12-9-2-20

Aliens exist and Trump almost let it slip


A former Israeli space security chief has sent eyebrows shooting heavenward by saying that earthlings have been in contact with extraterrestrials from a "galactic federation."

"The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet," Haim Eshed, former head of Israel's Defense Ministry's space directorate

Eshed said cooperation agreements had been signed between species, including an "underground base in the depths of Mars" where there are American astronauts and alien representatives.

"There is an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here," he said.

https://www.techpowerup.com/274967/psa-a...-installed

Quote:If you're a programmer you'd have /facepalm'd by now, let me explain. In a multi-threaded program, Events are often used to synchronize concurrently running threads. Events are a core feature of the Windows operating system, once created, they can be set to "signaled", which will notify every other piece of code that is watching the status of this event—instantly and even across process boundaries. In this case the Radeon Settings program will wait for an event called "DVRReadyEvent" to get created, before it continues with initialization. This event gets created by a separate, independent, driver component, that's supposed to get loaded on startup, too, but apparently never does. The Task Scheduler entries in the screenshot above do show "StartDVR". The naming suggests it's related to the ReLive recording feature that lets you capture and stream gameplay. I guess that part of the driver does indeed check if Radeon hardware is present, and will not start otherwise. Since Windows has no WaitForEventToGetCreated() function, the usual approach is to try to open the event until it can be opened, at which point you know that it does exist.

You're probably asking now, "what if the event never gets created?" Exactly, your program will be hung, forever, caught in an infinite loop. The correct way to implement this code is to either set a time limit for how long the loop should run, or count the number of runs and give up after 100, 1000, 1 million, you pick a number—but it's important to set a reasonable limit.
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Waiting on synchronization signals is very basic programming skills, most midterm students would be able to implement it correctly. That's why I'm so surprised to see such low quality code in a graphics driver component that get installed on hundreds of millions of computers. Modern software development techniques avoid these mistakes by code reviews—one or multiple colleagues read your source code and point out potential issues. There's also "unit testing", which requires developers to write testing code that's separate from the main code. These unit tests can then be executed automatically to measure "code coverage"—how many percent of the program code are verified to be correct through the use of unit tests. Let's just hope AMD fixes this bug, it should be trivial.

If you are affected by this issue, just uninstall the AMD driver from Windows Settings - Apps and Features. If that doesn't work, use DDU. It's not a big deal anyway, what's most important is that you are aware, in case your system feels sluggish after a graphics hardware change.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/31621...-the-grave

Quote:Back in 2015, AMD demonstrated an intriguing concept PC it dubbed “Project Quantum.” It was an AMD high-concept PC that combined up to two Fiji GPUs with an Intel CPU to build a gaming box in a unique form factor. The upper part of the chassis held the closed-loop liquid coolers and exhausted heat out the top, while the bottom of the machine held all of the electronic components.
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Now, AMD has filed for a patent on the design, which has sparked discussion that the company may be preparing to revive it. I have no specific knowledge of AMD’s plans in this regard, but we can speak to the overall competitive situation between AMD and Intel, which is better than it’s been in nearly 15 years. The Ryzen 5000 series is expected to deliver significant performance uplifts, with 1.19x additional IPC and the potential for an unknown amount of additional clock (1.2x – 1.25x are the common figures). Assuming the company delivers, this is a sufficiently large boost to catch many an enthusiast eye. But the performance of Big Navi is still an unknown factor.

It would make sense for AMD to reserve Project Quantum for a time when it was in a much better competitive situation with respect to Intel. The question is, is this a chassis design AMD would license to other companies? The idea that AMD would build the machine itself seems unlikely, since it would essentially be competing against its own customers.

It would be interesting to see if AMD could boost the performance of CPUs it sold into Project Quantum systems, specifically, as a way of creating a premium boutique product — but how that product would be distributed is anyone’s guess. It makes sense for AMD to take out a patent on the Project Quantum concept whether it builds anything around it or not, just to prevent a competitor from sniping the idea out from underneath them.

