Slashdot Mirror

TI has been closing down fabs, but they still have 9 200mm and 2 300mm fabs. They have 2 150mm fabs which are being closed down. TI-beats-estimates--plans-to-close-two-fabs

Actually I believe some of the APUs such as the Brazos platform is done by TSMC. Yes according to this link they inked a deal with TSMC to use their SOI process for Fusion APUs and since i can't find any links saying this deal was later canceled i have to assume that is what they did. Makes sense as TSMC has the experience with ATI GPUs and the whole point of Fusion is wedding the ATI GPU to various AMD CPUs such as Stars (Liano), Bobcat (Brazos) and Bulldozer (FX) and since the overall performance of those chips would depend on how well they could get the GPUs to come out since they can't really bin the GPUs like they normally do without ending up with a bazillion variations it makes sense they went with the one that has more GPU experience.

So does anybody have any REAL info on what's going on? What chips? What sockets? Is it only on server, or is desktop and mobile affected as well? Is it a one in a million bug or an easy to hit bug? Considering CPU bugs can go from the Pentium I "you'll likely never hit it" to the Phenom I quad "Good luck getting above 2.4GHz because the third core (Core 2) is buggy and unstable" there can be a pretty wide variance when it comes to odds. As someone who owns several AMD units and have sold even more some more info would be nice.

Answers.wiki.com confirms it.

The original term seems to have been bald-faced (bare-faced) and refers to a face without whiskers. Beards were commonly worn by businessmen in the 18th and 19th century as an attempt to mask facial expressions when making business deals. Thus a bald-faced liar was a very good liar indeed, and was able to lie without the guilt showing on his face.

I just had to check up on you. I have learned long ago to trust, but verify.

( A man I have great respect for, Bob Pease , taught me that. )

You are still in my memory, Bob, and thanks for all the wisdom you have shared with me.

Today, we can place the atom with high precision, in silicon, so that the devices can be made reliably.

Cornell demonstrated a single atom transistor nearly 10 years ago, and today we are still pretty much at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.

Ten years from now, who's to say we won't be able to mass produce them?

It is a pretty big jump from building a single demonstration / proof of concept device and connecting it and integrating it into a design that works reliably at speed. IBM seems to be getting some interesting results with a single atom DRAM, but that is still way closer to a laboratory curiosity than an option for shipping silicon.

But that is just the Fab side of things. To actually design and build chips with this sort of technology is almost certainly going to require some serious upgrades to EDA tools.

Today, we can place the atom with high precision, in silicon, so that the devices can be made reliably.

Cornell demonstrated a single atom transistor nearly 10 years ago, and today we are still pretty much at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.

Ten years from now, who's to say we won't be able to mass produce them?

It is a pretty big jump from building a single demonstration / proof of concept device and connecting it and integrating it into a design that works reliably at speed. IBM seems to be getting some interesting results with a single atom DRAM, but that is still way closer to a laboratory curiosity than an option for shipping silicon.

But that is just the Fab side of things. To actually design and build chips with this sort of technology is almost certainly going to require some serious upgrades to EDA tools.

You mean like this?

I think I read it cost about $100 to manufacture one of these phones,

No, it costs a lot more than that to make an iPhone. But what does the EE Times know, right? And that's just the cost of the physical components. Good thing for your argument that R&D, shipping, marketing, software, and all that stuff that isn't something you physically hold in your hand are free, right?

Professor Babak Parviz has done some early work along these lines. Sounds like it might be some sort of inductive loop powering the circuits in the lens, with the external source being worn on your clothing or some headgear.

The article linked also touches on the question I immediately had about this - how do you produce an image or text on a contact lens that's legible to the wearer? If you think about elementary optics, you quickly realize having something in focus on the lens is not the same thing as having it in focus at some point beyond the lens. Basically it sounds like you need to have extremely thin corrective lenses built into the contact itself so the displayed item will be in focus on your retina.

How about realizing that it's a money grab.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210649/Kinect-s-BOM-roughly--56--teardown-finds-

Are you serious? You really think the entire cost of a device comes down to the sum of its parts? No costs involved in packaging, manufacturing, shipping, marketing, R&D, software development, profit, etc...? The iphone 4S is estimated at having a BOM totaling $188, but anyone with a shred of intelligence knows that there's much more to developing such a thing than simply buying those parts.

