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Zen 3: +17% IPC?
It is pointed out that in mixed operations that leverage both integer and floating-point units of the Zen architecture, Zen 3 could deliver a 17% IPC gain on average. It is also stated that the integer ops are getting a 10-12% increase on average while the floating-point operations could feature up to a 50% increase in performance. Integer operations are what most general consumer apps use but in floating-point heavy applications, Zen 3 has the potential to be a big game-changer for the industry and especially the server market (HPC/Datacenters).
Big if true. Looks like a worthwhile upgrade to Zen/Zen+ systems if your motherboard is compatible. Otherwise, it might be better to wait it out until Zen 4 on a new AM5 socket, likely allowing upgrades to future Zen 5 and Zen 6 CPUs.
End of Year Stats
JMH requested some site data and I haven't done one of these up in a while, so here goes.
Top 20 viewed stories of 2019 as of NOW()
+---------------------------------------------------------+------------------+-------+
| Story | Submitter | Hits |
+---------------------------------------------------------+------------------+-------+
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/06/24/1233205 | martyb | 36429 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/08/23/0136213 | Anonymous Coward | 14008 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/26/0356205 | Anonymous Coward | 13165 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/01/25/0435205 | martyb | 12502 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/04/11/1029234 | Anonymous Coward | 12021 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/04/15/2012241 | Freeman | 10861 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/01/20/192257 | aristarchus | 9113 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/21/0256218 | martyb | 9083 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/01/03/1431210 | aristarchus | 8672 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/01/27/1941254 | martyb | 8612 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/04/18/1615204 | martyb | 8555 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/05/01/1713236 | AnonTechie | 8528 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/04/17/0824259 | aristarchus | 7718 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/01/13/1816246 | takyon | 7396 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/02/22/0241259 | aristarchus | 7272 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/17/1114248 | Anonymous Coward | 7226 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/02/15/0416210 | martyb | 7190 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/11/01/1146203 | Anonymous Coward | 7135 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/02/12/2347255 | takyon | 6730 |
| https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/11/0256224 | RandomFactor | 6525 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+------------------+-------+
Most mods for ... in 2019 (in order of the db id of the reason)
Offtopic
+----------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+----------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 1007 |
| realDonaldTrump | 221 |
| Runaway1956 | 186 |
| aristarchus | 138 |
| khallow | 51 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 47 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 28 |
| jmichaelhudsondotnet | 28 |
| fustakrakich | 26 |
| c0lo | 25 |
+----------------------+------+
Flamebait
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 1817 |
| Runaway1956 | 194 |
| aristarchus | 155 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 139 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 121 |
| realDonaldTrump | 86 |
| khallow | 83 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 76 |
| ikanreed | 63 |
| Bot | 40 |
+--------------------+------+
Troll
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 4490 |
| Runaway1956 | 470 |
| realDonaldTrump | 431 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 307 |
| khallow | 278 |
| aristarchus | 242 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 178 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 177 |
| jmorris | 117 |
| VLM | 101 |
+--------------------+------+
Redundant
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 466 |
| aristarchus | 54 |
| khallow | 50 |
| realDonaldTrump | 46 |
| Runaway1956 | 45 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 26 |
| fustakrakich | 19 |
| DeathMonkey | 19 |
| c0lo | 15 |
| Bot | 11 |
+--------------------+------+
Insightful
+--------------------+-------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+-------+
| Anonymous Coward | 11091 |
| Runaway1956 | 900 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 650 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 612 |
| JoeMerchant | 512 |
| DannyB | 468 |
| Thexalon | 465 |
| c0lo | 441 |
| DeathMonkey | 410 |
| ikanreed | 405 |
+--------------------+-------+
Interesting
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 6465 |
| JoeMerchant | 536 |
| takyon | 516 |
| Runaway1956 | 495 |
| DannyB | 307 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 279 |
| bzipitidoo | 265 |
| c0lo | 257 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 256 |
| Thexalon | 232 |
+--------------------+------+
Informative
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 6776 |
| takyon | 589 |
| DeathMonkey | 531 |
| c0lo | 420 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 366 |
