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Hot Chips 2020 in August
Online-only conference, August 16th to August 18th.
IBM, USCB, and Google's quantum computing presentations should be interesting in light of: Some Serious Drama Went Down on Google’s Quantum Computing Team and IBM and Google disagree on quantum computing achievement
Other interesting presentations:
Marvell ThunderX3 ARM server CPU
2nd generation of the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine
Alibaba RISC-V
ARM Cortex-M55
DeepMind and Google's 2nd and 3rd generation tensor processing units (TPUs)
Manticore: A 4096-core RISC-V Chiplet Architecture for Ultra-efficient Floating-point Computing
Baidu Kunlun AI processor
Alibaba Hanguang 800 NPU
Grubman Shire Meiselas HACK: Trump Emails?
The unidentified cybergang who dumped Lady Gaga's data after the hack of a prominent entertainment law firm have dumped what they say is data about the president.
The cybergang dropped links to "the first part of data, with the most harmless information," on the dark web site. A sampling of the files reviewed by Business Insider were were legal emails, documents, and contracts mentioning the president, from an "Apprentice" costar's emails seeking to land a new show during his campaign, to the contracts negotiating legal use of his videotaped interviews.
The ransomware gang has stolen data from businesses and leaked it on a dark web site in the past, and a ransomware expert who has followed past data dumps said it's difficult to know what they data they have stolen – but said the crime adds to a wave of highly public ransomware extortion attacks.
Criminal group that hacked law firm threatens to release Trump documents
Hackers Release Dozens of Law Firm’s Emails Citing Trump, but There’s No ‘Dirty Laundry’
The criminals’ claims to have revealing info on Trump in connection with their hack of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks were puzzling, given that the law firm has never represented Donald Trump or the Trump Organization.
The hackers claimed the emails they released Saturday contain “the most harmless information” about Trump — apparently trying to imply they are holding back more compelling material. But considering that what they published contained nothing remotely interesting, it seems likely that the cybercriminals are vastly exaggerating the value of the data they’ve stolen.
Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks refused to pay the cyberthieves’ initial $21 million ransom, after which the hackers doubled their demand to $42 million. Now that it’s clear the law firm, which has brought in the FBI to conduct a criminal investigation, will not even negotiate with the criminal ring, the hackers are claiming they will auction off the client data they stole on the dark web.
The attack on the Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks network, which appears to have occurred on or around May 7, allegedly resulted in the theft of documents on multiple music and entertainment figures. The hackers have claimed those include Lady Gaga, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige, Ella Mai, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Cam Newton, Bette Midler, Jessica Simpson, Priyanka Chopra, Idina Menzel and Run DMC.
What is the name of the group?
TSMC "5nm" Products Leak, Includes Intel
Products manufactured on the upcoming TSMC 5nm have already been confirmed in a leak from ChinaTimes and while it had products that we were already expecting: AMD Zen 4 CPUs, AMD Radeon RDNA 3 GPUs and NVIDIA Hopper GPU, it also had an unexpected entry: Intel's Xe graphics. There have been a lot of rumblings on the rumor mill of Intel moving to 5nm and this is another feather in that hat. While the bit about AMD CPUs and GPUs and NVIDIA Hopper is confirmed, I would take the portion about Intel Xe with a grain of salt because as per my information - nothing is set in stone right now.
[...] 2021~2022 Mass Production:
AMD: Zen4-architecture CPUs and RDNA3-architecture GPUs
Broadcom: High-speed network processor
Qualcomm: Snapdragon 875 and X60 and other 5G modem
Nvidia: Hopper-architecture GPUs
Mediatek: Dimensity 2000 series 5G chips
Intel: Xe-architecture GPUs or FPGA
Apple: A15 application processor
Huawei HiSilicon: Kirin 1100, AI and Server processors
Zen 4 may launch in late 2021, but could easily slip into 2022.
Intel was said to be producing a high-end GPU on TSMC "7nm", so this would be a follow-up. It could also be an indication that their own "7nm" process (comparable to TSMC "5nm") is failing, or they are hedging their bets and can make any product they want on that node.
Dimensity 1000 looked good on paper, so the follow-up should be interesting.
Separate Snapdragon 875 info:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 flagship 5nm chipset’s details leaked
WTF is "Bluetooth Milan"?
World Too Bleak for Black Mirror Season 6
Black Mirror creator not working on season 6 because we already feel depressed
Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker believes humanity could use a bleakness break.
Brooker revealed to the U.K.'s Radio Times that he's not currently working on writing season 6 of Netflix's Emmy-winning series because we've already found ourselves plunged into a nightmarish dystopia like those explored in his shows.
‘Black Mirror’ Creator Says the World Is Too Bleak Right Now for Season 6 to Happen
BreadBee: $10 Crowdfund, Smaller Than RasPi Zero
BreadBee: A tiny alternative to the Raspberry Pi Zero that supports Linux and costs just US$10
The BreadBee is an ultra-compact board for developers. Measuring in at just 32 x 30 mm, the BreadBee is considerably smaller than other SBCs like the Raspberry Pi Zero. The BreadBee is rather tall though as developer Daniel Palmer has included an Ethernet port. The RJ45 port can transmit data at up to 100 MBit/s. The BreadBee does not support Wi-Fi, but a future model may have an Ampak Wi-Fi module in place of the Ethernet port.
The BreadBee is based on an MStar MSC313E processor, which integrates an ARM Cortex-A7 core with NEON and FPU that runs at 1.0 GHz. There is also 64 MB of DDR2 RAM and 16 MP of SPI NOR flash memory.
