What A Week
I have actually been spending a lot of time on a plumbing problem that is turning into the project from hell. There are two shut off valves on the line I’m trying to fix, and both of them gave up the ghost. They not only don’t shut off the water, they leak. As they are in 50-year-old galvanized piping, I am avoiding any major applications of torque, as that will probably just break something else.
Hopefully I will be able to fix the primary problem tomorrow, and then can consider how to fix the shut off valve problem.
Along with my ‘wrenching’ problems, I’ve been making some software changes that haven’t been working. I use Filezilla in Linux for uploading, so I decided to finally dump the ancient FTP program I have used since Win95 and use the Filezilla version for Windows to maintain cross platform compatibility. I fought with it for hours, reading FAQs and Help pages before it finally occurred to me that I had been using the wrong Port Number. I have used Port 21 for FTP for so long, I had been automatically typing it in, when I really needed Port 22 for the SSH/SFTP connection.
At some point I will probably convert this place to a secure connection via HTTPS. I need a certificate for that, and the choice of vendors is ripe with con artists. I’m not going to sell anything, so I don’t need 2048-bit encryption, but it will annoy the contractors if they can’t see clear text going to and from this place. They are going to have to read it to find out what’s going on.
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Hey guys, have you seen this? BeagleBoard BeagleBone Black. Yet another tiny embeddable system similar to the Raspberry Pi. I’d link to a Reg comparison of the two, but then this comment would get dropped into the spam bucket, you can Google it yourself. Suffice it to say both boards have their own approach to the problem of a tiny embeddable computer system, and which one works best for you depends on whether you like JavaScript or Python better, and whether the stackable feature of the Beagleboards is useful for you…
I don’t know why you would think that your comment would get tagged as spam, The Reg isn’t really that bad, and it takes more than ten links for moderation to kick in.
It looks interesting, and I may pick one up after I have played with the PI for a bit.
Yeah, those BeagleBoard products are interesting, especially that little BBB. 🙂
Well… I think AMD have now seriously lost the plot!!
The new 9000 series CPU’s have been announced and will ship soon. One of my regular suppliers have them up on their website.
AMD FX 9590 8 Core Black Edition – AM3+ (ADVFD9590FHHKWOF)
Frequency: 4.7GHz
Turbo Core: up to 5.0 GHz
Cache: 16MB
Socket: AM3+
Architecture: 32nm
TDP: 220W
Does not include FAN. Watercooler required.
PRICE: AU$1,100.00!!
There are a few problems with that. THE PRICE!! The TDP! And the fact that you MUST buy an expensive watercooler for it (or it WILL meltdown)! The other problem is, they are still using the aging 970/990FX chipset (no support for USB 3.0, no support for PCI-E 3, and other issues). The CPU still under-performs in multithreaded app’s, unlike the rival Intel Core i7 3970X Extreme which they are apparently pricing this against! Granted that the i7 only clock’s to 4GHz vs 5Ghz in turbo mode, and the AMD has 8 vs 6 cores (though the i7 has 12 threads), given the TDP, I doubt the AMD will be able to overclock without some very serious cooling, and I don’t mean water! That i7 has been overclocked on water to a stable 5GHz.
And then, to make things even more confusing, the other CPU lunched:
AMD FX 9370 8 Core Black Edition – AM3+ (ADVFD9370FHHKWOF)
Frequency: 4.4GHz
Turbo Core: up to 4.7 GHz
Cache: 16MB
Socket: AM3+
Architecture: 32nm
TDP: 220W
Does not include FAN. Watercooler required.
The ONLY difference is a slightly lower clock speed (-300MHz)! Even the TDP is the same. But there is a BIG difference in price: AU$440.00!
I guarantee that they are in fact the same CPU, but the best of the fab’s are handpicked and overclocked to become the 9590. That does NOT justify a price hike of $660!
The other problem the AMD CPU’s have is that their memory manager is pretty poor compared to Intel’s. Intel have a quad-channel architecture, whilst AMD are still duel-channel. Intel support a far broader range of RAM manufacturer’s products, compared to a narrow range for AMD. And in systems I’ve tested with the Bulldozer architecture, you have to be damned lucky to get 4 High-freq DDR3 sticks to work in a system (usually only two will work well above 1600 MHz), though that does depend somewhat on the motherboard also. Still, it is a problem.