| Runaway1956 | 354 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 337 |
| NotSanguine | 227 |
| JoeMerchant | 219 |
| ikanreed | 217 |
+--------------------+------+
Funny
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 5100 |
| DannyB | 422 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 319 |
| Runaway1956 | 276 |
| c0lo | 245 |
| Bot | 242 |
| takyon | 235 |
| aristarchus | 234 |
| realDonaldTrump | 214 |
| Gaaark | 199 |
+--------------------+------+
Overrated
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 497 |
| Runaway1956 | 63 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 51 |
| DeathMonkey | 27 |
| ikanreed | 27 |
| aristarchus | 26 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 25 |
| c0lo | 24 |
| realDonaldTrump | 22 |
| The Shire | 19 |
+--------------------+------+
Underrated
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 610 |
| Runaway1956 | 73 |
| realDonaldTrump | 36 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 34 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 26 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 22 |
| khallow | 20 |
| VLM | 18 |
| Arik | 16 |
| aristarchus | 16 |
+--------------------+------+
Spam (including moderations that were reversed)
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 321 |
| DeathMonkey | 8 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 5 |
| aristarchus | 4 |
| NPC-131072 | 2 |
| mars90 | 2 |
| mrpg | 1 |
| edIII | 1 |
| sigterm | 1 |
| stretch611 | 1 |
+--------------------+------+
Disagree
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 677 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 93 |
| Runaway1956 | 75 |
| khallow | 54 |
| fustakrakich | 34 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 30 |
| Arik | 24 |
| janrinok | 21 |
| c0lo | 20 |
| The Shire | 19 |
+--------------------+------+
Touché
+--------------------+------+
| Nick | Mods |
+--------------------+------+
| Anonymous Coward | 2758 |
| DeathMonkey | 234 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 192 |
| Runaway1956 | 161 |
| c0lo | 157 |
| takyon | 138 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 131 |
| DannyB | 128 |
| khallow | 96 |
| fustakrakich | 95 |
+--------------------+------+
HA! The only moderation list I didn't make was Offtopic!
NVIDIA, CUDA, and F@H on Linux
Ohhhh-kay - video cards on Linux have always been a hassle. Nothing works right, right? Except, when it does work right, it's really right!
I've finally figured out how to make NVIDIA GPU's work right, and I'm documenting it here, for myself and anyone else who can use the information.
First, you download the SGFXI script from https://smxi.org/site/install.htm
After a new install of your OS, run the script. It takes all the headache out of blacklisting Nouveau etc. It's all in the script, you need not even think about it. By default, the script will install the latest current NVIDIA driver. Using the switch -o when you invoke it, you can choose which driver to install. But, the choices are limited, it doesn't support all available NVIDIA drivers. It's probably best to just go with the default, which is currently 440.40.
That latest, greatest, shiny new 440.40 should be your choice of driver anyways, right? Nope. It doesn't crunch very well, if it crunches at all.
The script runs, and announces that the driver is installed, asks if you want to restart your desktop. I always just reboot the computer.
So, the computer boots to your desktop, with 440.40, it's time to install the good, working CUDA driver. Grab the CUDA toolkit from https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
I boot into single user before running it, but that isn't strictly necessary. Navigate to wherever you downloaded it to, and invoke it with './cuda_10.2.89_440.33.01_linux.run' or similar, as Super User. Some of the NVIDIA installers balk at SUDO, so you probably need to be SU instead of SUDO.
It's a very large download, 2.5 gig if I recall correctly. Just wait for it to extract itself, and you'll get a menu, giving you options of features to install. For our purposes here, we ONLY NEED the driver. I'm not a programmer, and I'm not going to learn how to make CUDA jump through hoops. F@H has already figured that out, they just need the proper driver to make the hoops with. Unselect everything but the driver, and tell it to run.
When the driver is installed, reboot, and install F@H, or whatever programs you might be running that require CUDA.
IF you had your card working with any other driver, this 440.33 driver will make your GPU look like an upgraded video card!
And, no, the sgfxi script will not install this driver. If you extract it, and put it into the sgfxi/downloads folder, the script will simply tell you that the driver is unsupported.
For science, I should repeat the process a couple dozen times. I'm lazy though - 4 runs is more than enough!
I hope someone finds that useful! Enjoy.
Merry Christmas
You're all getting ten extra mod points courtesy of the goofy staff here at SN. Let us know if they don't fit and we can exchange them.
Happy Christmas, Hermione. Happy Christmas, Ron
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good net.
(Happy Christmas sounds better to me than Merry Christmas)
Baba Ram Dass Dies at Age 88
Baba Ram Dass, Proponent of LSD and New Age Enlightenment, Dies at 88
Baba Ram Dass, who epitomized the 1960s of legend by popularizing psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary, a fellow Harvard academic, before finding spiritual inspiration in India, died on Sunday at his home on Maui, Hawaii. He was 88.
