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Comment Re:For low power? None (Score 1) 78

No, it doesn't. HardOCP did a test with the new Haswell E series, as well as normal Haswell and Ivy Bridge chips, and then the AMD FX-9590. In every case, the AMD chip lost. Sandra Drystone, Sandra memory bandwidth, Hyper PI, Cinebench, POV Ray, Handbrake, LAME, WinRAR, and games, in call cases it scored below the Haswell chip. In most cases it scored below the Ivy Bridge chip, sometimes substantially. For example in Cinebench the Haswell-E 8 core scored 19.31, the normal Haswell 4 core scored 9.93, the AMD scored 7.93. Also the AMD chip was clocked 500 MHz higher than the Intel chips (all were OC'd, HardOCP is a performance site).

Also please remember that normal Haswell has a TDP of around 90 watts.

Right now, AMD chips just are not a very good showing in terms of power per watt. Intel also is able to be price competitive because their more midrange chips compete with AMD's higher end. The Bulldozer architecture has not proven to be efficient, and Intel also gets to lean on their lead in lithography. All Intel's lines are on 22nm these days and they are rolling out 14nm chips for sale now. AMD is still using a 32nm process.

http://www.hardocp.com/article...

Comment For low power? None (Score 1) 78

AMD chips need a lot of juice for a given level of performance. Their Vishera chips that competes with Intel's high end desktop i5s in price and in some cases performance (depends on the benchmark, it is as fast in some, woefully slower in others) needs 220 watts to get that level of performance.

If you desire a power economical processor, Intel are your guys. AMD's architecture and lithography are just not up to Intel's level at the moment.

You also have to remember, with regards to lithography, Intel is WAY ahead of anyone else. AMD's chips are still 32nm, these new Broadwell chips are 14nm.

Technology

Ask Slashdot: Best Drone For $100-$150? 116

andyring writes With Christmas fast approaching, and me being notoriously hard to buy for, I thought a camera drone would be great to suggest for Christmas. But the options are dizzying, and it's nearly impossible to find something and know it'll be decent. What are Slashdotters suggestions/recommendations/experiences with a basic camera drone in the $100-150 range? Looks like all of them do video but I'm more interested in high-res stills although that may be a moot point.

Comment Re:BLUE ray (Score 2) 194

If you look at the absorption and efficiency plots in the linked nature abstract, the improvement is pretty broad spectrum as it is. Based on the Fourier analysis plots, it does seem like a slightly wider pit spacing would better concentrate the energy in their desired sweet spot, but CDs and DVDs would be too wide. HD-DVD actually looks like it might have the most ideal pit spacings.

Comment Re:BLUE ray (Score 4, Insightful) 194

Now that they have a proof of concept, it is an obvious thing for researchers to try different pit sizes and patterns in order to optimize the efficiency

Actually, that already happened. As the abstract of the paper notes, previous research has already identified how to theoretically optimize patterns, but arbitrary patterns require expensive photo lithography equipment to create. This research shows that an existing inexpensive mass production technique generates results that are almost as good as the optimized patterns, but not quite as good because the spacing of the pits is a bit too periodic (especially across tracks rather than along them).

Comment Re:Good for them. (Score 1) 17

Also sounds like it may be much cheaper, which would be nice. I have repetitive strain injury from computer use and while it is manageable, I'd like a way to be able to not use the mouse when possible. An eye mouse would work well, but they are too much money. However this sounds like it might be in the range of something I could afford, and use as alternate input.

Comment It sounds like some of them changed testimony (Score 1) 1128

Now why they changed I dunno, but that can change things. Also there was supposedly physical evidence that contradicted witness statements.

However if you are interested, it sounds like the unusual step of opening up the grand jury records will be taken in this case. So, keep up with it and read the transcript when it is available, and then see what you conclude.

Comment No it isn't that we won't (Score 1) 455

But that we are so far from any kind of AI that worrying about what form it might take is stupid. Yes, there are lots of things that might happen in the far future. Until they are closer, worrying about them is silly. There have been stories from people who are all paranoid about AI and think we need to start making with the rules. No we don't, we are so far away we don't even know how far away we are. We also have no idea what form it'll take. May turn out that self awareness is a uniquely biological trait and we never make computers that are truly strong AI.

