To be sure that no misunderstands your post, RdRand doesn't just use noise in the general hardware, it has its own dedicated hardware to generate that noise and the subsequent random numbers.
Mostly, Bull Mountain follows the Cascade Construction RNG model, using a processor resident entropy source to repeatedly seed a hardware-implemented CSPRNG. Unlike software approaches, it includes a high-quality entropy source implementation which can be sampled quickly to repeatedly seed the CSPRNG with high quality entropy. It represents a self-contained hardware module that is isolated from software attacks on its internal state resulting in a solution that achieves Random Number Generation objectives with considerable robustness: Statistical quality, highly unpredictable random number sequences, high performance, protection against attacks.
And an article (with pictures!) from IEEE Spectrum Magazine: Behind Intel's New Random-Number Generator They go through some of the history and theory of RNG including the lava lamp generator.
After my wife's EVO 4G was stolen last year, I shopped around for a replacement. I was stunned by the number of people in the Portland area advertising EVOs, saying "like new!" and "will only work on Cricket, don't bring this to a Sprint store!" Of course I reported the phone stolen to Sprint and the police, but there's only so much that does.
Discussions of Wayland on Slashdot tend to be all about a lack of network forwarding or missing features, so I think I'll share some of the positive things I expect to see from Wayland:
Fewer CPU cycles spent in the graphics stack, shortening time to sleep
Less memory used by the graphics stack
More efficient compositing, meaning less memory bandwidth used in memcpy routines, lowering DRAM power and greatly improving speed in certain scenarios
A graphics stack that's fast enough to get 60 FPS scrolling on an embedded GPU
I'm not aware of any X.org implementation that's gotten 60 FPS on an embedded GPU. That's not me trying to knock X.org, say anyone should stop using it, or say people need to "upgrade" to Wayland before it's feature-complete. That's me recognizing the reality of X.org not being "one size fits all" in a world where embedded or mobile Linux (think Android) outsells (and out-deploys) Linux on big core 10 or maybe 100-to-1.
Disclaimer: A big part of my job of performance optimization of applications on Linux running on mobile devices.
The gay sex scenes (which really aren't even scenes!) are wife's favorite parts of Mass Effect II. Sure it might gain Renegade points for my fem shep, but I have to listen to my wife - my avatar is modeled after her. I'm pleased to see EA morph is to a less evil company over time, but I wouldn't say I love them, especially since Mass Effect III isn't (and won't be) on Steam. I do hope they resist pressure and put more (optional) lesbianism instead of less into future games.
Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds
Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds
Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.
If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)
Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?
Now, how is ARM Cisc? Last time I checked, it stood for Advanced Risc Machines has technology subverted the acronym?
ARM chips since ARMv7 have supported the Thumb-2 instruction set, which has 32-bit instructions with CISC features like making an optional left shift available to most instruction, and allowing each comparison to be followed by up to four conditional statements. It's what most JIT and my compilers target now, IIRC.
While binary, proprietary software also dominates the mobile market, it is compiled against iOS and Android, where it is Intel, not Risc, which fights an uphill battle.
It's absolutely true that it's Intel whom must the uphill battle here. The fact that many Android applications are compiled to DEX, and the emergence of HTML5 runtimes offer some relief. I still think that despite Intel's dominance of the desktop market, it faced an uphill fight in the server arena as well, where it was competing against OSes which generally did not (yet) run on IA, using Linux and Windows.
How many times Intel has tried to compete against Risc?
[...]
Forgive me, but colour me skeptic this time around.
It's true that Intel hasn't achieved great success with it's own RISC designs, but what about the times that Intel competed using its CISC designs against:
Alpha? (You mentioned Alpha as something that Intel threw out, no something that it competed against)
It's also worth noting that all of the modern ARM-based SoCs that Medfield will compete against are CISC designs, not RISC, so I guess my list doesn't even matter:-/
Being ineligible for Pell Grants and government work is rough, but the Selective Service FAQ says that "a non-registrant may not be denied any benefit if he can 'show by a preponderance of evidence' that his failure to register was not knowing and willful." Maybe it wasn't always that way, but Wikipedia says that "there is a procedure to provide an 'information letter' by the SSS for those in these situations, for example recent citizens who entered the US after their 26th birthday."
