Prediction articles:
2020: A consumer electronics forecast for the year(s) ahead
AI Chips: What Will 2020 Bring?
CEO Outlook: 2020 Vision: 5G, China and AI are prominent, but big changes are coming everywhere
Top 10 Tech Failures From 2019 That Hint At 2020 Trends – Last year’s tech failures often turn into next year’s leading trends
Trends:
AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 4000 CPUs are here to take on Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake laptop chips
Top 9 challenges IT leaders will face in 2020: From skills shortages to privacy concerns
From the oil rig to the lake: a shift in perspective on data
In December 2020, the new IEC/EN 62368-1 will replace the existing safety standards EN 60950-1 and EN 60065-1
Use of technology money outside company IT department is the new normal
Tech to try:
12 Alternative Operating Systems You Can Use In 2020
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION: WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED IT
Research:
Universal memory coming? New type of non-volatile general purpose memory on research, some call it UltraRAM.
1,318 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD and Xilinx: A Match Made in Silicon Valley?
https://www.eetimes.com/amd-and-xilinx-a-match-made-in-silicon-valley/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/computing/it/the-problem-of-old-code-and-older-coders
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scramble For The White Space
https://semiengineering.com/scramble-for-the-white-space/
Chips area is never fully utilized, creating opportunities for on-chip monitoring and improved reliability.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reliability Over Time And Space
Challenges in the march toward known good systems.
https://semiengineering.com/reliability-over-time-and-space/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Demand Grows For Reducing PCB Defects
Electrical test alone will not discover problems in increasingly complex and dense boards.
https://semiengineering.com/demand-grows-for-reducing-pcb-defects/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wafer Shipments Head for Record Increases
https://www.eetimes.com/wafer-shipments-head-for-record-increases/
Worldwide wafer shipments, as with most global IC market segments, are up and heading for record increases over the next 18 months, according to the latest in a series of rosy forecasts by a semiconductor industry group.
SEMI also reported earlier in October that the EDA industry revenue jumped a healthy 12.6 percent during the second quarter, increasing nearly $312 million over the same period last year to $2.78 billion.
All of which underscores soaring demand for silicon and chip design expertise as AI technologies and machine learning fuel demand for CPU accelerators. That, along with everything but the kitchen sink becoming a smart device—although designs for an intelligent kitchen sink are probably on the drawing board somewhere.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11255-amd-n-uusin-on-tehokkain-peliprosessori-intelin-vastaus-tulossa
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11263-yksi-dpu-korvaa-125-prosessoria
Nvidia esitteli GTC-tapahtumassa toisen polven verkkoprosessorin, joka pääjohtaja Jensen Huagin mukaan voi korvata 125 perinteistä CPU-prosessoriydintä datakeskuksen palvelimella. DPU eli dataprosessori on aivan uudentyyppinen prosessori, joka perustuu Nvidian uuteen datakeskussuorittimien DOCA-arkkitehtuuriin.
Santa Claran tapahtumassa Jensen Huang kertoi yhtiön kolmevuotisesta DPU-roadmapista sekä esitteli ensimmäinen DPU-tuotteen. BlueField-2-piirien rinnalla tuotiin tarjolle kokonainen ohjelmistokehityspaketti sovellusten rakentamiseen DPU-pohjaisiin datakeskuslaitteisiin.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Et tajua sitä vielä, mutta data mullistaa kaiken
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11266-et-tajua-sita-viela-mutta-data-mullistaa-kaiken
EDA-yritys eli työkaluja mikropiirien ja järjestelmien suunnittelijoille kehittävä Cadence Design Systems aloitti tänään vuotuisen CadenceLIVE-tapahtumansa Euroopassa, virtuaalisesti tottakai. Pääjohtaja Lip-Bu Tan korosti avauspuheessaan, että alkamassa on datan vallankumous.
Tämä näkyy kaikissa suurissa teknologiatrendeissä: 5G, teollinen IoT, hyperluokan datakeskukset, robottiautot ja kaiken yhteen sitova tekoäly. – Tämä kaikki data pitää prosessoida, tallentaa, siirtää datakeskuksiin ja analysoida, Lip-Bu Tan sanoi.
Datasta on jo pitkään puhuttu ”uutena öljynä”, mutta totuus on, että vallankumous on vasta ensi metreillään. – 90 prosenttia kaikesta datasta on generoitu viimeisen kahden vuoden aikana. 80 prosenttia tästä datasta on strukturoimatonta eli esimerkiksi videota ja vain kaksi prosenttia datasta analysoidaan, Cadencen pääjohtaja muistutti.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Microsoft says backward compatible titles on the Xbox Series X and S will support Auto HDR, alongside better visuals and faster frame rates — We already knew that Xbox Series X and Series S users will be able to play thousands of previous-generation games at launch.