Looks like desperation and greed have hit AMD. I hate to think what their next family of Radeon graphics cards will sell for. There is a rumor that they want a reason to justify getting out of the desktop market. I think this will do it.
They are crazy. It’s way too soon for them to try to compete with Intel on price! Especially if the rumors of the next 10,000 series chipset are true.
Oh, I should also add, when running in Turbo mode @ 5GHz, only 4 cores/4 threads are available, and half the cache!
Insane.
They sound like something only a gamer would even consider, like a limited edition model, not a serious CPU.
I prefer things like my APU – simpler and cheaper, and it runs faster than my DSL connection, so what more do I need? I can watch movies on DVD, so the sucker does what I want, even those things I rarely want.
Yes, you are probably correct, they are doing the same thing that DRAM makers have done for years, rated their chips based on how fast they go until they fail, when they all come out of the same oven as part of the same disks.
No gamer that has that kind of money would buy the AMD at that price. None of the Motherboards are even close to the Intel based ones at the high-end for a start.
The current top AMD CPU, AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core, whilst it’s only clocked at 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo), it had amuch lower TDP and has successfully been overclocked (with watercooling of course) to 5.2 GHz or more. It costs AU$242 (at the same store the new 9000 series above). And I guarantee you wouldn’t notice much of a performance different in games or most things.
Nobody is that insane (well… OK, there are some who do have far more money than brains, but not enough to seriously compete against Intel).
It’s a stupid move by AMD. All they will do is piss off their current loyal buyers. It’s a great move for Intel. I can’t believe the board approved this, if they did, they should all retire.
I’ve been in this game a long time and seen it all. AMD has NEVER been able to successfully compete against Intel toe-to-toe on price. There was a time when they out-performed Intel and came close in price, but those days were long ago.
If anyone has been considering upgrading an AM3 based system, they better grab an FX-8350 before AMD kill them off! it’s the only way they might be able to sell a few of the 9000 series.
If AMD continue down this path, Intel will become a monopoly. Then we are all screwed!
I don’t think it is serious. I think it is just a marker until they can get what they are actually working on to top Intel out the door. I think they have a glitch in their next product and felt the need to put something out there until they can fix it. When the real new product comes out it will be at a lower price than this turkey in peacock feathers.
I think their yield problems are manifesting themselves again. AMD has always had quality control issues, which never seem to get fixed. I’ve never had a bad chip from them, but I’ve seen wholesalers returning shipments in disgust because of problems.
This sounds like something from marketing, not engineering, and upper management signed on.
I’ve been solidly Intel for a while now. AMD had the lead for a while when they introduced the Opteron and the AMD-64 architecture, and then blew it. Since then Intel has stolen all of AMD’s innovations such as HyperTransport, memory controller on the die, etc. and turned the knobs up to 11. Add in the rock solid stability of Intel products, vs the flakiness I’ve had with AMD products, and AMD can only compete on price. Which $1K+ for a gamer CPU definitely is not doing!
ATI video cards have always had good performance with low power dissipation compared to their nVidia equivalents, so clearly there’s *someone* at AMD who knows how to make good chips, but also just as clearly, that someone has nothing to do with AMD’s processors…
I don’t understand why AMD are still trying to to have Global Foundries make $1k/CPU!) Then factor in Intels new lower power consuming FinFET tri-gate transistors that will be used on the 22 nm & lower wafer production, and I see no real way for AMD to compete on anything other than price for some time to come. Think what you like about Intel, but for the past 5+ years they have done what they have said they would do. AMD on the other hand made grand announcements… and then said “Oh, wait… we can’t!” Both AMD & ARM have stated they will produce 16 & even 14 nm FinFET parts later this year. Nobody who is sane would believe any of it. Ain’t gonna happen! They simply do not have the fabrication capability to even come close, and won’t have for at least 3 years!