You have a four-digit user ID, so you're probably too old to take advantage of this. That said, I do hope that by posting this I can raise awareness of the procedure so that other people don't lose eligibility.
Calling Global Foundries AMD's "long-time partner" really dates "MrSeb", he must have started reporting tech news in the last three years. Global Foundries isn't just a "partner" to AMD, it's part-owned by AMD, and was spun out of AMD's manufacturing and merged with Chartered Semiconductor.
Your description is also inaccurate. Instruction decode and L2 cache are shared between cores in Bulldozer modules as well; I wouldn't ding Bulldozer for the shared L2 cache but the L1 cache is write-through, and there doesn't seem to be enough cache bandwidth to keep both integer cores busy. Bulldozer is not a 3-issue design, it is a 4-issue design. With regards to Bulldozer's Achilles' heel, I think that its deficiency in single-threaded performance comes more from actual cache misses and latency than the smaller instruction window.
I could be proven wrong by architectural studies that come out in the future. Either way, those studies will be interesting.
It's apparent from jobs.intel.com that Intel has a large appetite for employees who hold PhDs. Maybe they actually want more people to perform advanced research in semiconductors, computer science, and computer architecture, so they can hire those people? It certainly looks like they're willing to put their money where their appetite is. The "open source" provision is a no-brainier way of protecting themselves from having to pay royalties steaming from research they contribute to. At the very worst, it creates a barrier to entry (have to build their own lab) to other groups seeking to patent developments in those fields for exclusive use. I suppose it's possible that Intel is trying to limit the patentable research coming out of universities, but at least they're doing it with funding, and not political manipulations or lawsuits. Even in that case, research is funded and the fruits of that research become available to the public.
Why is everyone convinced that this is real? Is there some hard evidence that I don't know about? Any evidence indicating:
The iPhone being an iPhone 5?
That the people who say that got an email message from Apple really did get such a message?
That Apple (or an authorized representative) really sent it?
Sneaking around isn't really Apple's modus operandi. If they reacted the way they did last time, this would look totally different, and they haven't given any kind of impression that they were unhappy with the way they handled it last time. If Apple decided to break the law instead of just calling the police (who appear willing to answer Apple's calls) and expose themselves to massive liability with a plan that was very unlikely to work (impersonate a cop and ask for the phone) then why wouldn't they just kick the guy's door in and threaten to shoot him in the head? Once he gave back the iPhone (if he had it) he wouldn't have any evidence to show that Apple threatened him, and if he did, he would probably be too wise to call them on it.
This whole thing screams fake. And tedious fake. It used to be that people in the media were suckered by better con artists than the ones walking around today.
I was in either second or third grade when our classroom teacher showed us how to control LOGO, a programmable turtle that could be used to draw shapes. She put me on a carpet in the center of the room, with a ball of string to unwind in a trail behind myself. She told the class that they would use me to create a shape on the carpet, by telling me where to go.
She asked the class:
what shape to make
which way I should face to start making the shape (a square)
how far forward I should walk to make the first side
what I should do next
etc.
When the square was finished, she discussed how I had repeated some steps (turn 90 degrees, walk forward) and used that as an introduction to for loops. Next, she lead us to the conclusion that we could make a shape of N sides by having me turn 360 / N degrees. Last, she let the class figure out that they could have me approximate a circle with a high value of N.
This whole exercise took maybe two hours. We spent the rest of the afternoon in a lab, programming with Logo, in pairs. Don’t feel bad if you can’t lead a bunch of kids through basic programming and geometry before lunch, this woman was a genius teacher. Her class size was maybe 30. Looking back it’s clear that she must have used some form of mind control to keep us in line.
What's going to be nasty is that I bet there's people out there with Citi accounts that don't know they've got one. When the FDIC illegally seized WAMU for JP Morgen, Citi ended up with my CC. I canceled it, but they sent me another card anyways, and I'd be surprised if a few people didn't end up with a CC account that they don't know about.
I'm sorry, but creator tags were a huge PITA. You can still hide file extensions. And Pages has had a maximized mode for awhile - it's excellent. Sometimes mono-tasking really is the right approach and I'm glad that users get that option.
On a related note, my fiance has made me throw out many things, but I still cling to the issue of Maxim from 2000 where they predict that Osama Bin Laden will start World War III with a terrorist attack in New York City.