Microsoft Details Xbox Series X|S Backward Compatibility
Posted on October 13, 2020 by Paul Thurrott in Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X with 4 Comments
https://www.thurrott.com/games/xbox/xbox-series-x/242622/microsoft-details-xbox-series-xs-backward-compatibility
We already knew that Xbox Series X and Series S users will be able to play thousands of previous-generation games at launch. And that all of them will be better in some way than they were on earlier consoles. But today, Microsoft provided some additional details about this huge benefit of the Xbox ecosystem.
“We know how important it is to preserve and respect your gaming legacy,” Microsoft’s Peggy Lo writes in a new post to the Xbox Wire blog. “We believe your favorite games and franchises, your progression and achievements, your Xbox One gaming accessories and the friendships and communities you create through gaming should all move with you across generations. We also fundamentally believe that not only should you be able to play all of your games from the past without needing to purchase them again, but they should also look, feel and play better on the next generation of Xbox consoles.”
That last bit is the key. Original generation Xbox and Xbox 360 games that are part of the Xbox Backward Compatibility program look and/or play better on Xbox One today. And going forward, Backward Compatible titles from all three previous Xbox console generations will likewise be better on Xbox Series X|S.
According to Lo, Backward Compatible titles run “natively” on the new consoles and run at “the peak performance that they were originally designed for, with significantly higher performance than their original launch platform, resulting in higher and more steady framerates and rendering at their maximum resolution and visual quality.” And thanks to the Xbox Velocity Architecture—basically, very fast SSDs—they also experience significant reductions in load times.
That’s all expected. More interesting, perhaps, Xbox Series X|S will support a new feature called Auto HDR that brings the high dynamic range and visual quality of modern games to legacy standard dynamic range (SDR) titles that shipped before HDR was available.
“Auto HDR enhances the visual quality of an SDR game without changing the original artistic intent of the game,” Lo explains of the feature. “Auto HDR is implemented by the system so developers don’t have to do any work to take advantage of this feature. Also, since Auto HDR is enabled by the console’s hardware, there is absolutely no performance cost to the CPU, GPU or memory and there is no additional latency added ensuring you receive the ultimate gaming experience.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teknostressi on yleistä ja sillä on vakavia haittavaikutuksia. Tietojärjestelmätieteen apulaisprofessori Markus Salo kuitenkin tietää, että käyttäjät voivat vaikuttaa omaan teknostressiinsä.
Lue lisää JYUnity-lehdestä: https://jyunity.fi/ajattelijat/teknostressi/
Technostress is common and can have severe consequences. “Users can, however, influence their own technostress”, tells Associate Professor of Information Systems Markus Salo.
Read more at JYUnity-magazine: https://jyunity.fi/en/thinkers/technostress/
#JYUnique
Tomi Engdahl says:
Visual Studio Code 1.50 goes hard on extensions support, but tackling add-on bloat is becoming more onerous
Also new: WebView sidebars, rich JavaScript debugging, accessible settings
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/13/visual_studio_code_1_50/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scramble For The White Space
Chips area is never fully utilized, creating opportunities for on-chip monitoring and improved reliability.
https://semiengineering.com/scramble-for-the-white-space/
Chipmakers are pushing to utilize more of the unused portion of a design for different functions, reducing margin in the rest of the chip to more clearly define that white space.
White space typically is used to relieve back-end routing congestion before all of the silicon area is used up. But a significant amount of space still remain unused. That provides an opportunity for inserting monitoring, inspection, and other features that will add value without raising the die size.
“Advanced nodes end up somewhere in the vicinity of 60% to 70% [utilization],” said Raanan Gewirtzman, chief business officer at proteanTecs. “You don’t go beyond that in advanced chips because of the routing challenges.”
Monitoring circuits, inspection features, and other additions can be quite small if designed with die size in mind. With white space distributed broadly around the logic, there are many opportunities for insertion. But any added circuits would need to avoid further stressing the interconnects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opinion
Craig Addison
China’s semiconductor quest is likely to fail, leaving rapprochement with US the only way out
https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3105156/chinas-semiconductor-quest-likely-fail-leaving-rapprochement-us-only-way-out
China does not have a good track record when it comes to developing its own chip industry, even with the help of foreign technology partners
Country’s chip makers must invent new ways to design and make semiconductors of equal or better performance than products from TSMC, Samsung and Intel
One of the biggest battles in the ongoing US China tech war is over semiconductors – the enabling technology behind everything from smartphones to earth-orbiting satellites.
However, efforts by the US and China to satisfy their respective national security concerns will likely end in failure.
China must reduce its near-total dependency on American chip tech, but it does not have a good track record when it comes to developing its own chip industry – even with the help of foreign technology partners.
while SMIC is considered China’s national chip champion today, it is entirely dependent on foreign technology
For China, fully decoupling from US semiconductor technology will require a herculean effort over many years, if not decades, but it is already off to a shaky start. Thousands of Chinese companies – most with zero experience in the technology – have jumped on the chip bandwagon in recent months, eager to tap government funding or hoping to get rich from an IPO on the new STAR market.