The fact that people are buzzing about this concept is an example of how much things have changed in the past five years. In 2015, AMD had to outfit its own hardware concept with Intel CPUs in order to get the market to take it seriously. Today, it’s a given that the Ryzen 3000 and 5000 families would be at least competitive for the socket, while the performance of Big Navi is the larger question mark.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/31...ows-on-arm

Quote:For the last couple of years, it’s been possible to buy an ARM PC that runs Windows, with an average user experience that ranges from “acceptable” to “lousy,” depending on what kind of work you need to do with your PC.

Some of the problems Windows 10 on ARM is grappling with today are the same issues Windows RT suffered from in 2012. While Windows on ARM  in 2020 has the x86 emulation capabilities that Windows RT lacked, the feature has been subject to certain restrictions regarding software support. Only 32-bit applications have been supported — and not all of them. Emulated 32-bit gaming is a very hit and miss affair, as this post from Reddit shows.

Now, however, some of these restrictions are going away. In a recent blog post, Microsoft said future versions of Microsoft Edge will use less battery, and that the company is building a native Teams client optimized for Windows on ARM. Finally, the company writes: “We will also expand support for running x64 apps, with x64 emulation starting to roll out to the Windows Insider Program in November.”
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In order to make 64-bit Windows on ARM an attractive prospect, Microsoft needs to deliver four specific things:

Native Apps: One of the ways to make 64-bit x86 emulation more attractive is to reassure people they’ll hardly ever need to use it. This may require straight-up paying the Top 500 most-commonly installed PC app vendors to port their software. x86 has a four-decade lead on ARM when it comes to the total number of native applications, and throwing some cash at this problem is the most straightforward way to make it go away.

Low-Level Driver and API Support: API support can overlap with app support depending on the context, but I decided to group it up with drivers for thematic purposes. The shift to supporting 64-bit x86 applications should include better driver support at every level, from anti-cheat software to accessories and peripherals. One of Microsoft’s biggest goals with the next version of Windows on ARM systems should be to eliminate as many low-level snags and “gotchas” as is humanly possible. Find a way to extend gaming support to a version of OpenGL written after the Clinton Administration.

Faster SoCs: It’s not enough to improve the software side of the equation — the hardware inside these systems needs to come up a few notches as well. This is the Achilles heel of emulation; it’s much harder to improve performance when simultaneously performing code translation. This pressure should reduce as more native applications and better low-level driver and API support become available.

Smooth performance: Several reviews of the Surface Pro X note that the unit often stutters or performs erratically when emulating x86. It’s worth making tasks take slightly longer if the result is a smoother end-user experience. Apps that stutter or hang erratically are much more difficult to navigate than apps that respond at slower but more consistent rates. Faster SoCs, as mentioned above, will help resolve these issues.

How Microsoft responds to the above list will shape the conflict between x86 and ARM in the traditional desktop/laptop space. If the company begins aggressively working to make ARM a full partner in terms of overall software availability, DirectX support, and future game releases, it’s going to bring x86 into direct conflict with ARM in relatively short order. This would be especially true if Nvidia were to use its ARM ownership to build CPU cores specifically intended to challenge Intel and AMD in their core spaces.

Trends like this are why I’ve said we’re looking at the most interesting CPU market in decades. How Microsoft treats ARM will shape the x86-versus-ARM competition. So will Nvidia’s decisions about how to best-leverage its new IP. RISC-V is continuing to gain steam. As for these Windows on ARM systems, Microsoft has said it’s working with Acer, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and its own Surface division to bring Windows 10 on ARM to customers.

Quote:Microsoft has announced that they will be pushing x64 app support on their Windows 10 on Arm operating system. This is part of a move by Microsoft to mainstream adoption of their OS (and related services) on Arm-based platforms, ensuring that the company has a foothold in that market - especially as competition between Arm and x86-x64 architectures increases further and reaches more and more areas. Whereas before, Arm was relegated to low-power, relatively low performance designs, recent years have seen Arm's design performance (and philosophy) looking for higher performance use-cases both in the consumer and server/supercomputing spaces. One needs not look further than NVIDIA's plans to acquire Arm to see how much stock is being placed in Arm's future,
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Adding x64 support to Windows on Arm is arguably more important than the base x86 support, though one couldn't live without the other. As more and more applications have been built from the ground-up on x64 due to increased requirements and the democratization of RAM memory (among other factors), x64 support may finally bring Windows on Arm to a feature-level parity with Windows 10 on x86-64 - and bring the fight against Apple's creator ecosystem that encompasses that firm's Macs through iPads and iPhones.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/the-en...-new-model

Quote:In a surprising turn of events, Nvidia today announced that it's completely killed its current model of SLI, which lets your system run more than one Nvidia graphics cards simultaneously for greater performance.

