteron-a1100-arrival

Intel overhyping flash-killer XPoint? Shocked, we're totally shocked

P0l0nium

Its just Marketing... everybody does it... get over it!!!

In other news ... Large corporation produces marketing material that highlights the absolute best attributes if its new product..

It can address a single bit 1000X faster than NAND Flash .... get over it and stop bitching.

Anandtech don't seem to have a problem with "1000X faster".

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9470/intel-and-micron-announce-3d-xpoint-nonvolatile-memory-technology-1000x-higher-performance-endurance-than-nand

You've been churning out this same crap for months and we're all tired of it.The only question is "What motivates Chris Mellor"??

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/15/intel_xpoint_emperor_has_no_clothes/

By 2040, computers will need more electricity than the world can generate

P0l0nium

Re: Modern Malthusians

It wasn't Ronald McDonald ... it was Fritz Haber.

He figured out how to turn the atmosphere into food !!

Juno's 1,300-pic Jupiter vid

P0l0nium

Re: What a waste !!!

Well, to be fair : The Pluto pictures WERE a substantial part of "the point of the mission"... These are not. No one demanded pretty pics of the "Higgs Boson" in order to justify the $9B toroidal "hole in the ground".

So lets give funding to all the projects that can deliver pretty pictures ... huh ??? I'm sure that'll advance the frontiers of knowledge REALLY FAST !!!

Democracy sucks ..!! ("But everything else we tried was worse" - WS Churchill")

P0l0nium

Re: What a waste !!!

Wait for what ??? Someone to create a 200KB GIF animation that shows the same thing ??

NASA put a camera on this thing for reasons of "public outreach". The only way they can securely fund serious research is to run a "Punch and Judy" show FFS.

"Ooooh..... pretty pictures" ..... that's NOT THE POINT OF THIS MISSION !!!!

P0l0nium

What a waste !!!

2.5 Gigabytes of download and storage yields a view of Jupiter no better than you can get from your back lawn with a 6 inch reflector.

Sponsored by Cisco, Intel and Seagate ???

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