Eventually this bubble will burst and the serious players can begin the real work. But they must invent new ways to design and manufacture semiconductors of equal or better performance to the best circuits coming out of overseas players such as TSMC, Intel and Samsung.
China’s biggest challenge won’t be money – it will be finding qualified people. Poaching a few hundred semiconductor engineers from Taiwan might be enough to ramp up a new chip fab in China, but that is far short of what will be required to completely rebuild a semiconductor ecosystem.
Finding “a handful of geniuses” – an approach China has used in past national programs – probably will not work either. A completely new mindset may be required to come up with an alternative to the existing silicon-based chipmaking process. Materials like graphene and gallium nitride are often cited as potential replacements for silicon.
For its part, the US needs to bring semiconductor production back home but even with rare bipartisan support, the dysfunctional federal government could be a major hindrance. There is also the question of who could lead a revival in US wafer fabs.
Intel, for decades the US national chip champion, has now fallen behind TSMC as the global chip technology leader – a major wake up call that in part prompted the bipartisan call for chip funding.
In May, TSMC agreed to build a new wafer fab in the US state of Arizona, supported by federal and state subsidies. While that is a significant first step, it will not be producing wafers in volume any time soon
There is a cheaper alternative for the US – but it is also risky. That is, take steps to “secure” supply from TSMC’s wafer fabs in Taiwan, which already serve the needs of the major “fabless” US companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia and AMD, as well as consumer product giants like Apple.
But efforts to bring Taiwan closer into the US orbit are complicated by China’s territorial claims on the island. Miscalculations on either side could even lead to a war.
If China overcomes the odds and succeeds in its quest for chip self-sufficiency, it will shift the global balance of power. If it fails, which is the more likely outcome, there is only one alternative: rapprochement with the US.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Xbox Series X preview: focus on basics that matter like being quiet and cool, high frame rates, faster load times, accessory support, and backward compatibility
Xbox Series X preview: the next gen feels like a PC
A cool, quiet, and PC-like console
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21515790/xbox-series-x-preview-hardware-games-performance?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
I haven’t been using my Xbox One as much recently, as it just feels outdated. As someone who plays primarily on PC, the lower frame rates and input lag on current-generation consoles are enough to put me off playing a lot of games on an Xbox One or PS4. That was until I started playing games on the Xbox Series X three weeks ago.
Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox comes the closest I’ve ever witnessed to re-creating the superior PC experience of playing games, thanks to SSD storage, a far more powerful CPU, 120Hz support, and impressive backward compatibility features that improve existing games. This is all inside a $499 box that’s quieter and far easier to use and maintain than the $3,000 gaming PC I built a few weeks ago.
There’s a reason the Xbox Series X looks like a PC — it’s because it often feels like one.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Come on, Amazon: If you’re going to copy open-source code for a new product, at least credit the creator
Developer wishes cloud giant gave more thought to not stepping on toes
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/16/aws_headless_recorder/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
On Thursday, Amazon Web Services launched CloudWatch Synthetics Recorder, a Chrome browser extension for recording browser interactions that it copied from the Headless Recorder project created by developer Tim Nolet.
It broke no law in doing so – the software is published under the permissive Apache License v2 – and developers expect such open-source projects will be copied forked. But Amazon’s move didn’t win any fans for failing to publicly acknowledge the code’s creator.
“Amazon should have opened a PR [pull request] and proposed ‘let’s add this feature to your code. Or they could have simply kept their fork open source,” he said.
“In the least, they could have mentioned that their work was based on my work. I do this in the README.md of the project itself where I acknowledge the creators of an old project by segment.io that I used as inspiration.”
This is not the first time AWS has taken the work of open source developers and turned it into an AWS product. Last year, it launched Open Distro for Elasticsearch, to the dismay of Elasticsearch
And earlier that year it released DocumentDB, based on an outdated version of the open source MongoDB code.
Many popular open source licenses allow this, but because AWS brings billions in infrastructure assets into the competition, smaller companies trying to commercialize open source projects find the challenge difficult to deal with.
Such behavior – taking without giving back, or at least giving thanks – has been a concern for the past few years and has led to experiments with “cloud protection licenses” designed to deter cloud providers from co-opting public software projects. Just last month, database maker TimeScale adopted a new source-available license called the Timescale License (TSL) as a defense against AWS and its peers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lenovo begins selling OEM Ubuntu PCs to the general public
It’s getting easier to find OEM-installed and -supported Linux computers.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/lenovo-launches-new-oem-linux-thinkpad-and-thinkstation-pcs/
Beginning today, Lenovo is offering a greatly expanded selection of OEM Linux PCs to the general public. Earlier this year, Lenovo began offering Fedora Linux pre-installed on laptop systems including Thinkpad P1 Gen 2, Thinkpad P53, and Thinkpad X1 Gen 8. Today’s announcement makes Ubuntu Linux available on a considerably broader swath of both desktop and laptop PCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTuber RND_ASH took things to the next level by running Doom on his Android head unit with the steering wheel and pedals being used for control.
