Monday, January 11, 2021

New powerful phone microprocessors


The most notable thing about this particular phone is that it uses a new processor that will also be used on an upcoming flagship Samsung phone, and the only thing notable about that is the Geekbench score, which is around 3600 to 3700, which is almost exactly the same as my 2009 Core-I7 iMac desktop computer.  My 2017 iMac is not a huge improvement but it scores over 6000.    The latest iPhone is around 3900.

With 5-nanometer processors, compared to the 42-nanometer of my 2009 iMac and the 14-nanometer of my 2017 iMac, we are seeing desktop performance in handheld devices, with no active cooling.  Apple made an upgraded version of their phone processor for their laptops, called the M1 chip, and it has a Geekbench score on the Macbook Pro of 7331.  

Apple is trying to abandon Intel processors.  Reportedly they are working on more powerful chips for their future desktop computers.  I have heard incredible predictions of around 60 processor cores for their upcoming pro computers, using two processors.

We are seeing exciting changes after a decade of only marginal improvement.

Sunday, January 10, 2021

This Fisher-Price “Gaming Controller” Knows the Konami Code – Review Geek

When Konami accidentally left in a cheat code to one of their games, used by the programmers to debug the game, it became so popular that many videogames began to support the code.

https://www.reviewgeek.com/66925/this-fisher-price-gaming-controller-knows-the-konami-code/

Friday, January 8, 2021

Computer processors

We have spent at least 35 years dependent upon Intel microprocessors or equivalent from AMD. A quiet revolution is happening where both hardware and software are switching to ARM Risc processors, giving great performance with lower power consumption and more battery life on portable devices. It is about damn time! There is now more choice in the marketplace, and the software makers aren't forcing you to use just one type of processor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA  

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

xkcd: Compiling

This is a famous classic cartoon that computer programmers can relate to.

https://xkcd.com/303/

Back in the 1980s, I did not have any good programming tools for my Timex Sinclair 2068 computer, so I wrote an "assembler" which was unfortunately really slow.  It took 6 hours to "compile" a videogame that I wrote.  (Normal compile times might be a few minutes.)