The airmen did kill unarmed civilians but you have to realize that these civilians were journalists hanging out with armed men. The journalists were carrying cameras but there were men holding RPGs and AK-47s in that crowd they were hanging out with.
I don't think that's the case. It is my understanding that those civilians weren't killed because they were hanging out with armed men, they were killed because their camera were mistaken for weapons.
The gunsight tracks two of the men, identified by WikiLeaks as the Reuters news staff, as the fliers identify their cameras as weapons. Military spokesman Turner said that during the engagement, the helicopter mistook a camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
I think that what many people are missing is that what Apple is offering is a proprietary implementation of open standards, vs a proprietary implementation of a closed standard. If Apple finds a problem in Safari, it can fix it. If it finds a problem with Flash, it can't. An iPhone owner who doesn't like Apple's implementations of HTML5 or IMAP can get a different smart phone. If he doesn't like Adobe's implementation of Flash, he's hosed.
From the renderings on their site, it looks like they still have the hard edges. At the risk of sound like an apologist, I changed my ergonomics a year ago so I I'm not resting my arms on the edge and my hards feel much better. I initially did that so I wouldn't break my new desktop keyboard tray, but I started doing it when using laptops as well.
I have a disability similar to dyslexia, called dysgraphia. It makes writing by hand extremely difficult, but my ability to use a keyboard is normal. This was documented by a psychiatrist and so I have taken some writing exams with a laptop. No one has ever given me grief for it. That said, there is no way that a ban on laptops applying to students with recognized and diagnosed disabilities would survive a suit unless there were "adequate accommodations" made for the student. Student Disability Services at Cornell University offered to have a classmate carbon copy their notes, but I found it more convenient to make audio recordings of the lectures.
Interesting side note: Firefox's spell checker recognizes dyslexia, but not dysgraphia.
Is there something I'm missing? It seems like the deadline is for applying to receive "federal incentive monies" to roll out the new technology. If they're not rolling out the new technology, then they shouldn't be applying for the money. If they are rolling out the technology, then send in the application for free money.
You're totally correct: a direct comparison between POWER and Itanium is difficult because the architectures have different purposes. That said, do you know of any benchmarks where the new (or old) Itanium chips clobber POWER6 (or 7) processors? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm really curious.
The controversy surrounds the fact that they tend to be expensive and use an energy-dense, highly flammable metal, to react with the readily available oxygen in the air.
TFA doesn't say if these lithium-air batteries are more flammable than other lithium batteries. "Controversial" should probably be dropped from the summary.
Slashdot Mirror
To be sure that no misunderstands your post, RdRand doesn't just use noise in the general hardware, it has its own dedicated hardware to generate that noise and the subsequent random numbers.
From one of Intel's software blogs:
And an article (with pictures!) from IEEE Spectrum Magazine: Behind Intel's New Random-Number Generator They go through some of the history and theory of RNG including the lava lamp generator.
After my wife's EVO 4G was stolen last year, I shopped around for a replacement. I was stunned by the number of people in the Portland area advertising EVOs, saying "like new!" and "will only work on Cricket, don't bring this to a Sprint store!" Of course I reported the phone stolen to Sprint and the police, but there's only so much that does.
Discussions of Wayland on Slashdot tend to be all about a lack of network forwarding or missing features, so I think I'll share some of the positive things I expect to see from Wayland:
I'm not aware of any X.org implementation that's gotten 60 FPS on an embedded GPU. That's not me trying to knock X.org, say anyone should stop using it, or say people need to "upgrade" to Wayland before it's feature-complete. That's me recognizing the reality of X.org not being "one size fits all" in a world where embedded or mobile Linux (think Android) outsells (and out-deploys) Linux on big core 10 or maybe 100-to-1.
Disclaimer: A big part of my job of performance optimization of applications on Linux running on mobile devices.
The gay sex scenes (which really aren't even scenes!) are wife's favorite parts of Mass Effect II. Sure it might gain Renegade points for my fem shep, but I have to listen to my wife - my avatar is modeled after her. I'm pleased to see EA morph is to a less evil company over time, but I wouldn't say I love them, especially since Mass Effect III isn't (and won't be) on Steam. I do hope they resist pressure and put more (optional) lesbianism instead of less into future games.
Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)
IBM is in there, too at #8
Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds
Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds
Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.