Rory Read may have decided to gut AMD’s marketing and PR departments in ’11, but they are still spewing garbage! What he should have done was transfer some of the obviously talented engineers from the ATI division to the CPU div. Even if only temporarily. These guy’s successfully created a behemoth of a GPU with over 4.2 billion transistors on a 28 nm wafer (the Tahiti core), compared to the *new* FX9000 series, which in reality, it’s not new. It’s just a slightly tweaked FX8300 series. In fact, the only differences are a faster clock (4.7 GHz vs 4GHz, up 15%), and a slightly faster RAM clock (2400 MHz vs 2200 MHz, up 9%) and a bug 53% increase in TDP all for (apparently) a massive 80% price hike! US$920 vs US$195.
Also, I doubt anyone will be seeing them in stores soon in any case. AMD have only announced and are shipping OEM trays, no boxed versions. And no announcements when boxed CPU’s will ship. So only system integrators will have them now (HP, Dell, etc).
Curiously, AMD were originally planning to buy nVidia, but decided on ATI at the last minute according to insiders. I wonder why? And what would have happened if they had taken over nVidia?
Maybe Intel will buy out nVidia. Their GPU”s still suck! If that happens, it’s game over for AMD!
Actually, we don’t know if the problem is that they don’t have a design, or the foundry can’t make it. If their next chip was supposed to be 16nm and the foundry can’t make them, this might be the reason for this absurdity.
In any case, it may all be moot if the current trend continues. We could end up with ARM as the only company left standing.
The market for high-powered chips was never huge, and it may shrink to what is necessary for servers, as users switch to smartphones and tablets.
If Europe and the US don’t start doing something useful about their economies, no one may be able to buy anything beyond food and matches.
Bryan, ARM doesn’t make chips. They license core designs to people who *do* make chips, like TI, Qualcomm, Samsung, and nVidia. They basically provide the “operating system” for those company’s silicon.
I have been quite underwhelmed by the processing capacity of ARM chips. They are suitable for light duty purposes such as browsing this web page, but anything complex and they fall over, even the very latest quad-core 1.5Ghz models. They are simple chips designed for low power consumption, not high performance.
For high performance general purpose CPU’s, Intel pretty much has a lock on the market at the moment. I have a 2.6Mhz Sandy Bridge quad core (8 thread) CPU in my laptop, and it hauls a** big-time while sipping power.
It seems the TSMC is at least serious about being the leading wafer Fabrication company. Their growth has been phenomenal. Their new GigaFabs (as TSMC call’s them) can start production @ 100k wafers/mth and ramp up from there (nobody else, even Intel, can get close to that capacity).
Like Intel, they have stuck to their roadmap since at least 2004. They do what they say. 🙂
Apple have finally agreed to have their A-Series Chips for Future iOS Devices manufactured by TSMC. All their current iOS device components are mainly manufactured by Sumsung, which Apple have been suing regularly for years (I always found that amusing! But that’s the way Apple does things.) Apple have been wanting to move further away from Sumsung for years and have been slowly doing so. The main reason for delaying the move was that Apple apparently wanted TSMC to either set aside a fab Plant to produce only Apple chips, or to allow Apple to Invest in TSMC. TSMC have always stated they will remain a privately held and independent company and wouldn’t entertain either notion.
TSMC Confirms Deal with Apple to Produce A-Series Chips for Future iOS Devices
TSMC recently announced new MegaFab plants to produce larger wafers (450mm) and scale’s down to 16/10/7 nm for FinFET transistors and other components. BTW, a primary difference between FinFET and traditional transistors is that the traditional transistors are planar (2D) and the FinFET’s are essentially 3D. TSMC also announced plans to move from Silicon based wafers to Germanium when they hit between 7 & 5 nm, as Silicone will be unviable at those scales.
TSMC manufacture the wafers for AMCC, Altera, Broadcom, Conexant, Marvell, NVIDIA, Allwinner and VIA. AMD make most of their wafers @ TSMC, and some @ Global Foundries.