Running Doom on an Android Stereo Head Unit with Steering Wheel and Pedal Controls
https://www.hackster.io/news/running-doom-on-an-android-stereo-head-unit-with-steering-wheel-and-pedal-controls-45a388db2781
RND_ASH took things to the next level by running Doom on his Android head unit with the steering wheel and pedals being used for control.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Increase In Analog Problems
https://semiengineering.com/increase-in-analog-problems/
New data suggests that more chips are being forced to respin due to analog issues.
Analog and mixed signal design has always been tough, but a resent survey suggests that the industry has seen significantly increased failures in the past year because the analog circuitry within an ASIC was out of tolerance.
What is causing this spike in failures? Is it just a glitch in the data, or are these problems real? The answer is complicated, and to a large extent it depends heavily on analog tuning.
“Analog tuning means you need to be very clear about the performance of the analog circuit, given the context of the entire system, that you need to achieve in silicon,” says Sathish Balasubramian, senior product manager for AMS Verification at Mentor, a Siemens Business. “And that needs to be pretty close to what you get from silicon.”
“One way to track the progress of analog design methodology is the percent of field failures due to analog elements of a design compared to other elements,” says Art Schaldenbrand, senior product manager at Cadence. “At a recent VLSI Test Symposium, it was reported that 95% of field failures are due to the analog elements of the design. Analog is difficult. The challenge of analog design is getting harder, and the impact of analog elements on the design are becoming more intractable. Plus, there are increasing pressures on analog designers. It takes more time to scale down analog power than it does to scale down digital power. This is because we have to re-architect what we’re doing in analog to achieve that.”
Designs of all sizes and technology nodes are experiencing increasing problems with analog. “ASICs are getting more complex, driven by two main areas,” says Mentor’s Balasubramian. “One is going to be the migration to advanced nodes. But the biggest driver is that the number of complex mixed signal designs is increasing. This is mainly due to companies trying to optimize the area footprint to include analog within the same technology node. Everyone is trying to migrate to a single substrate, or a single technology node. That by itself poses a lot of challenges. When teams need to get exposure to analog design, or get exposed to some of the effects of advanced nodes — such as lower threshold, such as being really finicky in terms of parasitics — they can’t do a schematic simulation and say everything is working.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel agrees to sell its NAND business to SK Hynix for $9 billion
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/19/intel-agrees-to-sell-its-nand-business-to-sk-hynix-for-9-billion/?tpcc=ECFB2020
SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest chip makers, announced today it will pay $9 billion for Intel’s flash memory business. Intel said it will use proceeds from the deal to focus on artificial intelligence, 5G and edge computing.
The Wall Street Journal first reported earlier this week that the two companies were nearing an agreement, which will turn SK Hynix into one of the world’s largest NAND memory makers, second only to Samsung Electronics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/126000117413375/posts/3954842687862413/
// DevOps roadmap. Large image https://roadmap.sh/devops?Twitter=nixCraft
Tomi Engdahl says:
After outcry, Microsoft presses pause on unsolicited Windows 10 web app installs
The company says part of it was a bug
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/19/21524006/microsoft-pause-unsolicited-pwa-office-app-windows-10
On Saturday, I pointed out how Microsoft force-restarting Windows 10 computers to install unwanted web apps was the latest proof you don’t own your own Windows PC. Today, the company says it was at least partly a mistake — and will be pausing the “migration” that brought web apps to your Start Menu this way.
Originally, Microsoft tells The Verge, the idea was that any website you pinned to the Start Menu would launch in Microsoft Edge, and it simply intended to turn those shortcuts into more visible tiles now. But — in what Microsoft is calling a bug — the change also turned its existing Microsoft Office web shortcuts into PWA web apps as well. That’s something you can normally do from inside the Edge browser, but not something that would happen by itself.
Microsoft just force restarted my Windows PC again to install more unwanted apps
The latest proof you don’t own your Windows 10 computer
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520315/microsoft-install-office-pwa-web-app-without-permission-update-word-powerpoint-excel
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.eetimes.com/tsmc-sees-hpc-as-next-inflection-point/
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) expects the main driver of its growth in the next several years to be high-performance computing (HPC), overtaking its current smartphone business.
The world’s biggest chip foundry said its technology leadership during the third quarter this year helped it capture 5G and HPC orders that will increase company growth by about 30% in 2020, leading overall gains in the semiconductor industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Intel Losing its Memory and (Manufacturing) Mind?
Intel’s sale of its NAND memory to Hynix and recent comments about leaving the chip manufacturing space raise national concerns.
https://www.designnews.com/electronics/intel-losing-its-memory-and-manufacturing-mind?ADTRK=InformaMarkets&elq_mid=14744&elq_cid=876648
Intel has announced plans to sell its NAND memory business to Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world’s 3rd-largest semiconductor company. By itself, this is disturbing news as Intel is the only major US-owned designer that still manufactures semiconductor technology domestically. This is important to maintain global competitiveness and security.