Also if you are betting your life (regardless of if this means an actual bet, singular investment of all assets, etc) on something far off, you are a moron. You have no idea when a technology will happen, if it'll even be possible, and if it is if it'll even be marketable. Want a great example? SED, surface-conduction electron-emitter display. Reasonably chance you've never even heard of it. Was a new tech from Canon, basically a flat, large, hig rez take on CRT. Offered extremely high refresh rates (and thus low blur) great contrast ratio, wide viewing angle, etc. Very exciting display technology lots of people looked forward to as an LCD alternative. Wouldn't displace LCD, but would be a better technology for many uses. It was real too, actual working sets were shown at CES in 2006.

What happened? Well as a result of litigation, the financial downturn, and the general market, they decided to pack it in and stop development. They shut down and liquidated that division in 2010, and there's been no further development. So despite it being real and doable, it didn't happen and almost certainly never will happen.

Now compare that to the concept of strong AI, which we have no idea if it even can exist, if it does what form it will take, and if so what technology will be required. Maybe not the best thing to be betting the farm on.

Comment A lot depends on size of the monitor (Score 1) 330

The bigger it is, the wider that is useful. Basically you find that you need a certain amount of vertical real estate to work effectively. So on a small screen like a laptop, a 4:3, or even more square, monitor can be of use. However when you start getting large desktop displays, wide is very nice. Personally I like 16:10 displays for the desktop, in part because I find them aesthetically pleasing (likely because they are near the golden ratio) but also because for the large sizes I like (30" currently) it provides a good amount of vertical real estate, but plenty of horizontal to fill my field of view and allow for multiple things to be displayed at once.

For TV, heck I could go even more than 16:9 if such a thing were standard. I was always partial to 1.85:1 3 perf and 2:1 Superscope for movies myself.

Comment I imagine not (Score 1) 140

However the problem is that it can presumably notify security that you've done that. Given that they'll have full video of it, and know where the unit was, the chances of you getting caught are pretty high.

These aren't the kind of thing that would work well on their own out in the middle of nowhere but on a campus like MS's with human backup I imagine they are pretty effective. Rolling security cameras basically.

Comment They do in Windows (Score 2) 327

The generic MS drivers know how to see if the drive supports TRIM and send the commands if it does. That's the point of TRIM: It is an ATA standard command, so special software isn't needed.

In fact, in Windows all you use is the generic drivers. I mean you may install drivers for your SATA controller, but not for your drive. My laptop has a Samsung 840 Pro in it, with Samsung's Magician installed. However the drivers in use are disk.sys, partmgr.sys (both Microsoft files) and iastorf.sys (Intel's file). No Samsung provided drivers. Magician can directly send commands to optimize the drive if needed if the OS can't, but the OS sends TRIM commands no problem.

Comment Ok conspiracy 'tard (Score 1) 340

Or perhaps more likely "pro Russian shill" next time, spend a little more time doing research before you put together your bullshit theory. See you seem to have missed one little detail: This came from Russian TV. This isn't something that surfaced in the US, purporting to be originally from Russia, it was on Russian national television.

So, maybe think your bullshit conspiracy through next time,a nd make sure you know the sequence of events.

Comment On enough with the whining (Score 1) 127

I hate this attitude that if you don't have the top spot, you are crap. It is so silly the attitude that the US somehow lost something by not having the first spot on the top 500 list.

I mean for one thing, the Chinese computer is more specialized than the big US supercomputers. It gets its performance using Intel Xeon Phi GPGPU type processors. Nothing wrong with hat but they are vector processors hanging off the PCIe bus. They work a lot like graphics cards. There are problems that they are very fast at, linpack (which is what's used to test) being one, but others they are not as fast at. Many of the US supercomputers (like BlueGene/Q) use just standard CPUs, meaning their performance holds steady over more kinds of tasks.

Then there's the fact that while the US might not have the #1 spot they have the #2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 10 spots. In other words, half of the top 10 computers. That is more impressive than having one really big system. Ya it's nice to have a huge system and some simulations need really big systems to do, but there's something to be said for lots of different research groups having access to high power computers.

Also there's the fact that linkpack isn't necessarily the best benchmark.

I'm happy that the US is looking to invest more in HPC because money spent on research is always well spent in my opinion. However let's stop pretending like it is some major failure that the US doesn't have the #1 computer. Big deal.

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