LSI is a reseller of TSMC wafers. TSMC also have a subsidiary in the USA called WaferTech (in Camas, WA). Initially (1998), Altera, Analog Devices, and ISSI were key partners. In 2000, TSMC acquired full control. It’s a so-called “pure-play semiconductor foundry”. A Pure-play semiconductor foundry is basically a company that does not offer any significant amount of IC products of their own design. They primarily operate semiconductor fabrication plants focused on producing wafers (ICs) for other companies.
Even though Intel look good because their new products are good, they do have a problem. Their fabrication ability is small compared to most other wafer fab companies. Intel are not even in the top-10 rank (as of 2012) in terms of actual production capability. And TSMC (who are ranked #1) are bigger (in terms of production capability) than the next three companies combined (UMC, Globalfoundries, Samsung)! Also, TSMC have held the #1 ranking since 2004. Because of this, some of Intel’s production is being outsourced to TSMC. 🙂
TSMC Future Revealed
Even though ARM announced they will be releasing a new 3GHz processor late this year, Samsung has decided to move away from ARM and it’s new tablet’s are using the old Intel Atom. This shows that Samsung believe that Intel is the way to go, and the new Haswell family seem to be baring this out.
Whatever happens, the winner will probably be TSMC! Too bad they are a private company! 😉
“Watch this space!” 😉
Regarding Apple vs Samsung… It truly is a love/hate relationship! 😀
It seems Apple just signed up Samsung to produce the new SSD’s for MacBook’s and Air products! 😆
It’s no wonder really… Samsung are the first to actually begin mass production of the new NGFF M.2 standard SSD which no longer use SATA or mSATA. The new SSD’s are rated at a sequential read performance of 1.4GB/s! The new NGFF standard is being pushed hard by Intel mainly because the current max performance of SATA 3 is a real bottleneck to emerging SSD’s. ASUS are the first to release a new PC MoBo that supports NGFF M.2, but there are no drives yet available commercially. That will change as Sumsung, then Adata & Intel release NGFF SSD’s over the next few months.
It’s REALLY getting interesting! 😉 😀
Oh… and the New NGFF SSD’s have a different form factor from traditional SSD’s, even the small mSATA ones. Here’s info & pic’s:
New SSD from Samsung can read 100 HD movies in 6 minutes!
I can see some new generation of external storage akin to the current USB pen drives coming our way. I’m sure it won’t be too long before there is an eNGFF external port on MoBo’s. (At least, I hope so!) 😉 😀 512 GB on a palm sized drive? YES PLEASE! 😀
Intel is pretty much the only one that still manufactures what they design, everyone else outsources. I remember the ancient days when M$ actually printed their own manuals and burned their own disks. They sold all of that off and outsourced. AMD did the same thing, and it affects the products. When you do it in-house you can catch the small problems before they become large, often before wafers are produced, if designers and the foundry guys talk.
There were once Apple manufacturing facilities to produce Apple products, now there is a design team, as everything is outsourced.
All this speed is wonderful if it does something for you, but when most of the US is still lucky to get cell phone coverage and T1-speed Internet connections, it isn’t very important to that many people.
I feel really bad for you, Badtux, because you are in the center of so much power, and stuck with the same sucky choices as I have down here in the “we’ll finish having 3G coverage in the area real soon” Redneck Riviera.
The sale of their foundry to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi was definitely a turning point in AMD’s fortunes — a turning point from bad to worse. Since then they have fallen further and further behind.
Intel doesn’t need the manufacturing capacity to manufacture billions of 5 cent microcontrollers or $1 chipsets, they can outsource those to TMC or anybody since there’s nothing special about them. All they need is the manufacturing capacity to manufacture bleeding-edge CPU’s for less — bleeding edge in power consumption, computing power, or both.
Regarding integration of manufacturing and design, Intel’s design people and their manufacturing people work hand in hand in a very tightly integrated process, their design people’s offices are actually located in the same complex as the foundries. They talk to each other. Unlike the Microsoft org chart which consists of a half dozen independent organizations with guns aimed at each other, heh.
I don’t know of single enterprise that has survived after selling off their own manufacturing capability. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple when he came back, but it won’t last, because you can’t give other people control over your basic products and expect to survive.
