About how decent girls spin drunken sailors, ARM-based servers and the results of Visual-Core, how American gold flows between fingers and other interesting things …
Qualcomm refused to sell to Broadcom again
Following the dialogue between these two large companies, sometimes you don't know whether to cry or laugh. Broadcom has already announced its intention to buy Qualcomm three times, and each time it has been firmly refused. And Qualcomm did not even give a hint of consent. A person with imagination can easily imagine a picture of a drunken sailor soliciting the love of a decent girl, breathing fumes in her face and waving a bundle of crumpled banknotes in her face. The girl is still holding on, but her mother is already whispering in her back: 'Look how much money he has, think carefully how you will heal if you give in.' This is how you can assess the situation if you are not a hardened capitalist, but a romantic.
Hawk Tan, Broadcom
On February 8, Qualcomm turned down another Broadcom offer, which this time totaled $ 121 billion. The official polite refusal included the expression “serious shortcomings in the proposed amount and uncertainty about the future.” This is very similar to the common expression from the dictionary of ladies' men “turned on the dynamo” or even “breaks like an inexperienced girl.” And here it is worth paying attention to two things – part of Qualcomm's shareholders sympathize with the merger with Broadcom, and the other part, including the company's management, is strictly against it. At the same time, our conditional 'drunken sailor' has already checked all his pockets and shook out the last coins from them, there is nothing more to offer. Which is what Broadcom CEO Hock Tan is reporting in a letter to Qualcomm executive chairman Paul Jacobs, pointing out that the last proposal was 'the best and final' and that the proposal has received support from Qualcomm shareholders. How this confrontation will end is still unknown. Will Qualcomm hold out in its quest to be independent, or succumb to persuasion? We will find out about this in the near future.
Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm
When the release was already in the layout, information came about a secret meeting between representatives of Qualcomm and Broadcom, scheduled for Wednesday. Due to the great secrecy, the details are unknown, but the fact itself is alarming.
Do you think this deal will be good for us, lovers of Android OS and Qualcomm chips, if it goes through?
Intel again have to move?
You and I have witnessed not very successful attempts Intel to break into the smartphone and tablet market in order to dominate. And if in the server segment, as well as among personal computers, its position is stable, then in the mobile market everything is not so cloudless. And now it seems that from the server rooms it may be asked. It's all the fault of former senior employee Intel Renee James, who unveiled the first successful ARM server chip for cloud computing. The company she leads, Ampere Computing, has grown out of a startup and is now a threat Intel. According to Rene, the company Intel has always liked her and she respects the company's success in increasing the computing power of its processors. However, in her opinion, the future belongs to cloud computing, which is the most important part of any online services, including all online stores, businesses, social networks, and in Intel this is not noticed. The staff Intel did not comment on this statement, which was simultaneously filled with affectionate nostalgia and a challenge to a duel. What gives Madame René reason to speak so loudly?
Rene and her processor
TDP of the Ampere processor is 125 W, the computing unit is represented by 32 ARM V8A cores operating in auto overclocking at a frequency of up to 3.3 GHz, up to 16 DDR4 server RAM (ECC) connections are supported, a maximum of 64 GB per slot (for a total of 1024 GB ) and standard connection interfaces. Everything looks very good on paper, and it makes sense for a lot of specialized kernels to replace the old scheme. I suggest fans of processors to independently familiarize themselves with the official characteristics of this miracle and express their opinion.
I want to ask everyone else, are you mentally ready to replace the X86 processor with ARM in your home computer? Or do you still think ARM processors are pampering?
The ceremonial inclusion of Visual-Core for third-party applications in Google Pixel 2
In 'Birches # 6' it was told about an additional image processing chip in Pixel 2 and XL, which hid for the time being, and most of all hid that it was a brainchild Intel. It was first deployed in the December public beta Android 8.1 and only served the proprietary Google Pixel Camera in HDR + mode. As common sense tells us, this chip is located in a chain behind the camera module and processes the already shot material. There are only a few comparative photographs available from the still scarce sources, and it can be seen from them that the results roughly correspond to those as if the original photograph was processed by a bunch of 'human + photoshop'.
Dark areas are highlighted, item detail in mid-tones is increased, etc. And if this is not surprising for a specialist, then for an ordinary person who is not familiar with graphic editors, this is a clear step forward and a 'must-have'.
Starting from February 5, this chip was used in applications Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Snapchat, and from February 8, it will work in other applications, the developers of which will take care of Visual-Core support and release relevant updates.
Over the past months, Pixel 2 and XL owners have been wondering why this long-awaited update has been taking so long. What are Google pulling? The answer to this question was given in an interview by Google Hardware Manager Ofer Shacham (in the top photo): 'This is the first time we have worked on such a project, and it was very important to make sure that the module and software work without interruption, to save our partners from any unpleasant surprises. We wanted not only to improve the quality of the resulting image, but also to speed up the processing. Therefore, we opened access to Visual-Core for developers in November and have been improving it ever since. '
I would like to add that this is the very first and, apparently, successful case when a certain rudiment of AI went to the masses, its work is visible to the naked eye and is in demand.
University of Buffalo students demand gold
There are not many ways to get electricity beyond the standard coil and magnetic field. In fact, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Apparently, members of the research group headed by the University of Buffalo (USA) thought so when they came up with their own method. As with other alternative ideas, the impetus was the widespread adoption of wearable electronics such as smartphones and tablets. Humanity needs an alternative way of generating electricity and recharging gadgets, which it is desirable to integrate into everyday clothes. “Nobody likes being tied to a power outlet or carrying a power bank with them,” said lead researcher Qiaoqiang Gan . “The human body is a rich source of energy, so why not use it to generate electricity?”
Qiaoqiang Gan
The current generator is a finger pad and in scientific parlance is called a 'triboelectric nanogenerator'. The device contains two thin layers of gold with a layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) sandwiched between them. When the finger flexes, the movement results in friction between the gold and PDMS layers. “It makes electrons flow back and forth between the layers of gold,” says research partner Professor Yun Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The 1.5 x 1cm patch provided a maximum of 124V, a maximum current of 10μA, and a maximum power density of 0.22mW / cm2, the team said. This, the researchers say, is enough to light 48 red LEDs at the same time. University of Buffalo students are tasked with improving the tab's performance, including using larger chunks of gold to generate more electricity. The researchers are also developing a portable battery to store the energy generated by the pad.
This statement can be approached with a fair bit of humor and recall the second law of thermodynamics. How much electricity will Mr. Yun Xu's fingers generate before the gold plates wear off? In any case, exercise cannot do harm, and strong strong fingers are always useful in everyday life.
What type of generator do you think can be placed on the human body and generate current cost-effectively?