Nvidia has transferred all SLI implementation responsibilities to the game developer and game engine and won't release new SLI driver profiles for the RTX 20-series and older GPUs starting January 1.

"For GeForce RTX 3090 and future SLI-capable GPUs, SLI will only be supported when implemented natively within the game," Nvidia said.
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What does this mean for SLI? Nvidia hasn't done SLI any favors over the past several years. The GTX 900-series was the final architecture by Nvidia to fully support SLI in its entirety, specifically 3-way and 4-way SLI configurations.
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Now, with Ampere, Nvidia has limited SLI to the RTX 3090, which is poised to be one of if not the best graphics card on the market upon release. But there's good reason for this. Since its inception, SLI has been riddled with bugs, crashes and inconsistent frame times, resulting in choppy gameplay. Getting the tech working correctly requires a lot of optimization from the game developer and from Nvidia. Additionally, there isn't a large market of PC gamers running more than one graphics card in their PC.

With Nvidia dropping SLI support for the RTX 3080 and below, Nvidia can free up resources, allowing its driver teams to work on other things. You might get performance improvements due to low-level API support. Nvidia has stated that SLI's only purpose right now is to make the fastest gaming rigs in the world, and this is a good way to keep that going.

Quote:Buried in the bowels of the driver change-log is a big disclosure, that the RTX 30-series "Ampere" GPUs don't support SLI (as in implicit multi-GPU), only explicit multi-GPU through modern APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan (if supported by the game). NVIDIA has already restricted the NVLink interface needed for SLI only to its topmost RTX 3090 SKU, so the lack of implicit multi-GPU effectively marks the end of SLI for future GPUs. That said, the technology itself is very much present on all GPUs that support it, provided games do.

https://techreport.com/news/3473207/wd-r...-7200-rpm/

Quote:Last time, the issue was Western Digital’s decision to use Shingled Magnetic Recording in its Red NAS drives to squeeze more data onto the drive (negatively impacting some read/write/access speeds). The DataHoarder subreddit has been poking at Red drives again, bringing together an extensive consumer investigation. Western Digital has apparently taken to calling its drives “5400 RPM Class” despite rotating at 7200 RPM. The issue affects a variety of drives according to the Reddit post, including the WD80EMAZ, WD80EZAZ, and apparently others. Some of these are “shucked” drives–pulled from external enclosures–but others appear to be bare drives.

Redditor /u/Amaroko ran an experiment that seems to lay the through out conclusively. They placed a variety of different drives, one at a time, on top of an empty cardboard box with a Blue Yeti mic held above it, then recorded the sounds the drive makes during activity (Gallery). Then they ran the info through spectral analysis. The analysis showed the drive running at 120 cycles per second, which works out to 7,200 cycles per minute.
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Western Digital has since responded to requests for comment on this. Here’s the response they sent to Blocks and Files:
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It seems like Western Digital is saying is that it classifies its drives not on the drive’s actual states, but on the rough performance of the drive in comparison with industry standards. This is a 7200 RPM drive that performs like a 5400 drive as long as you’re not worried about noise or power consumption.