How about realizing that it's a money grab.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210649/Kinect-s-BOM-roughly--56--teardown-finds-

Don't forget to add in assembly costs, RND, plastics, tooling, packaging etc. Obviously these things go down over time, but I'd estimate there would be an extra $5-$10 in cost, at the least. So lats say $70 cost to MS. This $249 price gives MS roughly a 20%-35% profit on each one, depending on what their wholesale price is. Hardly looks like a money grab to me.

How about realizing that it's a money grab.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210649/Kinect-s-BOM-roughly--56--teardown-finds-

Here are some suggestions to becoming a proficient software engineer:

1. Learn to work your way up the capability maturity model (and help your company to do so). See item 6 in the following article.

Learn to avoid the "7 Habits of Highly Dysfunctional Developers". http://www.ganssle.com/articles/7habits.htm

2. Jack Ganssle's articles are great reading for programmers wanting to build reliable systems. They are helpful for both embedded programmers and people working on other platforms.

http://www.ganssle.com/articles.htm

3. Here is Jack's recommended reading list.

http://www.ganssle.com/bkreviews.htm

I have found his own books to be useful.

http://www.ganssle.com/book.htm

4. Jack's articles in Embedded Systems Programming magazine contain lots of programming wisdom.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/21/Break-Points?Ecosystem=embedded

US has had some very good programming and embedded systems related magazines like C/C++ User's Journal, Dr.Dobbs and Embedded Systems Programming. Ten years ago there were many good articles on each of these magazines and in every issue. I found the magazines to be of great quality. I was a fresh engineer and I enjoyed each and every issue very much. All of them had excellent people writing to them like Herb Sutter, Michael Barr, Jack Crenshaw and many others.

But then there was steady decline: paper quality, number of pages, quality articles all went down slowly but steadily.

And now the situation is:
- Dr.Dobbs had its final issue on 2009. They still publish it in pdf format. Website is there: http://drdobbs.com/ .Not _quite_ the same.
- C/C++ User's Journal was discontinued on 2006. The own website is gone, but Dr.Dobbs hosts old content and some new articles at: http://drdobbs.com/cpp . Again, not quite the same.
- Embedded Systems Programming is now named Embedded Systems Design. Most of the editors still write to the mag. The website is alive and well on http://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded . This has somehow managed to maintain most of its quality.

But for the UK or euro alternatives: There is practically none I know of. So the situation in this field is quite bad.

This is neither the book nor the review I would have written.

My book would have started:

WTF is the Khronos Group? Good question. It sure sounds like one of those faux "we really do talk to each other while going our own separate ways" PR initiatives of the African UNIX warlord alliance of so many bland bodies from ages ago whose names we can no longer recall.

Circling threat

My caption: With the new hipwader hull, Joe had the whole OpenCL stack right at his fingertips.

Moly disulfide is mostly known as a lubricant.

Interesting, but I wouldn't sell my stocks in silicon electronics yet. Silicon is way down the learning curve. I wouldn't bet a new semiconductor against it.

Some of what the article says is a little dubious, like the fact that silicon "The surface likes to oxidise - it likes to bind with oxygen... and that makes its electrical properties degrade when you want to make a very thin film." Yes, it forms oxide easily. No, that doesn't "degrade" the electrical properties-- in fact, this is exactly why silicon is so incredibly useful in electronics. Oxide, and the fact that silicon oxide passivates the surface to prevent electron-hole recombination at the dangling bonds, is what makes silicon electronics possible. I note that the moly disulfide transistors use hafnium oxide for a gate. That's a high dielectric constant material that is indeed also used in silicon, but the silicon oxide is still the critical interface.

By the way, I think there's slightly better info from eetimes http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4212757/New-material-for-semis-said-to-beat-silicon or physicsworld http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/45056

It's a tradeoff metric. If you want it to go faster on the freeway you may have to give up some integer-processing performance. A unit with more MIPS/horsepower would let you get more of either or both.

And now I'm actually highly curious as to what a table of MIPS/horsepower would look like for current production vehicles. Some new cars have upwards of 100 embedded CPUs.

It will be deployed in 2014:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4230160/ARM-unveils-64-bit-architecture

"Indeed, the first processors based on ARMv8 will only be announced sometime in 2012, with actual server prototypes running on the new architecture expected in 2014."