But earlier this year, Intel floated the idea of leaving the leading-edge chip manufacturing space as a whole. This would leave the company – at least for leading-edge design and production – as merely another fabless semiconductor vendor.
Most semiconductor companies are fabless. There is nothing wrong with that approach to business as it deals with the extreme complexity of designing chips. Without an intellectual property (IP) designed focused fabless approach, semiconductor technology is not the economic growth engine that it is today. But we need to maintain fabs in the US. Unfortunately, Intel has recently had so much trouble with the manufacturing of the next generation of leading-edge chips that it contemplated leaving the fab space.
For the last 50 years, Intel has both designed leading-edge semiconductor devices and manufactured them with in-house production. The company had planned to continue that method until it began having major problems with, first the 10nanometer process node and, more critically, the 7nm node. Currently, Intel is making chips at 10nm even though that technology was scheduled for release in 2017 or 3 years ago. Its production yields on the next iteration of chips at 7m have been low
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opinion: How did Intel lose its Silicon Valley crown?
Published: Oct. 17, 2020 at 9:18 a.m. ET
By Therese Poletti
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-did-intel-lose-its-silicon-valley-crown-2020-10-16?tesla=y
Chip giant has fallen behind AMD in engineering process and Nvidia in market cap as troubling decade takes its toll
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ledipioneeri Cree luopui ledeistä
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11303-ledipioneeri-cree-luopui-ledeista
Cree tunnetaan laajalti laadukkaista ledikomponenteistaan erityisesti teollisuudessa. Yllättävässä, mutta pitkään valmistellussa liikkeessä yhtiö myy koko lediliiketoimintansa SMART Global Holdingsille. Jatkossa Cree keskittyy piikarbidi- ja galliumnitridi-pohjaisiin erikoispuolijohteisiin.
Käänne on tapahtunut nopeasti. Vielä kaksi vuotta sitten Cree halusi keskittyä nimenomaan ledeihin. RF- ja tehokomponenttien toiminta irrotettiin uuteen Wolfspeed-yritykseen ja tavoite oli myydä Wolfspeed Infineonille vuoden 2017 lopulla.
Yhdysvaltain kauppaviranomaiset kuitenkin estivät kaupan, mikä sai uuden toimitusjohtajan Cregg Lowen kääntämään kelkkansa täysin. Yhtiö ilmoitti massiivisista panostuksista piikarbidi- ja galliumnitridi-pohjaisiin prosesseihin ja samalla se osti Infineonin RF- ja tehopiirien toiminnot 345 miljoonalla dollarilla.
Kaupan hintalappu on 300 miljoonaa dollaria. Kauppa tarvitsee taas viranomaisten hyväksynnän.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cree, Inc. to sell LED Business to SMART Global Holdings, Inc. for up to $300 Million
https://www.cree.com/news-events/news/article/smart-global-holdings-to-acquire-cree-led-business
Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) today announced that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its LED Products business unit (“Cree LED”) to SMART Global Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: SGH) for up to $300 million, including fixed upfront and deferred payments and contingent consideration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Intel reports Q3 revenue of $18.3B, down 4% YoY, vs $18.24B est., and Data Center Group revenue of $5.9B, down 7% YoY; stock is down 10%+ after hours — – Intel beat estimates overall as work from home continued because of the coronavirus pandemic. — The company’s data center unit derives revenue …
Intel drops on weak results for its data center group
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/21/intel-intc-earnings-q3-2020.html
Intel beat estimates overall as work from home continued because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company’s data center unit derives revenue from enterprises and government customers that pulled back during the quarter.
Intel shares fell as much as 10% in extended trading on Thursday after the company reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that were stronger than analysts had expected but showed new weakness in its data center business.
Here’s how the company did:
Earnings: $1.11 per share, adjusted, vs. $1.11 per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
Revenue: $18.33 billion, vs. $18.25 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
Overall, Intel’s revenue in the quarter, which ended Sept. 26, declined 4% on an annualized basis, according to a statement. In the prior quarter revenue had increased 20%.
Intel’s Data Center Group came up with $5.91 billion in revenue, down 7% and less than the FactSet consensus estimate of $6.21 billion. Intel said revenue from enterprises and governments went down 47% after two quarters of growth above 30% because of the coronavirus pandemic, but cloud revenue in the quarter grew 15%. Average selling price across the division was 15% lower than in the year-ago quarter.
Intel’s largest business, the Client Computing Group that sells PC chips, produced $9.85 billion in revenue, up 1% year over year and above the $9.09 billion consensus among analysts polled by FactSet. Earlier this month technology research company Gartner estimated that PC shipments grew 3.6% in the third quarter, as people kept buying machines to work and study from home.
Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group had $1.15 billion in revenue, down about 11% and lower that the $1.50 billion consensus. On Tuesday South Korean memory maker SK hynix said it would buy part of that division, Intel’s NAND memory and storage business, for $9 billion.
Intel’s operating margin narrowed to 27.6% from 33.6% in the year-ago quarter. Operating margin for the Data Center Group reached 32%, down from 49%.