If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)
Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?
all made the top Linux contributor list, too.
I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.
Now, how is ARM Cisc? Last time I checked, it stood for Advanced Risc Machines has technology subverted the acronym?
ARM chips since ARMv7 have supported the Thumb-2 instruction set, which has 32-bit instructions with CISC features like making an optional left shift available to most instruction, and allowing each comparison to be followed by up to four conditional statements. It's what most JIT and my compilers target now, IIRC.
While binary, proprietary software also dominates the mobile market, it is compiled against iOS and Android, where it is Intel, not Risc, which fights an uphill battle.
It's absolutely true that it's Intel whom must the uphill battle here. The fact that many Android applications are compiled to DEX, and the emergence of HTML5 runtimes offer some relief. I still think that despite Intel's dominance of the desktop market, it faced an uphill fight in the server arena as well, where it was competing against OSes which generally did not (yet) run on IA, using Linux and Windows.
How many times Intel has tried to compete against Risc?
[...]
Forgive me, but colour me skeptic this time around.
It's true that Intel hasn't achieved great success with it's own RISC designs, but what about the times that Intel competed using its CISC designs against:
It's also worth noting that all of the modern ARM-based SoCs that Medfield will compete against are CISC designs, not RISC, so I guess my list doesn't even matter :-/
Being ineligible for Pell Grants and government work is rough, but the Selective Service FAQ says that "a non-registrant may not be denied any benefit if he can 'show by a preponderance of evidence' that his failure to register was not knowing and willful." Maybe it wasn't always that way, but Wikipedia says that "there is a procedure to provide an 'information letter' by the SSS for those in these situations, for example recent citizens who entered the US after their 26th birthday."
You have a four-digit user ID, so you're probably too old to take advantage of this. That said, I do hope that by posting this I can raise awareness of the procedure so that other people don't lose eligibility.
Calling Global Foundries AMD's "long-time partner" really dates "MrSeb", he must have started reporting tech news in the last three years. Global Foundries isn't just a "partner" to AMD, it's part-owned by AMD, and was spun out of AMD's manufacturing and merged with Chartered Semiconductor.
Your description is also inaccurate. Instruction decode and L2 cache are shared between cores in Bulldozer modules as well; I wouldn't ding Bulldozer for the shared L2 cache but the L1 cache is write-through, and there doesn't seem to be enough cache bandwidth to keep both integer cores busy. Bulldozer is not a 3-issue design, it is a 4-issue design. With regards to Bulldozer's Achilles' heel, I think that its deficiency in single-threaded performance comes more from actual cache misses and latency than the smaller instruction window. I could be proven wrong by architectural studies that come out in the future. Either way, those studies will be interesting.
It's apparent from jobs.intel.com that Intel has a large appetite for employees who hold PhDs. Maybe they actually want more people to perform advanced research in semiconductors, computer science, and computer architecture, so they can hire those people? It certainly looks like they're willing to put their money where their appetite is. The "open source" provision is a no-brainier way of protecting themselves from having to pay royalties steaming from research they contribute to. At the very worst, it creates a barrier to entry (have to build their own lab) to other groups seeking to patent developments in those fields for exclusive use. I suppose it's possible that Intel is trying to limit the patentable research coming out of universities, but at least they're doing it with funding, and not political manipulations or lawsuits. Even in that case, research is funded and the fruits of that research become available to the public.
Why is everyone convinced that this is real? Is there some hard evidence that I don't know about? Any evidence indicating:
Sneaking around isn't really Apple's modus operandi. If they reacted the way they did last time, this would look totally different, and they haven't given any kind of impression that they were unhappy with the way they handled it last time. If Apple decided to break the law instead of just calling the police (who appear willing to answer Apple's calls) and expose themselves to massive liability with a plan that was very unlikely to work (impersonate a cop and ask for the phone) then why wouldn't they just kick the guy's door in and threaten to shoot him in the head? Once he gave back the iPhone (if he had it) he wouldn't have any evidence to show that Apple threatened him, and if he did, he would probably be too wise to call them on it.
This whole thing screams fake. And tedious fake. It used to be that people in the media were suckered by better con artists than the ones walking around today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)
I was in either second or third grade when our classroom teacher showed us how to control LOGO, a programmable turtle that could be used to draw shapes. She put me on a carpet in the center of the room, with a ball of string to unwind in a trail behind myself. She told the class that they would use me to create a shape on the carpet, by telling me where to go.