It looks like this is just the GPL software. Nothing terribly exciting but maybe it has kernel drivers for the e-ink display. AFAIK the Kindle uses a locked bootloader so there is no way to actually get your ROM image running anyway. The Fire is a bit more promising, and the source release does seem to have kicked off a bit of interest in hacking it a bit, it's been rooted and Android market runs. I'll save you the 148MB download; here's the contents of Kindle_src_3.3_611680021.tar.gz:

gplrelease/
gplrelease/picocom-1.4.tar.gz
gplrelease/util-linux-2.12r.tar.bz2
gplrelease/atk-1.26.0.tar.bz2
gplrelease/uboot-1.3.0-rc3.tar.bz2
gplrelease/pango-1.24.5.tar.bz2
gplrelease/gstreamer-0.10.17.tar.bz2
gplrelease/taglib-1.5.tar.bz2
gplrelease/e2fsprogs-1.38_patch.tar.gz
gplrelease/fuse-2.7.1.tar.gz
gplrelease/libltdl-1.2.tar.bz2
gplrelease/libol-0.3.18.tar.gz
gplrelease/syslog-ng-1.6.11.tar.gz
gplrelease/busybox-1.7.2.tar.bz2
gplrelease/webkit-1.1.7.tar.bz2
gplrelease/e2fsprogs-1.38.tar.gz
gplrelease/wireless_tools.29.tar.gz
gplrelease/mtd-utils-1.0.0.tar.gz
gplrelease/pango-1.6.0.tar.bz2
gplrelease/lrzsz-0.12.20.tar.gz
gplrelease/gst-plugins-base-0.10.17.tar.bz2
gplrelease/libvolume-id_092.ipk
gplrelease/ifupdown_0.6.8.tar.gz
gplrelease/gst-plugins-good-0.10.6.tar.bz2
gplrelease/gst-plugins-base-0.10.6.tar.bz2
gplrelease/linux-2.6.26-lab126.tar.bz2
gplrelease/gnutls-2.8.4.tar.bz2
gplrelease/module-init-tools-3.2.2.tar.bz2
gplrelease/libgpg-error-1.4.tar.bz2
gplrelease/DirectFB-1.2.0.tar.bz2
gplrelease/libproxy-0.2.3.tar.bz2
gplrelease/module-init-tools-3.2.2_patch.tar.gz
gplrelease/glib-2.22.2.tar.bz2
gplrelease/udev-112.tar.bz2
gplrelease/alsa-lib-1.0.13_patch.tar.gz
gplrelease/enchant-1.4.2.tar.bz2
gplrelease/gtk+-2.16.5.tar.bz2
gplrelease/libgcrypt-1.4.4.tar.bz2
gplrelease/base-files_3.0.14.ipk
gplrelease/alsa-lib-1.0.13.tar.bz2
gplrelease/fuse-2.7.1_link.tar
gplrelease/dosfstools-2.11.tar.bz2
gplrelease/libsoup-2.30.0.tar.bz2
gplrelease/procps-3.2.7.tar.gz
gplrelease/procps-3.2.7_patch.tar.gz
gplrelease/base-passwd_3.5.9.tar.gz
gplrelease/powertop-1.10.tar.gz
gplrelease/iptables-1.3.3.tar.bz2
gplrelease/glibc-2.5.tar.bz2
gplrelease/alsa-utils-1.0.13_patch.tar.gz
gplrelease/alsa-utils-1.0.13.tar.bz2
gplrelease/gdb-6.6.tar.bz2
gplrelease/sysvinit-2.86.tar.gz
gplrelease/cairo-1.8.6.tar.bz2

Wow! I found this story today

The Griggs Hall haunting

There are already several comanies working on multi-core ARM chips for servers, because they believe that will be the most power-efficient way to handle big workloads. Here is one product announcement from the day after ARM 64 was announced:

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Applied Micro Circuits Corp. fired a shot across the bow of Intel, demonstrating the first 64-bit ARM server processor here. The X-Gene chip is the first of an array of competitors that will attack Intel's multi-billion dollar server franchise with cheaper, lower power ARM SoCs.

AMCC's X-Gene packs multiple 3 GHz cores complaint with the ARM 64-bit V8 architecture announced today at ARM Tech Con. The cores are quad-issue, out-of-order superscalar designs. The chip also sports Ethernet MACs, PCI Express and Serial ATA linked on an 80 GByte/second fabric.

The company showed a working version in an FPGA emulation it will ship in January. Silicon will sample in the second half of 2012.

I imagine a new generation Apple TV with next gen A5 CPU (A6?) and iOS. Already capable of running all the games in the App Store.