Additionally, Palmer has included two multi-pin headers. Specifically, there is a 24-pin dual-row header with a 2.54 mm pitch on one side, which support SPI, I2C, UART and GPIO. On the reverse, Palmer has included a 21-pin header with a 1.27 mm pitch that supports SD/SDIO, USB 2.0 and GPIO.
Also at CNX Software.
BreadBee board will soon be launched on Crowd Supply, and the cost to make the board is said to be around $10 in small quantities. I think Daniel is a regular reader and commenter on CNX Software and may be able to answer any questions here.
No Discussion Here
This is the journal entry mentioned in Meta: Coronaids and Subscriptions.
AMD NUCs Meet "Financial Horsepower"
AMD was introducing its Ryzen-based mini PCs in late 2019 as alternatives for Intel’s NUC models, but most of these came powered with embedded solutions like the V1000 and R1000 CPUs, or at most Ryzen 2000 APUs. Only Zotac announced a few Ryzen 3 3200U models earlier this year and the company hinted that we could eventually see some mini PCs powered by the freshly launched Ryzen 4000 Renoir APUs later this year. Anandtech's respected reviewer Ian Cutress suggests that this might not be the case and it may take mini PC OEMs up to a year to introduce Renoir-based models, as Intel is actually incentivizing most prominent vendors to delay or not build any AMD-based mini PCs at all.
Some of the OEMs that already joined AMD’s “anti-NUC alliance” include OnLogic, EEPD, Simply NUC, Tranquil PC and ASRock. While the first four are smaller companies that do not have a highly-diversified portfolio, ASRock is already a well-established mini PC maker, and we would expect more powerful mini PC solutions, yet, as it stands, ASRock just began offering mini PC builds sporting the Ryzen 3000 Picasso APUs along with the older Raven Ridge and Bristol Bridge solutions, and that is exactly one year after the launch of the Picasso APUs, as pointed out by Ian Cutress. We are seeing either a 1-year delay for AMD-based small form-factor models, or absolutely no AMD-based mini PCs in the case of big brands like Dell, Asus or MSI, so Cutress may be onto something here.
AMD best-buds, TSMC, designed an 'enhanced' 5nm node for its future Ryzen chips
In a news story from Chainnews (via @chiakokhua), ostensibly about the cut in 5nm and 7nm production orders from Huawei, the piece also notes that TSMC isn't worried about this drop because Apple has taken up the slack. It's asking for a whole bunch of extra chip wafers, potentially competing with AMD for 5nm demand at the end of this year.
But the piece also goes on to say that: "TSMC is said to have developed a 5nm enhanced version of its process specifically for AMD, which has a capacity requirement of no less than 20,000 12-inch wafers per month."
Gaming laptops will never be the same, and it's all thanks to AMD
Deep Fakes: Neural Voice Puppetry
Neural Voice Puppetry: Audio-driven Facial Reenactment (5m28s video)
This AI Makes "Audio Deepfakes" (5m37s video)
Demo (disabled)
Previously: Deeper Fakes
Bernie Out
Bernie Sanders Drops Out of 2020 Democratic Race for President (archive)
Mr. Sanders championed and popularized liberal policies like “Medicare for all” and free four-year public colleges aimed at lifting up America’s working class, but he faced opposition from many party leaders, elected officials and major donors, as well as large numbers of moderate voters who saw him as too far left.
Mr. Sanders never accepted that argument. In recent weeks he said repeatedly that he had won the ideological debate, asserting that a strong majority of Democrats supported his progressive agenda. But during a striking news conference in Burlington, Vt., last month, he also acknowledged that he was losing the electability battle to Mr. Biden, saying voters had made clear that they thought the former vice president was the best candidate to beat Mr. Trump.
He repeated that argument in his announcement on Wednesday.
“Focusing on that new vision for America is what our campaign has been about and what in fact we have accomplished,’’ he said. “Few would deny that over the course of the past five years our movement has won the ideological struggle.”
Zen 3 + 4 Rumor
According to AdoredTV's sources, the IPC gains in Zen 3 will be on par with that of Zen 2, which is between 10-15% per thread. Multi-threaded workloads could still see larger IPC gains. Zen 3 will also introduce a new CCX design, which could be among those core architecture improvements Dr. Lisa Su had alluded to earlier. Zen 3 will have one CCX with eight cores with a single L3 cache at 32 MB per CCX. Larger caches such as 48 MB or 64 MB are not indicated. With the new cache design, more number of cores now have access to a common L3 cache on the same die. This will likely reduce latency and improve gaming performance. Zen 3 will continue to use SMT-2 and not SMT-4 as was rumored earlier.
[...] Also being confirmed is something that we had reported back in December 2019 — that the 5nm Zen 4 Ryzen 5000 will herald the beginning of a new socket. New information we have now is that Zen 4 will feature more cores, a 1 MB L2 cache, AVX 512 support, and will look to offer much improved IPC.
"Rumor" in this case means "anonymous sources who (supposedly) emailed a YouTuber".
It was previously reported that Zen 3 would have a modest ~10-12% increase in integer operation performance, but something like a 50% increase in floating point operations.
Zen 2 has 512 KiB of L2 cache per core. New denser nodes like TSMC's "5nm" can allow an increase in the amount without increasing latency. This could go up even more in the future if 3D stacking is used, but the only thing that AMD has talked about so far is the use of HBM stacks on an interposer.
Zen 4 should be pretty interesting. AVX-512 support would allow it to catch up to Intel in the few benchmarks and pieces of software that actually use AVX-512 instructions, and could lead it to become more widely used. I am guessing that Zen 4 will have up to 50% more cores, e.g. a 24-core Ryzen 9 5950X.