I don’t doubt that selling the foundry made sense to Wall Street analysts, but it makes no sense in the long term survival of a corporation.
The deal is that manufacturing is *hard*, but Wall Street knows nothing about manufacturing, so they just handwave manufacturing and expect it to “just happen”. Well, it doesn’t. Been there, done that, it’s a *lot* of work and a lot of details that have to happen right and if they don’t, you don’t have product, or you have product that is late and not of good quality. But hey, just hand-wave “okay, design good product, outsource manufacturing, … profit!”. Wall Street and the Underpants Gnomes seem to have similar outlooks :twisted:.
I don’t understand how they fail to miss that those products are actual, physical assets that have value. If you don’t make the products in the US, you don’t get the increase in assets in the US, and you follow the path of the Spanish Empire to oblivion after running through the largest influx of gold, silver, and precious gems ever seen to that time.
The balance of trade gets screwed up fatally, and foreign nations own the country. That is definitely a path to ‘ending up like Greece’ .
It is amazing how many people haven’t figured out that a high stock price is only important if you are selling stock. If you are selling anything else, after the IPO it is fairly irrelevant.
Regarding Apple and manufacturing, apparently the reason why Apple cannot release a large-screen iPhone to compete with the large-screen Samsung Galaxy S3/4 that are cleaning its clocks in the marketplace is because… dum dum dum… THEY CAN’T GET THE SCREENS. Because Samsung is the only manufacturer making large-format screens. And Samsung isn’t selling them to Apple.
Apple is now building their own factory in China to make the screens, but it won’t be ready until next summer at least, because manufacturing is *hard*. But Apple had hand-waved the making-screens part of the iPhone… and now is paying the price for that.
Too bad, I much prefer iOS to Android, the deal being that iOS, while being a bit dated, is easier to use and easier to navigate. It won’t do as much as Android, but all I do with my Android is read email and message and answer phone calls, and it does that just fine. But I can’t see the bloody teensy little screen on the current iPhone! Yeesh!
Of course, when they release a model with a bigger screen, Samsung will sue them for patent infringement. [Aren’t the Intellectual Property laws a real thrill?]
If you don’t own the manufacturing, you can’t control your product line. There have been a number of things that I have bought and used over the years because I liked the way they worked, but then I would go in to buy another one, and even though it is the same model, there is an annoying change because they are using different parts suppliers.
Welcome to middle-age – it sort of sucks, doesn’t it?
“Welcome to middle-age – it sort of sucks, doesn’t it?”
Ain’t that the truth??! *SIGH*
Past couple weeks have been really crappy. Haven’t been able to shake this damned cold yet, but I think it’s finally easing.
I prefer Android, and have a Samsung, partly because of the larger screen! 😉 😀
Apple are one of the few companies I know who constantly try to sue one of their critical partners! Should change the name to ‘Lemings’! Samsung WERE actually working on a deal to supply the larger screens to Apple, but Apple torpedoed that, as they do! Apple would have to rank as one of the most brilliant whilst at the same time, dumbest companies I have ever worked for! Technologically brilliant, but when it comes to business/customer relations, crap. I spent 2 years as a Service Manager here, and had to quit because they treated their customers like garbage, and forced me to make many morally (and probably ethically) dubious decisions. They were not lake that in the 80’s & 90’s. *shrug*
Well, I won’t be using AMD any more (except perhaps for low-end builds using the new AMD A10 6400K/6800K 4-Core APU’s with the integrated HD8670D graphics). I found out the APU’s are actually designed by what was once the ATI graphics division, and so is probably the reason they work so well and are low-cost. The more I look at what AMD are doing, the more sure I am that they want to exit the desktop market. It’s just too hard to compete, you know? Who knows… I may be a good move in the end. *shrug*
I have no complaints about my box, but then I don’t flog it, and don’t do much in the way of multi-media where separate graphics cards would be helpful.
Actually, a couple of purpose built code-breaking machines put together by distributed.net use GPUs to work on the number-crunching because they are faster, which makes sense when you consider what GPUs are designed to do.
AMD has wasted its initial creativity trying to ‘out Intel’ Intel. They should have followed their own path.