I think you're bob on there. Updating the Apple TV Bill of Materials. With the iPhone 4s estimates

• Apple A5 - $26
• Memory 32GB NAND / 512MB SDRAM - $38

Would make a total BoM today of $97.40 (presuming they can't cost reduce the rest) - with a launch in 2012 some time, they ought to pull this off for their more typical margins.

As noted, they adjusted the external antenna and even provided two receivers to adapt.

And as tech sites noted, this is the same design as the Verizon iPhone 4, and it's absolutely no improvement.

That's because unlike you, I know what the hell I am talking about and not afraid to list good AND bad points of any device. You would never in a million years admit to a flaw in your device of choice - hell, you can't even use a real ID.

At least I know how to use HTML and the Continue Editing button. And what makes you think I'd never admit flaws in an Android phone? There are plenty of pros and cons to every individual phone, but there's one giant pro that outweighs anything Apple offers: choice. Don't like a flaw in the Droid? Get an HTC Evo. Don't like the HTC? Get a Samsung Galaxy. And there are a ton of other options.

Although as it turns out you can simply buy a Verizon/Sprint phone and use a SIM card in another country anyway (they unlock GSM) so the point was moot.

Oh, look, we're back to "Apple can do no wrong." That didn't take long.

Wow, you've utterly lost touch with things that are important to real people, haven't you?

Have you ever talked to real people? Being able to swap batteries is a pretty big deal with a phone. Everyone I know who owns an iPhone has one of those external battery pack cases because without it the battery life is absolutely abysmal. The fact that there are a ton of accessories to deal with this flaw seems to suggest that real people think it's a real flaw.

As for removeable storage - well, which would you rather do: spend $300 on a 32 GB iPhone, or $200 on the 16 GB iPhone and then another $40 to get a 32 GB microSD card? Or, even better, get the 16GB model right now, then expand with a microSD card in a year when you need the space?

Don't forget, they're selling the iPhone as this media hub with all your music, videos, and pictures on the device. And since you've already claimed that they're not using the cloud for that storage, expandable local storage isn't a "nice to have," it's a REQUIREMENT. Unless, of course, they are storing it all on the cloud and we can look forward to a 3-day Apple iCloud outage.

Aside from the spec sheet factoids that we all already knew, I see nothing else that's factually correct in that summary. Let's go through the rest of it:

To date, however, Apple is the only systems manufacturer to adopt Thunderbolt

Incorrect. Sony shipped the Vaio Z21 earlier this year with Thunderbolt, though it was branded under the old codename of Light Peak.

and it has done so as an additional device connectivity port

Incorrect. It's replacing mini-DisplayPort with Thunderbolt on the models that are being updated since they share the same connector. Doing so means no additional ports. Instead, since Thunderbolt can support different protocols, people who have DisplayPort devices can continue to use them without issue, and they'll have Thunderbolt there for later when more peripherals arrive.

keeping SuperSpeed USB on its computers.

Apple doesn't have SuperSpeed USB on any of its computers. They never have. The MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac mini have all been updated with Thunderbolt, yet they're all still using USB 2.0. The Mac Pro is their only computer which hasn't been updated since Thunderbolt debuted, and it certainly doesn't have USB 3.0 either. In fact, Apple is the only major holdout on USB 3.0. It even says so at the end of the introduction on Wikipedia's USB 3.0 page.

No other systems manufacturer has committed to Thunderbolt.

Besides Sony, which I've already mentioned, both Acer and Asus have committed to having Thunderbolt devices out in the future.

In contrast, SuperSpeed USB has been installed on 10 billion pieces of hardware, with numbers continuing to grow.

Incorrect, and entirely inane. Of course the numbers continue to grow. Was there a concern that they'd be shrinking? And 10 billion is patently false. The best numbers I could find in a quick search were that only 14M USB 3.0 devices were sold in 2010 (so you're only off by three orders of magnitude), and that projections by analysts peg sales at 1.7B per year by 2014.

I'm sorry but the attitude on /. here is that whatever not Apple would do it's ALWAYS wrong. Imagine if tables were reversed and how the reaction would be towards Samsung if there would be a reaction at all!

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4058472/Samsung-set-to-sue-Asian-phone-makers-says-report - http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Content_And_Downloads/Industry/X8M9G5T9 - http://consumerist.com/2010/05/samsung-sues-journalist-for-satirically-pointing-out-that-its-chairman-keeps-getting-convicted-of-cr.html - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/07/samsung_sues_matsushita/ - http://www.crn.com.au/News/114322,samsung-sues-polaroid-and-westinghouse-over-patent-infringement.aspx - http://www.cn-c114.net/578/a294176.html

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4058472/Samsung-set-to-sue-Asian-phone-makers-says-report

Intel now sells Atom CPUs, with embedded FPGA. Xilinx, the top FPGA maker, offers ARM CPUs with embedded FPGA. Both CPU lines run Linux now.