His death was announced on his official Instagram account.
Having returned from India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert, became a peripatetic lecturer on New Age possibilities and a popular author of more than a dozen inspirational books.
The first of his books, “Be Here Now” (1971), sold more than two million copies and established him as an exuberant exponent of finding salvation through helping others.
He started a foundation to combat blindness in India and Nepal, supported reforestation in Latin America, and developed health education programs for American Indians in South Dakota.
Five sentenced to death in Kamal Khashoggi assassination
Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor said on Monday five people had been sentenced to death over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October last year, but two top figures investigated over the killing have been exonerated.
"The court issued death sentences on five men who directly took part in the killing," the prosecutor, Shalaan al-Shalaan, said in a statement.
Saudi prosecutors had said deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri oversaw the Washington Post columnist's killing in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate in October 2018 and that he was advised by the royal court's media czar Saud al-Qahtani.
Moving on
Of the 11 unnamed individuals indicted in the case, five were sentenced to death, while three face jail terms totalling 24 years, and the others were acquitted. All can appeal the verdicts.
A key thing here is that it's a huge public acknowledgement that the Kingdom killed Khashoggi. But none of the higher ups involved, particularly the Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman are affected. And it remains to be seen what comes of the people sentenced to death. They might win those appeals or their executions might be faked.
Only cops should have guns!!
Here, we have a case of "blame the victim", and the cops are going to get away with it. The fact that she is young, white, and pretty will work against her, I'm sure. And, she's from Alabama. The Gestapo busts in on her, while she's taking a nap, shoot her down, and they have the nerve to say, "Well, if she hadn't pointed her gun at our officers . . . "
This, among many other incidents, is why I can't follow the liberal logic. WTF do any of you want the cops to have guns, but deny yourselves the opportunity to defend yourself from those rogue cops? Disarm the police, then I might think about giving up my own weapons. Key words are "might" and "think about".
WILMER, Ala. (WALA) -- A huge investigation underway after a woman is shot during an undercover warrant roundup. It happened Thursday morning at a home in Wilmer on Old Moffat Road.
Turns out the suspect agents were looking for was already in Metro Jail.
"As agents went up to the house they detained two men outside, who said there was a woman still inside. As they went to make entry into the house... This lady had armed herself with a shotgun and the entry team was giving her orders to drop the gun, put the gun down, drop the gun several times -- over a period of a few seconds it seems like... And there is video recordings of that. She didn't and she pointed the gun at one of them -- then two or three agents fired upon her striking her three or four times," said Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran.
The woman idenitfied as Ann Rylee was not who agents were looking for. Instead, they were there to execute outstanding drug warrants for 41-year-old Nicholas McLeod -- the uncle of Rylee's fiance.
McLeod has a long drug arrest history. Prior arrests list the home on Moffat Road as McLeod's home address. Turns out he was already in Metro Jail. McLeod booked in on Wednesday at 3:36 p.m. on the outstanding warrants.
Sheriff Cochran says had they known -- they wouldn't have gone to the house.
"We do know there was a miscommunication... And we've narrowed it down to one of two things: The investigators did not make one final check this morning to send teams out to make the arrests or warrants section did not communicate to the computer system -- that the warrants were no longer active. We're running that down," said Cochran. "However, if she would not have pointed a gun at the agents -- they would have determined all of that on the scene and would have bid her a good day and thank you very much."
It's a multi agency team -- running the warrant round-up consisting of Mobile County Sheriff's deputies, Homeland Security, and agents with the U.S. Marshals Office. Sheriff Cochran tells us it was not one of his deputies that fired the shots.
Meanwhile, there is no body camera footage because the Mobile County Sheriff's Office doesn't have body cameras.
The Alabama Bureau of Investigation was called in to take over the case.
All content © 2019, WALA; Mobile, AL. (A Meredith Corporation Station). All Rights Reserved.
https://www.fox10tv.com/news/mobile_county/mcso-sheriff-woman-pointed-gun-at-officer-before-she-was/article_effd4f0c-22da-11ea-b92c-97a70d44e2ba.html
More Zen 2 Laptop Chips Leak Out
That's Ryzen AF: Some Old AMD Chips Might Be Getting a 12nm Makeover
AMD's first-gen Ryzen processors are selling at all-time low pricing, but it turns out that some of these chips are filtering out into the hands of enthusiasts with an unexpected surprise: The 12nm process, which is more efficient and faster than the original manufacturing process used with AMD's freshman Ryzen chips.