In July executives said Intel was evaluating how it might begin relying on other companies to manufacture its chips, and on Thursday CEO Bob Swan said Intel should be able to describe its decision in January.
“I would say we feel very confident in the ability of us being able to port to TSMC,” Swan said, referring to the Taiwanese manufacturer. He said Intel is “increasingly confident” that, if it were to become more reliant on TSMC, it would then be able to bring manufacturing back.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hyperscale Data Center Construction Triples
https://www.eetimes.com/hyperscale-data-center-construction-triples/
The number of really big data centers, otherwise known as “hyperscale,” reached a milestone at the end of September.
Synergy Research Group reports there are now 504 hyperscale data centers scattered across the globe grinding away on workloads ranging from delivering your weekend streaming video to fulfilling that online book order you placed (hopefully for mine….).
The total number of hyperscale providers has tripled since the beginning of 2013 as online and other cloud-based vendors vacuum up unprecedented amounts of data, much of it unstructured from social media feeds and online shopping.
While the U.S. still accounts for nearly 40 percent of cloud, hosted, co-located and on-premise data centers, Synergy reported last week that the Asia-Pacific and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) regions registered the highest growth rates during the third quarter of 2020.
Australia, China, Germany Japan and the U.K. together accounted for nearly one-third of total hyperscale data center growth, the market analyst reported.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It-investoinnit jatkuvat poikkeustilassakin, ja GreenLake vauhdittaa hybridipilvien rakentamista
26.10.2020 07:00
https://www.tivi.fi/kumppanisisaltoa/telia/tv/edb5d544-8d80-4f24-be2b-eda1c4b72cd0
Suurella osalla yrityksiä on sovelluksia ja työkuormia, joita on regulaation, suorituskyvyn tai liiketoiminnan jatkuvuuden turvaamiseksi välttämätöntä ajaa paikallisessa datacenterissä. Yhä harvempi on halukas investoimaan rahaa omiin laitteisiin tai valmis tinkimään pilvimäisestä käyttökokemuksesta. Löytyykö HPE GreenLakesta ratkaisu, joka tuo pilvimaailman ja paikallisen datacenterin edut ovat ikään kuin samassa paketissa?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can We Replace YAML With an Easier Markup Language?
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/10/25/1949258/can-we-replace-yaml-with-an-easier-markup-language?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
On his personal blog, Red Hat’s Chris Short (also a CNCF Cloud Native Ambassador) told his readers that “We kinda went down a rabbit hole the other day when I suggested folks check out yq. (“The aim of the project is to be the jq or sed of yaml files.”)
“First, there’s nothing wrong with this project. I like it, I find the tool useful, and that’s that. But the great debate started over our lord and savior, YAML.”
Fear and Loathing in YAML
https://chrisshort.net/fear-and-loathing-in-yaml/
It irked me that the YAML creators laid out goal #1 as “YAML is easily readable by humans.” It is human-readable because you see the human-readable words in the scalars and structures, but there was something off-putting about YAML. It was a markup language claiming not to be a markup language. I held the firm belief that markup languages are supposed to make things simpler for humans, not harder (XML is the antithesis of markup languages, in my opinion).
Here I was, relatively fresh to the DevOps game, learning some core developer concepts to understand a markup language, the crux of which was two Achilles heels. I also didn’t like how big, bulky, and cumbersome Puppet was to work with. But, here I was thrust headfirst into this world. Might as well make the best of it. I’ve since embraced YAML, but it doesn’t mean I’m writing my notes in YAML format.
Close to ten years later, I see YAML in the same somewhat offputting light. It’s not friendly to new people in the same sense git isn’t. Kubernetes has almost abused YAML to the point that it has become a punchline. And we’ve stuck ourselves with it for a long time to come too. If Kubernetes is the platform of the future, that means we’ll be using a spec written in 2009 well into the 2030s (and likely beyond).
I hope that a drop in replacement is possible. The fact that we need tools like yq does show that there is some work to be done when it comes to wrangling the YAML beast at scale. In 2009, when the latest version of the YAML spec was written, no one thought of applying pod security policies to massive Kubernetes deployments spread out across data centers the world over. Something better will come along and I hope adopting it isn’t as painful as adopting YAML is.
Remember, comparing things relatively to like something (YAML vs. XML or YAML vs. JSON) completely throws out the beginner’s journey. Start from the newb and go forward from there. YAML doesn’t. Git doesn’t. Incrementally, YAML is better than XML but, it sucks compared to something like HTML or Markdown (which I can teach to execs and children alike). Yes, balancing machine and human readability is hard. The compromises suck, but, at some point, there’s enough compute to run a process to take in something 100% human-readable and make it 100% machine-readable. In the same sense that compute has become so readily available that we gzip and encrypt almost all HTTP traffic today, I hope we can do the same with systems configuration languages. Move the complexity from the human to code. Computers are better at remembering things and syntax-semantics than humans could ever hope to be.
