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Submission + - Linus Torvalds tears into Intel, favors AMD (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Charlotte Web
Charlotte Web writes: Linus Torvalds said this week that after several months off of his Intel system, he's "very happy with AMD these days."

From ZDNet:

That's because Torvalds explained in a Real World Technologies discussion forum, you get more bang for the buck from AMD processors. But what about Intel's high-end Xeon CPUs? Torvalds said frankly, "I used to look at the Xeon CPUs, and I could never really make the math work. The Intel math was basically that you get twice the CPU for five times the price. So for my personal workstations, I ended up using Intel consumer CPUs."

As for AMD, on the other hand, "The AMD Threadripper pricing is much closer to 'twice the price for twice the CPU.' Yes, you end up paying more for the accouterments (MB and cooling), but that's pretty much in line too. So yes, it ends up being more expensive, but if CPU power is what you want and need, the expense is pretty much in line with what you get."

Submission + - Linus Torvalds Rails At Intel For 'Killing' the ECC Industry (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linux creator Linus Torvalds has accused Intel of preventing widespread use of error-correcting memory and being "instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with its horribly bad market segmentation." ECC stands for error-correcting code. ECC memory uses additional parity bits to verify that the data read from memory is the same as the data that was written. Without this check, memory is vulnerable to occasional corruption where a bit is flipped spontaneously, for example, by background radiation. Memory can also be attacked using a technique called Rowhammer, where rapid repeated reads of the same memory locations can cause adjacent locations to change their state. ECC memory solves these problems and has been available for over 50 years yet most personal computers do not use it. Cost is a factor but what riles Torvalds is that Intel has made ECC support a feature of its Xeon range, aimed at servers and high-end workstations, and does not support it in other ranges such as the Core series.

The topic came up in a discussion about AMD's new Zen 3 Ryzen 9 5000 series processors on the Real World Tech forum site. AMD has semi-official ECC support in most of its processors. "I don't really see AMD's unofficial ECC support being a big deal," said an unwary contributor. "ECC absolutely matters," retorted Torvalds. "Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously. And if you don't believe me, then just look at multiple generations of rowhammer, where each time Intel and memory manufacturers bleated about how it's going to be fixed next time... And yes, that was – again – entirely about the misguided and arse-backwards policy of 'consumers don't need ECC', which made the market for ECC memory go away."

The accusation is significant particularly at a time when security issues are high on the agenda. The suggestion is that Intel's marketing decisions have held back adoption of a technology that makes users more secure – though rowhammer is only one of many potential attack mechanisms – as well as making PCs more stable. "The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage. Now even the memory manufacturers are starting to do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to," said Torvalds. Torvalds said that Xeon prices deterred usage. "I used to look at the Xeon CPU's, and I could never really make the math work. The Intel math was basically that you get twice the CPU for five times the price. So for my personal workstations, I ended up using Intel consumer CPU's." Prices, he said, dropped last year "because of Ryzen and Threadripper... but it was a 'too little, much too late' situation." By way of mitigation, he added that "apart from their ECC stance I was perfectly happy with [Intel's] consumer offerings."

Submission + - Elon Musk tweet wipes $14bn off Tesla's value 2

Submitted by UnresolvedExternal
UnresolvedExternal writes: For anyone considering buying TSLA, the BBC reports: Tesla's founder Elon Musk wiped $14bn off its value after tweeting its share price was too high in his opinion.

So, that's 14 billion / 33 characters — another very expensive 420 joke?

Comment Re: He cheated OTHER players (Score 1) 406

by hene (#53674897) Attached to: How A Professional Poker Player Conned a Casino Out of $9.6 Million
Isn't it the casino's duty to choose the cards for the game? If they mess up and choose wrong, it's not the players fault. It is also the casino's job not to agree with stupid wishes. For example, players are allowed to ask to play with open cards, if they so choose. It is not against any law (that I know) to have this kind of game. It probably would be stupid, but not wrong.

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