FPGA is logic gates, the building blocks of CPUs (and other computing chips) that can be interconnected on demand to create different logic circuits - and therefore custom instructions. Logic implemented in FPGA on a CPU can be revised by over-the-network software upgrades. FPGA was typically used by chip designers to develop candidate designs to be burned into hardware, but has become cheap and fast enough to distribute as end-product "reconfigurable computing" devices.

Imagine your multimedia codecs configured directly into logic circuits on the CPU. They'd be really fast, and lower power than moving data across the CPU/RAM/bus boundaries. Upgrades by SW, just like now. Load/unload them as circuits on demand rather than as instruction codes in banks of RAM. Bring the network wires to FPGA pins on the CPU, and the data can route to codec processors on the chip for parallel operation. Of course these features apply to any "media" data, including business data in streams or large datasets.

Intel's move to SW upgrades of CPU microcode is creating the tech and business infrastructure for regular FPGA upgrades to these new hybrids. Soon enough the literally hardwired CPU logic might become the minority of the chip. Already FPGAs with embedded DSPs are like that, so a chip that's mostly FPGA with just some ALU and CLU circuits already optimized to close to their theoretical performance (in speed or power) are foreseeable.

32-bit machines with an Arduno form factor look promising. The usual Arduno ATmega 128 is rather limiting.

Putting a bloated non-realtime OS like Linux on a board that directly controls hardware may not be the right answer, if you want, say, to do vision, balance, and motor control on the same CPU. But there aren't many alternatives. QNX no longer encourages hobbyist use, nobody likes Windows CE, and LinxOS costs too much. Most Linux-based robots have additional, smaller CPUs running the motors. Robots that need fast and tight coordination between the high and low levels, like BigDog, tend to run QNX.

Pretty much all the big players are being sued by somebody. That graphic's a little old, but it still illustrates just how messed up the patent system must be.

And Samsung was sue happy before Apple entered the market: The allegations in the lawsuits include that companies copy the designs and functions of Samsung mobile phones and leak secret Samsung documents, the report said.

http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to
offer, schools themselves must change. ... So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

I wrote that essay after working towards some FOSS tools to make it easier for kids to get into programming.

Also related:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

And, speaking as someone who has been using computers for thirty years, and while thinking everyone should ideally have a baisc computer literacy to be an informed citizen, how many programmers does the world really need? Kids are smart. They know there are fewer and fewer "good" jobs in technology for all sorts of reasons.
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://community.dice.com/t5/Tech-Market-Conditions/Alice-Dice-s-claim-of-4-Unemployment/td-p/235866

From:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4209831/Engineering--The-next-generation
"We often hear from readers who are engineers that they try to dissuade sons and daught

AMD has chosen an architectural roadmap that makes the GPU and CPU part of the same APU. SYSmark does not measure 3-D graphics performance. At all. So while AMD is pursuing a path that will give its APUs greater overall performance than the CPUs they contain, they are actually hamstringing themselves in the CPU-only testing arena, because the CPU portion of thier APUs will seem relatively lower in performance at the same price point.

AMD's proper course of action should have been to promote an APU-specific benchmark. Instead, it tried to change SYSmark to do something it doesn't do.

It was denied the right to twist the benchmark in its favor. Rather than coming up with the obvious solution of spinning off a new benchmark consortium to develop an APU-specific test, it started crying and ran to its room shouting, "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

AMD is, really, behind a major 8-ball right here. It has, again, put all of its eggs into a rather hopeful basket, and come up with fewer than expected. At least this time, unlike with the Barcelona debacle, it isn't doing it while roller-skating blindfolded through a car-wash. That time it cost them their fabs. They don't have much left to sell.

It's little wonder that it's not having an easy time of finding a new CEO.

Only.. there are only so many valid design choices for what a modern smartphone looks like. Patents like this are idiotic anyway. What's novel about "Durr, I'll use a chrome strip around the thing to bling it up!".

Funny you say that in defense of Samsung of all companies

02/09/2006 LONDON — South Korean consumer giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is preparing to file lawsuits against a number of mobile phone handset makers in Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong, who it alleges have copied its products and breached its patents, according to a Taiwan government online report.