There’s always a happy medium between human and machine readability. However, I’d much rather see a human first, 80-20 approach here where entry-level skills can solve 80% of the markup language’s use cases. That’s the true nirvana, in my opinion. There will always be complexity and a need to understand the tool you’re using. But, YAML gives us an example that there can and should be better things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds hails ‘historic’ Linux 5.10 for ditching defunct addressing artefact
Memory-handling oddity from the age of the 286 has been around since ‘pretty much the original release of Linux’
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/25/linux_5_10_rc1/
Linus Torvalds has given the world the first release candidate of version 5.10 of the Linux kernel and called out what he’s labelled an historic change – the removal of an addressing tool that appears to have been around for nearly 30 years, sparked a nasty bug a decade ago but has since been made redundant by chipmakers.
That scheme is called set_fs() and allows the Linux kernel to override address spaces, which was a handy thing to do with Intel’s 286 and 386 CPUs.
As Torvalds explained in his weekly kernel update, set_fs() controls “whether a userspace copy actually goes to user space or kernel space”. That matters because, as was detailed in 2010 in CVE-2010-4258, it could be used to “overwrite arbitrary kernel memory locations, and gain privileges”.
The bug was fixed, again way back in 2010, and over time chip-designers have moved on to improved memory management techniques. Torvalds wrote that this sort of memory space override has been banished from the x86, powerpc, s390 and RISC-V architectures.
But set_fs(), which Torvalds says “goes back to pretty much the original release of Linux”, has persisted.
Big changes in this version of the kernel include end of support for PowerPC 601 CPUs, support for Nvidia’s Orin SOCs intended for use in self-driving cars and robots
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ilmainen tekoälyeditori nopeuttaa koodaamista 11 eri kielellä
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11309-ilmainen-tekoalyeditori-nopeuttaa-koodaamista-11-eri-kielella
Kite on syväoppimiseen perustuva koodieditori, joka viime vuonna julkistettiin Python-koodaamiseen. Työkalu ehdottaa koodin täyttöä kirjoituksen aikana, mikä säästää merkittävästi koodaukseen kuluvaa aikaa. Nyt Kite tukee jo yhtätoista eri kieltä.
Aiemmin tänä vuonna Kiteen lisättiin tuki Javascriptille. Uusin laajennus kattaa kielet C, C++, Objective C, Scala, Go, Typescript, HTML, CSS, C#, Kotlin ja Java
Kite-tiimin kehittäjien mukaan työkalu ”kirjoittaa” aktiivikäyttäjille joka päivä 175 sanaa koodia. Koska työkalu tulee koko ajan älykkäämmäksi, tämä koodin määrä kasvaa.
Kite toimii kaikissa suosituimmissa ympäristöissä, kuten VS Code, Jetbrain, Android Studio ja monet muut. Työkalu on koodaajalle ilmainen. Yrityksille tarjotaan myös palvelimella pyörivää Kiteä
https://www.kite.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
turning points
Bloomberg New Economy: Semiconductors Are China’s Choke Point
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-10-24/bloomberg-new-economy-semiconductors-are-china-s-choke-point
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your IT department should behave like a jellyfish, says Gartner
Analyst firm asserts coordinated action without central brain is the way to cope with turmoil
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/27/gartner_jellyfish/
IT organisations that want to thrive in plague-time need to model themselves on jellyfish, says analyst firm Gartner.
The metaphor was offered today in the keynote of the virtual Asia-Pacific Gartner Symposium, which thanks to a certain virus will this year precede the event’s EMEA incarnation.
Speakers outlined their belief that the COVID-19 pandemic, social upheaval and climate change have collectively delivered a chaotic and unpredictable environment in which business must become “composable”.
Those who have lived through “agility” may well have found the presentation familiar: IT decision-makers were urged to make their infrastructure modular, get good at orchestration so that different components can operate in harmony as and when required, and to do that while also allowing different parts of the organisation to work autonomously.
Jellyfish were then introduced to the conversation as an example of composability. While such creatures lack a brain, analysts suggested that they’re impressive because the beasts’ tentacles can act independently or demand assistance from other tentacles. The lack of a central brain isn’t a problem, the analysts argued, so long as whatever is up top can co-ordinate action and send the right signals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When User Experience Means Life or Death
Information architect Merryl Gross designs UX that averts calamities
https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/when-user-experience-means-life-or-death
“Basically [it’s] applying human psychology to the design of made objects,” says Gross. “Different fields have their own names for this,” Gross notes. “When it’s a control panel in an airplane cockpit, we call it human-factors engineering. When it’s software, we call it usability and user experience (UX).”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Print These Electronic Circuits Directly Onto Skin
Room-temperature sintering enables skin sensors for vital signs
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/skin-circuits
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/24/flash-is-dead-but-its-culture-should-live-on/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Improving 2020 … and a Brighter 2021
https://blog.semi.org/business-markets/improving-2020-and-a-brighter-2021
Tomi Engdahl says:
Moving to a cloud, not a storm
Avoiding common problems when moving to the cloud.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/move-to-a-cloud-not-a-storm
In my previous blog post on cloud security, I said you should concentrate on controlling data access, rather than worrying about the underlying security of the public cloud. In this blog post, I’ll outline how you can avoid some common pitfalls, and why you should simplify your permissions model to get the most out of the cloud. Moving to the cloud can be a complex process, and shouldn’t be made more complex than necessary.
