I have learned that every Intel microprocessor made in the last 15 years has another processor on it running its own operating system called Minix. This is quite surprising. The extra processor is responsible for managing the main processor, which seems very odd to me. This extra processor has also been the cause of security problems that they had to fix.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Ryzen Threadripper - AMD - WikiChip
My 2009 iMac has a first-generation Core-i7 chip that has 42-nanometer circuits. I just bought a refurbished laptop with a Core-I5 that has 35-nanometer circuits, and it performs 80% as well as the desktop even though it has half as many cores.
This is an interesting website about microprocessors. I don't think that I would want to buy a processor with a 10 to 14-nanometer process when 7-nanometer processors are coming from AMD in August. I find it interesting that Apple introduced 7-nanometer chips in their phones many months before either major processor company came out with 7-nanometer processors. I also find it interesting that both the new Play Station and the new XBOX will have 7-nanometer processors from AMD.
In terms of the laws physics, it is almost impossible to get much smaller than this, although I have heard talk of a 5-nanometer chip. I also heard about a possible 1-nanometer chip using different materials, but the technology is a long way off, and I have my doubts about how well it could work.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Sunday, March 3, 2019
The future of humanity
I see a danger to the future existence of the human race, and it is the kind of thing that people should think about and prepare for now. Sometime in the next 50 years machines will be smarter than people. There are major technical hurdles to overcome, such as the inevitable end of Moore's Law, which probably mean that it is not right around the corner or even within the next couple of decades, but it will happen, and easily within this century. And if for some reason it does happen within the next couple of decades then that means the results will be upon us that much sooner.
We can predict what will happen next and follow it to its logical conclusion, which is a future without people.
As machines become smarter, people will become increasingly reliant on technology. We can see that already with smartphones, which only have been with us for barely over a decade. Eventually machines will do all the heavy mental work, which will make our lives easier, but also make us more dependent.
And since we will be so dependent on the machines, we will start incorporating them into us. This will evolve over time until we are no longer purely human, but human machine hybrids. Perhaps when your biological brain dies, the machine part of you will be able to continue with all your memories intact. Maybe it would have an artificial body or maybe it will exist in a virtual world. It is likely that some would prefer to live in a virtual world where they can do more things than they could in the real world. Taken to the eventual extreme, our descendants would no longer bother with biological bodies and prefer to exist as machine intelligences either in the real world or in virtual ones.
The evolutionary pressure will be against purely biological people. Having machines incorporated into you will make you more productive, competitive, and increase your quality of life.
The future I describe might be long distant, but if it is not the future we want for the human race then we should start thinking about it now. Maybe we could have a Pure Human movement that would prohibit the merging of machine intelligence with human intelligence? This could be roughly analogous to the current legal ban on human cloning, because we very likely have the technology right now to clone humans, but countries ban it because they are uneasy about the implications of where that might take us.
However, we might not be able to prevent it. Linking machines with human intelligence is likely to happen in such small steps that we will easily adjust to it. It is sort of happening already with our dependence on computers. It could also start as a series of military applications where having the most effective soldiers determines who wins the wars. And once the genie is out of the bottle, we will never get it back in.
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Friday, February 22, 2019
Fwd: The Verge: Apple is reportedly closing two stores in a Texas district to avoid patent trolls
Apple is reportedly closing two stores in a Texas district to avoid patent trolls
The Verge
The Eastern District of Texas is notorious for patent cases, and Apple wants out Read the full story
Shared from Apple News
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Saturday, January 26, 2019
AMD APU's
I have some interest in getting an APU at some future date with the idea of building a lower cost computer. An APU is a chip that has the processor and graphics "card" on one chip, and this can save quite a bit of money over buying a seperate graphics card. For the moment, if you want the best performance, you need a separate graphics card, because you can get both better processors and better graphics cards that way.
The AMD APU that comes with the XBOX One X is fairly impressive. The processor is not fantastic, but the graphics are really good. However, you can't buy this APU and put it in a computer. The APU's that AMD released for computers in 2018 were just for low end gaming. However, I have read that AMD is going to release new APU's in 2019 and 2020.
Both Microsoft and Sony are planning on releasing next generation consoles either this year or next. Reportedly, these both will have higher performance AMD APU's, but not necessarily the same processor. I don't like the idea of buying a console that has PC hardware that you can't use as a computer. It would seem better to have the same performance in a computer, but so far AMD has not been releasing those chips to the general public.
This video gives an interesting history about how the technology has been evolving:
Saturday, January 12, 2019
RIGHT TO REMAIN PRIVATE
This is an important video with profound implications for personal privacy in the age of smart devices.
The PROBLEM with the Foldable Phone
I want to see what Apple does with this. They are not likely to try this until the technology is nearly perfect.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Thursday, December 6, 2018
iPhone 6s+ processor speed
Way back when I had an iPhone 4, I tried running the chess program Stockfish on it in analysis mode, and it was examining around 250,000 nodes per second, which at the time seemed to me to be pretty good for a handheld device. This was not as good as my desktop, but still a good substitute for it. Two years later when I got the iPhone 5, the speed had improved to around half a million nodes per second. Two years after that with iPhone 6+ I was impressed to reach a million nodes per second. However, I have just upgraded to the iPhone 6s+, which is a three year old phone, and the same Stockfish program on this phone is examining an amazing two million nodes per second.
Compare this to my late 2009 iMac with a quad core 2.8 ghz core-i7 processor. For its day it was a top of the line desktop computer, but today it is about average. Using one core, the Stockfish program examines around 450,000 nodes per second. If I use all 4 cores then the program sees about 1.5 million nodes per second. The iPhone 6s+ only has two cores, but it is outperforming my desktop computer by a good margin.
Since the iPhone 6s+ came out, Apple has released the iPhones 7, 8, 10, and 10s, all of which are faster than the previous generation. (The 8 and 10 are part of the same generation.) The 10s is only slightly faster than the 10, because we are reaching a point where the laws of physics won't allow them to make the circuits smaller, therefor faster. I personally wanted an iPhone 10 or an iPhone 8, because I knew that the processor on those phones kicked ass, but I didn't want to spend a fortune for a phone, so I settled for the good enough iPhone 6s+, which I got on a Black Friday sale for $300.
Speaking of kicking ass, Apple has been doing that with their processor development. No other mobile phone manufacturer comes close. Apple is using a 7 nanometer process with their latest phones and tablets. Compare that to Intel, the world's largest microprocessor manufacturer, who recently backed off of their 10 nanometer chips because of problems and instead released 14 nanometer chips. AMD, who is already kicking Intel's butt, is scheduled to release 7 nanometer chips early next year, with a whole new line of processors that undercut Intel on price.
This is an exciting time because of how much progress has been made in computer processing power. It is also impressive how much power Apple has been able to put in mobile devices. The latest iPad Pro's, which use the same processors as their latest phones, outperform many desktop computers.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
AT&T "You Will" Commercials (high quality)
These commercials go back to 1993, and everything they predicted has come true, although the company that brought it to you might be Apple, among others.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Friday, November 9, 2018
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 vs iPad Pro 11 Inch - Full Comparison
The benchmark on the iPad Pro blows my desktop out of the water.
Flash drives
Around 14 years ago 1GB flash drives were at least $90, and I felt especially privileged when my company gave me one. At the time that seemed like a lot of storage.
Now you can't even buy them. I just saw 128GB for $30.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
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