The allegations in the lawsuits include that companies copy the designs and functions of Samsung mobile phones and leak secret Samsung documents, the report said.

http://www.nokiapower.com/index.php?showtopic=5945&mode=threaded&pid=22391

Telsda handsets resemble close to Nokia,Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and Samsung handsets as the image shows. There are some minor cosmetic differences between Telsda and the big manufacturer handsets, but the overall aesthetic design is darn close to say Telsda copied.

I've been pretty impressed by the training my company has been able to put together lately.

• Seth Hallem, founder and former CEO of Coverity came to teach us about their static analysis tool.
• Dan Saks came to teach us about embedded software best practices.
• Scott Meyers came to teach us about using the STL effectively.
• James Grenning came to teach us about test driven development.
• Michael Barr came to teach us about real time scheduling.

Most of these guys are well respected in their fields, and while not exactly famous, are names I had seen more than once in connection with those topics. All of them spent some time looking at our company's needs specifically before doing the training in order to customize it for us. Our company isn't small, but not huge either. We have around 1600 employees, a few hundred of which took the training. It has really helped us revitalize a lot of our old school techniques. If a company our size can put a line up of training like that together, it ought to be within reach of most mid-size organizations.

This article implies that the 16 core adapteva system on a chip has 40 million transistors-- slightly less than an Atom.

The RV870 has 2.2 billion transistors, not all of which are used for the chip's 1600 stream processors.

Can someone point out where it says that Apple is abandoning its ARM-based architecture and going x86?

...yeah, didn't think so.

Go to the original EE times article. Read it. There is no claim that Apple is dumping ARM or its own SOC design in favor of x86. Apple is simply changing foundries because they don't trust Samsung any more. Intel is just as capable of making A5s, etc. as Samsung. Apple will continue to design its own SOC; they're just using someone else's fabs.

This article is a joke. Apple will not be abandoning ARM. By the way, the only ARM compliant big boy foundry for Apple to turn to is AMD's Foundry Solutions. Apple will not be turning over it's IP designs for their ARM SoC to Intel to stamp out.

Can someone point out where it says that Apple is abandoning its ARM-based architecture and going x86?

...yeah, didn't think so.

Go to the original EE times article. Read it. There is no claim that Apple is dumping ARM or its own SOC design in favor of x86. Apple is simply changing foundries because they don't trust Samsung any more. Intel is just as capable of making A5s, etc. as Samsung. Apple will continue to design its own SOC; they're just using someone else's fabs.

Here's a similar report from EETimes.

Of course that article says that the "Next Gen Processor For iOS Devices" (as well as the current A5) will be build by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) (at least some of them), and that Intel may want to build the Gen after that.

The report from EETimes suggests Intel is only going after foundry business to produce the A-series processors for Apple, not that Apple is looking to change architectures.

It could be Apple leaving Samsung, or it could be they've decided to go with multiple suppliers for everything to reduce potential impacts from future disasters.

Here's a similar report from EETimes.

Features of x86 that are currently missing in ARM? How about out-of-order execution,

The Cortex-A9 is out-of-order.

64-bit operation,

They indeed don't have 64 bit ALU or memory addressing support yet.

speed boost (some cores shut down to let other cores run faster),

That's unrelated to the architecture. And at least NVidia's Tegra dual-core cpu's shut down one of the two cores if it's not in use. I don't think they automatically overclock the other one to run faster when doing so though.

and a top-end speed around 3GHz just to name a few.

Yes, in absolute performance per core they are still trailing x86. I was mainly reacting to the "anorexic featureless simpleton CPU" remark with my question though.

Of course the lack of those features lets it run cooler which makes the ARM processor ideal for low-power applications like cell phones.

And server farms.

Speaking to EE Times during a discussion of ARM's first quarter financial results CEO Warren East said: "AMD is a successful company selling microprocessors. ARM is in the business of licensing microprocessor designs. It is perfectly natural that we should have been trying to sell microprocessor designs to AMD for about the last ten years. Hitherto we haven't been successful." East also said: "AMD has signaled they are going through a rethink of their strategy, and that must provide a heightened opportunity for ARM. They might use ARM microprocessors in the future and you've got to expect that we would be trying to persuade them of that." http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4215518/ARM-working-on-AMD-to-drop-x86

You may want to read the version with ads:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4215094/A5--All-Apple--part-mystery

To help support the site, as much as I appreciate linking the print view version in it's really not fair to the site owner.