The original Ryzen 5 1600 landed with six cores and twelve threads powered by the 14nm GlobalFoundries process, but a new "AF" version has appeared at retailers for a mere $85 and apparently comes with the 12nm Zen+ architecture.
[...] The newer AF models also come with the Wraith Stealth cooler, which is a lesser cooler compared to the Wraith Spire that came with the original 1600 models.
Performance may or may not be slightly better.
8 cores at a 15 Watt TDP sounds great (I have a Llano system with 4 cores at 35 Watts), although we'll have to see if hyperthreading is dropped or if that was just related to how it was tested.
I don't think using Vega graphics instead of Navi is a deal killer. But if there is no AV1 decode on the media engine, I don't want to get it. Also, I want to start seeing some AMD APUs with HBM or stacked DRAM on the chip, which could come with Zen 3 or Zen 4, if not later. AFAIK, Intel isn't planning to stop including eDRAM on certain models, and the next-gen consoles will probably have the CPU, GPU, and RAM packed in close.
Here are some proper APUs. Except I'm not sure I care about a 45 Watt TDP chip in that form factor anymore. Even if I take the hit down to 15 Watts, it would perform better than any laptop I've used.
The important thing is that this could help AMD claw back some market share in the segment and get some design wins.
AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 XT Graphics Cards Bottlenecked by PCIe Bandwidth?
If Radeon RX 5500 XT launch reviews were crippled by using PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0, WTF is AMD's marketing department doing?
There is an expectation that APUs will completely take over 1080p gaming in the near future, and the already tiny die size of the RX 5500 XT is notable. Shrink to "7nm+" or "5nm" and that level of performance will require an even smaller die size.
True RNG for the Orange Pi Zero, Part 5, Tiamat Version 0.0
And so here's the first prototype of my RNG hat based on the Lampert circuit: Tiamat Version 0.0, named for the ancient Babylonian goddess of chaos. Yeah, I know it's very crude. The protoboard I'm using there is this one. I had Elecrow (a Shenzhen-based electronics manufacturer) build those protoboards for me, mainly because the Github project recommended them, but their service, shall we say, leaves something to be desired. They made me wait more than two weeks for the boards, mainly because they broke many of the boards on their first attempt and somehow misplaced the boards they made on the second attempt, and it was the third try before they finally got things right. Anyway that left me with nearly a hundred of these protoboards (the original order called for 60, but they included the remaining unbroken boards from the first run), at a cost to me of $5 for the boards and $20 for shipping. Maybe I was just unlucky.
This Electronic Eel protoboard let me solder most of the surface mount components easily enough, with the exception of the TLV3202, which I stupidly ordered in MSOP8 (0.65 mm lead pitch), too fine for the board. I should have checked the package type before ordering it, as it appears to also be available in SOIC8, or maybe I should have just gotten a TLV3201 in SOT23-5 since the circuit really uses only one comparator stage. So I had to use an adapter, and it was rather hard to get it properly mounted (though I'd done that before). The protoboard actually has a ground plane so it was not too hard to get all of the ground connections done properly, though one needs to be careful with through hole components because the outer edge of the holes links to the ground plane. Anyway, I eventually succeeded in building it. Just tested it and it seems to work well enough. The raw circuit makes something like 6.8 bits of entropy per byte without debiasing, just as in my earlier breadboard tests, so only fairly modest debiasing is sufficient to provide reasonably good randomness.
Now I'm learning how to use KiCad and we'll see about making a real custom circuit board for this. It's a fairly small circuit so I'm kinda hesitant to order another production run from Elecrow or some other PCB manufacturing company since it's only around 33 mm × 33 mm, so for a 100 mm × 100 mm panel each one would have nine boards, so a ten-panel run would get me ninety boards, way too many for my purposes... Maybe I'll have them make several other boards on the same panel, perhaps more of the Electronic Eel protoboards, or something similarly useful. Might cost a bit more but my costs are already dominated by shipping. I really wish there were a local manufacturer so I'd not have to pay so much for shipping. I'll have to make very sure about the board dimensions and holes this time because I probably won't be able to cut these boards if they don't fit in the case.