For most users, this kind of thing is going to be relatively inconsequential and go unnoticed. The fact that Western Digital is not just advertising the drive as one speed, but showing it in SMART data, though, is concerning. This is the second time this year the drive maker has been caught telling half-truths about its WD Red NAS drives; that’s only going to put their products under more scrutiny as educated consumers start to lose trust in the brand.

https://www.techpowerup.com/272118/nvidi...-age-of-ai

Quote:NVIDIA and SoftBank Group Corp. (SBG) today announced a definitive agreement under which NVIDIA will acquire Arm Limited from SBG and the SoftBank Vision Fund (together, "SoftBank") in a transaction valued at $40 billion. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to NVIDIA's non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP earnings per share.

https://www.techpowerup.com/271310/corsa...c-offering

Quote:Corsair Gaming has recently filed an initial public offering with a target price of $100 million and will be treated as an emerging growth company. The company intends to list on the Nasdaq under the CRSR symbol. The IPO filing offers some insight into the financial position of Corsair however, many exact dollar values have been withheld in the public filing. Corsair Gaming has sold over 190 million products since 1998 with 85 million of those being sold in the last five years.
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Corsair also provided an interesting insight into who they consider to be their various competitors in various markets:

• Gaming keyboards & mice - Logitech, Razer
  
• Gaming headsets & audio products - Logitech, Razer, Kingston (HyperX)
  
• Gaming & creator streaming gear - Logitech, AVerMedia
  
• Gaming controllers - Microsoft, Logitech
  
• Power supplies, cooling solutions & computer cases - Cooler Master, NZXT, EVGA, Seasonic, Thermaltake
  
• Memory modules - G.Skill, Kingston (HyperX), Micron (Crucial)
  
• Prebuilt gaming computers & laptops - Dell (Alienware), HP (Omen), ASUS, Razer
  
• Custom gaming computers - iBuypower, Cyberpower
  

The IPO doesn't have an intended filling date and the $100 million listed in the offering may very well be a placeholder so we will likely see various changes in the coming weeks.

https://www.techpowerup.com/271155/have-...-mandatory

Quote:The transition will be gradual; starting this October, new accounts will have to be linked through Facebook. Existing standalone Oculus accounts will still be supported; however, they will only be grandfathered until 2023. According to Facebook, they'll still allow users to run their content on these accounts; but any new apps and content that's acquired for the system after then will not be available for usage in such scenarios. Facebook further said that some content might stop working by then, due to integration of some applications' backends with Facebook-bound accounts, capabilities and servers. And thus, Facebook will finally be fully integrated with Oculus, ensuring a new ecosystem of users, and thus, new data on which to base their publicity and marketing efforts. It's all about the value a user brings; and perhaps some social network integration with your VR environments. Because nothing makes more sense than creating Facebook-bound communities in the VR space, and seeing a Like emote pop up on your most recent spaceflight maneuver.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/31...gh-q4-2020

Quote:That hasn’t happened, even though predictions made as recently as June favored a price increase. The reason for the market uncertainty is because demand wasn’t just dropping. It’s been shifting across the market. The need for NAND in smartphones has been much lower than typical, while the market for PCs has boomed. Both Sony and Microsoft will be buying a lot of flash memory to support the Xbox XSX/PS5 launches, and there may even be an uptick in consumer sales if customers buy secondary drives to supplement console storage on launch day. No idea how strong the sell-through market on those add-ons will be, but we should see at least some motion.

What happened, specifically, is that demand for NAND wafers fell earlier this year while demand for SSDs surged. Now, wafer demand is starting to recover, but PC demand is falling off. Consoles should soak up some of the difference, but there’s also a memory manufacturer bringing new production online. YMTC is expected to hit maximum capacity utilization in one fab, while simultaneously bringing a second plant online. Trendforce writes: “Currently, YMTC has expanded the incorporation of 64L 256GB TLC products for its module maker clients; the average quoted price is far lower than contract prices and approaching spot market levels, in turn widening the decline in contract prices and exacerbating the oversupply situation in the market.”

What this means in aggregate is that if you’re going to be in the market for an SSD through the back half of the year, you should be in pretty solid shape — though keep in mind that even when pricing changes, it doesn’t necessarily directly impact what you’ll see on store shelves. Those planning to buy a drive for an Xbox Series X/S or a PlayStation 5 may well benefit at least a bit, and I’ve heard from a source that SSD prices there have been falling rapidly. The US market may see a similar decline over the next few weeks. The decline is expected to be larger in Q4 than it is in Q3, but keep an eye on what real-world prices actually do — there may be some good deals in the not-so-distant future.