The article writer missed 2 points of the device he was criticizing - in principle a tablet proves that the limited feature set doesn't cripple usability, and practically the iPad 2 is $270 worth of components.

Put it this way: the iPad has audio input/output, optical input/output, physical input, network connectivity, and peripheral connectivity (bluetooth & dock). There is no physical limitation* preventing someone from using the device as a thin-client desktop, capable of everything the X20 can do. The only thing crippling the device, like all tablets, is the software.

*the X20 does have a high-speed data bus

From what information is available it appears that the Fukushima plant changed to Mox (partial plutonium, "as a way to get rid of "surplus" weapons grade Pu) rods last year( and according to the EE times it was amidst protests from locals including the Mayor.. http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4214120/Plutonium--fuel-rod-reactions-stoke-nuclear-tensions?pageNumber=0 ), I am curious if anyone here knows if the plant was sufficiently upgraded to handle the higher neutron absorption and lower thermal conductivity of using plutonium in a reactor that was designed for uranium. At the least one would figure that it would need more control rods. Given the massive plume of Xe-133 ( a neutron absorber ) released 3-20/21-2011( http://tinyurl.com/4s4z6uz , go the bottom of the page) one has to wonder if part of the problem stemmed from all the cascading disasters and then a dearth of control rods ... It may explain why the boric acid had utility at teh beginning Perhaps simply not putting "surplus" weapons grade plutoniun mox into older reactor cores located on fault lines and then crossing ones fingers is something that could be considered forward thinking technology

As far as I am concerned, ZTE is exhibiting amazingly good taste.

That's a valid point. Until you consider that ZTE has been recently charged with unauthorized software use (AKA: Piracy), in order to avoid licensing fees.

So they may be exhibiting good taste ... but only by accident, not out of choice.

Apple isn't just an ARM licensee, they helped DEVELOP the ARM. There is literally NO ONE on the planet with more ARM experience than Apple.

As for ARM experience, your history is off. Apple worked with VLSI and Acorn on ARM. Acorn spun off the design team into a company that later became ARM. Apple had an integral part in the formation of ARM but haven't done much with the company since the formation.

Also considering a dozen companies are ARM licensees, I would fight it hard to believe that no one has more experience than Apple.

Find an earlier ARM device than the Newton, which started development in 1987, and we'll talk. Especially considering that Qualcomm didn't even exist until 1984, and didn't get its first patent until 1990.

It is my opinion that Qualcomm has much deeper experience than Apple.

But the facts disagree with your opinion, sorry.

For the most part licensees like Apple and TI and Samsung take the core that they get from ARM and build the rest of the system around it. Qualcomm is the only I know that modifies the core for optimization.

And you've seen the internals of the A4 and A5 chips to know that for a fact, right? Idiot, and an arrogant idiot, at that.

If you take a look at any dissection of the A4, it clearly shows where the ARM core is located and it appears to be a stock core design with little modification.

Now you're changing your position to say that there IS modification? Which is it, fucktard?

In the A4 and possible A5, most of Apple's modifications are on everything around the core but not the core itself.

No, they FABRICATED it. They didn't DEVELOP it. It was those people Apple got from the PASemi acquisition that did the development work. It's the difference between designing a photocopier and operating one.

Your timing is off. Apple didn't buy PA Semi until April 2008. The first iPhone was released in June 29, 2007, almost a full year before they acquired PA Semi. Logically Apple would have to be designing the iPhone before June 2007. So somehow PA Semi being owned by Apple designed an ARM chip for Apple two years before they owned them. Not unless Steve Jobs has a time machine.

I didn't say a thing about the original iPhone. It did not use the A4 or A5; but rather a much more "stock" ARM SoC (FABRICATED by Samsung). I think it might have still been slightly customized; but not a from-the-ground-up design like the A4/A5.

Also PA Semi worked with Power architecture not ARM.

That is, until Apple bought them... PASemi was purchased primarily because of their rich experience in LOW POWER (as in current consumption, not "Power" as in PPC) chip design. In fact, they probably had to play catch-up when switching gears to ARM. But engineers of that calibre are usually able to (and obviously did) transfer their special knowledge to another platform. And considering that ARM implementations are often designed with low-power in mind (the TI OMAP microcontrollers being especially current-miserly, IIRC), all the PASemi people had to do was to make sure the rest of the SoC in the A4/A5 was just as frugal on power as the ARM core already was.