Why cloud first is not a security problem
Using the cloud securely should be your primary concern – not the underlying security of the public cloud.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/why-cloud-first-is-not-a-security-problem
Tomi Engdahl says:
Xilinx Shares Soar As AMD Clinches Buyout In $35BN All-Stock Megadeal
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/xilinx-shares-soar-amd-clinches-buyout-35bn-all-stock-deal
A week ago, when we first heard the news about late-stage talks between California-based chipmakers AMD and Xilinx, headlines touted a $30 billion megadeal, the latest in a massive wave of consolidation across the semiconductor industry that’s occuring amid unprecedented trade disruption caused by President Trump’s campaign against Huawei, a major customer for the world’s largest chipmakers, including American giants like Qualcomm.
Investors responded positively when the $30 billion pricetag first hit, but now that we have some more clarity on the deal, Bloomberg is reporting that AMD has agreed to a pricetag of $35 billion all in stock, with no debt added to the combined company’s balance sheet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft, World’s Third-Largest Tech Firm, Posts $14 Billion Profit, Shattering Expectations As Pandemic Fuels Cloud Sales
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/10/27/microsoft-worlds-third-largest-tech-firm-earnings-14-billion-profit-third-quarter/?utm_campaign=forbes&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=Gordie/#676f7264696
Two days before a slew of big tech firms are slated to report earnings, Microsoft–the world’s third-largest technology company by market cap–posted quarterly results Tuesday after the market close that shattered Wall Street expectations thanks to a surge in sales of its cloud services–a sign that the pandemic continues to be a boon for tech, while other industries continue to struggle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anticipating audit questions before they are asked—and preparing compelling answers to them—is a great opportunity for CIOs to reinforce their standing as leaders.
Remote Work Complicates Tech Audits. Here’s How CIOs Can Reduce The Headaches.
http://on.forbes.com/6183GCPB1
The auditors will soon be buzzing around again, this year with a laser focus on technology controls. Remote work creatively enabled business continuity, but it has also fueled IT risk.
Even in an ordinary year, boards demand clear, concise, and credible answers from IT executives about external auditors’ concerns. In this extraordinary year, there will be far more questions and likely much tougher ones. Anticipating audit questions before they are asked—and preparing compelling answers to them—is a great opportunity for CIOs to reinforce their standing as leaders.
But the pandemic makes this a significant challenge. With remote work now both norm and necessity, companies have been scrambling to redesign workflows and procedures just to stay in business. The same technologies that enable such agility will face intense scrutiny when it comes to their security, stability and sustainability. Inadequate or ineffective IT controls may result in additional costly audit testing or, worse, an undesirable opinion. No board wants to be in that position.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Confirms Rumored Acquisition of Xilinx
https://www.eetimes.com/amd-confirms-rumored-acquisition-of-xilinx/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Need to build a Big Data app but can’t be bothered to learn Python or Scala? Good news: .NET for Apache Spark is here
Stay safe and warm in your C# cocoon
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/28/dotnet_apache_spark/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Node.js 15: What’s new, what’s coming, and keeping pace with Deno. ‘We’re not going to reinvent’ module ecosystem
Michael Dawson, chair of Node.js Technical Steering Committee, talks to The Reg
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/28/nodejs_15_michael_dawson/
Tomi Engdahl says:
PyGame Celebrates 20 Years By Releasing PyGame 2.0
https://hackaday.com/2020/10/28/pygame-celebrates-20-years-by-releasing-pygame-2-0/
Python is an absolutely fantastic language for tossing bits of data around and gluing different software components together. But eventually you may find yourself looking to make a program with an output a bit more advanced than the print() statement. Once you’ve crossed into the land of graphical Python programming, you’ll quickly find that the PyGame library is often recommended as a great way to start pushing pixels even if you’re not strictly making a game.
Today, the project is celebrating an incredible milestone: 20 years of helping Python developers turn their ideas into reality. Started by [Pete Shinners] in 2000 as a way to interface with Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), the project was quickly picked up by the community and morphed into a portable 2D/3D graphics library that lets developers deploy their code on everything from Android phones to desktop computers.
https://www.pygame.org/news
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2020/10/28/ergonomisempi-vaihtoehto-perushiirelle/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Awfice – the world smallest office suite
https://github.com/zserge/awfice
Tomi Engdahl says:
Different Requirements For Hyperscale Computing Across Vertical Application Domains
https://semiengineering.com/different-requirements-for-hyperscale-computing-across-vertical-application-domains/
Industrial process, consumer devices, and aerospace/defense are all generating massive amounts of data every day, where data is stored and processed is changing.