She asked the class:
When the square was finished, she discussed how I had repeated some steps (turn 90 degrees, walk forward) and used that as an introduction to for loops. Next, she lead us to the conclusion that we could make a shape of N sides by having me turn 360 / N degrees. Last, she let the class figure out that they could have me approximate a circle with a high value of N.
This whole exercise took maybe two hours. We spent the rest of the afternoon in a lab, programming with Logo, in pairs. Don’t feel bad if you can’t lead a bunch of kids through basic programming and geometry before lunch, this woman was a genius teacher. Her class size was maybe 30. Looking back it’s clear that she must have used some form of mind control to keep us in line.
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/722/ (Computer Problems)
What's going to be nasty is that I bet there's people out there with Citi accounts that don't know they've got one. When the FDIC illegally seized WAMU for JP Morgen, Citi ended up with my CC. I canceled it, but they sent me another card anyways, and I'd be surprised if a few people didn't end up with a CC account that they don't know about.
Really? Was WAMU solvent or something?
I'm sorry, but creator tags were a huge PITA. You can still hide file extensions. And Pages has had a maximized mode for awhile - it's excellent. Sometimes mono-tasking really is the right approach and I'm glad that users get that option.
I do remember, Mad Magazine predicted it, too.
On a related note, my fiance has made me throw out many things, but I still cling to the issue of Maxim from 2000 where they predict that Osama Bin Laden will start World War III with a terrorist attack in New York City.
What happened to the "You're a kitty!" tag? I think it's very appropriate. For those who haven't seen it, XKCD's "Cat Proximity" http://xkcd.com/231/
The airmen did kill unarmed civilians but you have to realize that these civilians were journalists hanging out with armed men. The journalists were carrying cameras but there were men holding RPGs and AK-47s in that crowd they were hanging out with.
I don't think that's the case. It is my understanding that those civilians weren't killed because they were hanging out with armed men, they were killed because their camera were mistaken for weapons.
From http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6344FW20100406:
The gunsight tracks two of the men, identified by WikiLeaks as the Reuters news staff, as the fliers identify their cameras as weapons. Military spokesman Turner said that during the engagement, the helicopter mistook a camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
I think that what many people are missing is that what Apple is offering is a proprietary implementation of open standards, vs a proprietary implementation of a closed standard. If Apple finds a problem in Safari, it can fix it. If it finds a problem with Flash, it can't. An iPhone owner who doesn't like Apple's implementations of HTML5 or IMAP can get a different smart phone. If he doesn't like Adobe's implementation of Flash, he's hosed.
From the renderings on their site, it looks like they still have the hard edges. At the risk of sound like an apologist, I changed my ergonomics a year ago so I I'm not resting my arms on the edge and my hards feel much better. I initially did that so I wouldn't break my new desktop keyboard tray, but I started doing it when using laptops as well.
There's also the Carbon/Cocoa issue from that same time period.
I have a disability similar to dyslexia, called dysgraphia. It makes writing by hand extremely difficult, but my ability to use a keyboard is normal. This was documented by a psychiatrist and so I have taken some writing exams with a laptop. No one has ever given me grief for it. That said, there is no way that a ban on laptops applying to students with recognized and diagnosed disabilities would survive a suit unless there were "adequate accommodations" made for the student. Student Disability Services at Cornell University offered to have a classmate carbon copy their notes, but I found it more convenient to make audio recordings of the lectures.
Interesting side note: Firefox's spell checker recognizes dyslexia, but not dysgraphia.
Is there something I'm missing? It seems like the deadline is for applying to receive "federal incentive monies" to roll out the new technology. If they're not rolling out the new technology, then they shouldn't be applying for the money. If they are rolling out the technology, then send in the application for free money.
You're totally correct: a direct comparison between POWER and Itanium is difficult because the architectures have different purposes. That said, do you know of any benchmarks where the new (or old) Itanium chips clobber POWER6 (or 7) processors? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm really curious.
The controversy surrounds the fact that they tend to be expensive and use an energy-dense, highly flammable metal, to react with the readily available oxygen in the air.
TFA doesn't say if these lithium-air batteries are more flammable than other lithium batteries. "Controversial" should probably be dropped from the summary.