From what I recall Apple used a Samsung ARM chip for the original original iPhone (released June 2007), 3G (released June 2008) , and 3GS (released June 2009 and chip designed by Intrinsity). It wasn't until iPhone 4

Apple isn't just an ARM licensee, they helped DEVELOP the ARM. There is literally NO ONE on the planet with more ARM experience than Apple.

As for ARM experience, your history is off. Apple worked with VLSI and Acorn on ARM. Acorn spun off the design team into a company that later became ARM. Apple had an integral part in the formation of ARM but haven't done much with the company since the formation.

Also considering a dozen companies are ARM licensees, I would fight it hard to believe that no one has more experience than Apple. It is my opinion that Qualcomm has much deeper experience than Apple. For the most part licensees like Apple and TI and Samsung take the core that they get from ARM and build the rest of the system around it. Qualcomm is the only I know that modifies the core for optimization. If you take a look at any dissection of the A4, it clearly shows where the ARM core is located and it appears to be a stock core design with little modification. In the A4 and possible A5, most of Apple's modifications are on everything around the core but not the core itself.

No, they FABRICATED it. They didn't DEVELOP it. It was those people Apple got from the PASemi acquisition that did the development work. It's the difference between designing a photocopier and operating one.

Your timing is off. Apple didn't buy PA Semi until April 2008. The first iPhone was released in June 29, 2007, almost a full year before they acquired PA Semi. Logically Apple would have to be designing the iPhone before June 2007. So somehow PA Semi being owned by Apple designed an ARM chip for Apple two years before they owned them. Not unless Steve Jobs has a time machine. Also PA Semi worked with Power architecture not ARM. From what I recall Apple used a Samsung ARM chip for the original original iPhone (released June 2007), 3G (released June 2008) , and 3GS (released June 2009 and chip designed by Intrinsity). It wasn't until iPhone 4 that they used an A4. I count at least 2 processors which PA Semi could not have possibly designed.

Rumor was it that they didn't fully like the chip in the original iPhone but it was exactly as they specified to Samsung. This was the impetus to acquire PA Semi for general chip design experience and later Intrinsity for ARM experience.

Again, hardware, but no OS or "Roadmap". So, what's your point, again?

You said Samsung never "DESIGNED" chips. I simply corrected you. Samsung like TI and Qualcomm both design and fabricate ARM processors. Apple since the A4 has designed their own processor; however, relied on Samsung and later Intrinisty to design them before the A4. They also acquired Intrinsity back in 2010.

"Seriously, how much "design" goes into a technology that has been around for 30+ years. You take a platter, mount it on a spindle, spin it, send the data through the same IO standard that has been around for 10 years. What f*cking design is involved? Hard drives ARE obsolete, they do not become obsolete after 3 - 6 months of design. If I open a hard drive in 2011, it looks exactly the same as one in 1990."

LOL! If I open up a microprocessor from 1985 it looks a lot like a microprocessor from 2011!
Funny thing, one works with a 20MHz clock and the other one works with a 2.5GHz clock. Do you want me to itemize all the other differences as well?

Lets see the list is huge, heres some reading for you:
http://www.disktrend.com/pdf/portrpkg.pdf
Thats from the perspective of the box, not what goes on inside of it.

Recording head technology:
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps129/Winter03/papers/grochowski-trends.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_read-and-write_head

Vertical recording:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpendicular_recording

Read channel technology:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4169625/Hard-disk-drive-read-channels--a-must-for-perpendicular-recording

The list of things in servo mechanisms, ECC methods, magnetic media, read channels, spindle controls, embedded servo methods, read/write heads, plated recording media, Viterbi detection vs peak detection, signal processing, PRML channels, etc, etc are huge.

The MBA program probably teaches them how to achieve good results for the company. That's typically not what the bigger players are trying to do - they want to get good results ... for themselves. A good way to accomplish this is by being greedy at the expense of the company.

For example Freescale: you can make a big deal with a major EDA company (that would be Cadence in this case) that you are going to buy all your design software from them. Never mind that Cadence doesn't have good quality tools for all the tasks a major chip design company needs (they are not a bad company as such, but they just don't cover the full design flow appropriately).

So you deny the problem, you cash-in a huge bonus due to the big savings you've made, and you leave the company as soon as you can. Perfectly rational strategy, hugely successful for the VP. Not for Freescale, I suspect.

The VP now works for AMD - three years already, I wonder whether he's about to change jobs, soon?

Maybe that is the secret reason why Intel is going to be fabbing FPGA's on their 20nm process for Achronix...