georgie01 said:

joogabah said:

No hypocrisy there at all.  America never bombs other countries or invades and topples other governments, even on false pretexts.  And America had nothing to do with Ukraine's 2014 coup either.  And it didn't state explicitly its plan to balkanize Russia as a prelude to war with China which it can't compete against.

Yes, long gone are the days when we could point the finger at other ‘evil’ countries as if the US and the West are much different. There was a time when the US was impressive, but we’re just standing on those past successes thinking we can redefine obvious truths and be successful when in reality we’re on a downward spiral. We need to fix ourselves before complaining about Russia.

dewme said:

Sound is a physical force, so yeah, this makes sense. I recall a college professor of mine showing me a tiny piezoelectric based cooling device with little flaps that could provide totally quiet cooling in a very confined space. It looked promising. GE eventually patented a piezoelectric cooling jet technique in 2004 and sold it off to a Japanese company. Not sure whether it ever gained widespread application, but the whole notion of using vibration, whether induced by speaker voice coils or piezoelectric crystals, to move air is fully reasonable. As with most technology that involves secondary or opportunistic “harvesting” of energy that would otherwise be ignored or wasted, it all comes down to efficiency and whether the intended benefit is worth the added complexity and cost. Inventions only become innovations if they can be put to practical use for the benefit of mankind. Otherwise, they’re just cool ideas, no pun intended.

cloudguy said:

All right. I will eat crow. I have long claimed that there was no way that Apple Silicon would match the Core i7 at launch and would probably be in line with the Core i3 or at best Core i5. I was wrong. I shall go sit in the corner with my dunce cap on now. 

But while on my way to the corner I will protest:

Apple did not reach this performance with the 4 and 6 core iPhone and iPad chips as people were claiming previously. Apple only reached this performance with an octacore chip that was specifically designed for use in personal computers - not mobile devices - that requires more cores, more power and dissipate more heat. We have always known that this was possible, as modern (meaning a ARM Holdings design base and not the Sun Sparc and other early RISC servers that go back to the 1980s) Linux-based ARM workstations and servers have existed since at least 2011 (the year after the A4 was released). Ubuntu has had official ARM releases since 2012, and HP - the venerable Wintel manufacturer - has been selling them to data centers since 2014. 

So I was absolutely right about Apple not being able to build a MacBook Pro or iMac with a 6 core chip that had 128kb/8MB caches (the M1 is octacore with 192kb/12MB caches). As lots of people on this site and elsewhere were indeed claiming that the 4 and 6 core low power/low heat iPhone chips could absolutely be put in a MacBook Pro and work as good or better ... yeah those people were as wrong as I was and even more so. 

Now in the corner of shame I go, sucking my thumb in the process. But you folks who claimed that this would have been possible with the iPhone chips need to go to corners of their own.

avon b7 said:

tmay said:

elijahg said:

cloudguy said:

dk49 said:

If ARM has its own AI engine now, what does it mean for Apple's Neural engine? Is it possible for Apple to completely discard ARMs AI engine in their processors or they will have to build theirs on top of ARMs? If yes then will it not break ARM's licence? 

See above. Apple is an ARM Holdings co-founder. They have a perpetual architectural license.

The fact that they were an ARM Holdings co-founder is no longer relevant to anything, they sold (AFAIK) all their interests in ARM long ago, and have never had a controlling stake. The perpetual architectural license was acquired when Apple bought PA Semi in 2008. NVIDIA also has an architectural license, along with MS and Qualcomm, so there's no reason they couldn't match Apple's M1 CPU speeds - except their engineers aren't good enough, apparently. So not really sure what Nvidia sees in ARM.

A disadvantage of not controlling the whole stack, as Apple does, is that Qualcomm, Samsung, et al, haven't control of Android OS, or Windows OS, and so will never have SOC's as optimized for end users, as Apple will for its own ecosystem. It may not make all that much difference in a mature marketplace, though it appears that Apple still sees an increasing user base, and still benefits from its tight integration of all of the technologies that is has at its disposal.

Android vendors can control the 'whole stack' if they wish to. Android is open source. It would take a huge investment and vendors would have to effectively re-invent many wheels but it's an option. There advantages and disadvantages to both scenarios. 

Huawei has been forced to do exactly that, and as a result, perhaps it could be argued that it controls as much, or more, of the 'whole stack' as Apple.

It's 5G modem and WiFi chipsets are designed in house, for example. Apple's aren't.

It can also 'optimise' the stack beyond the CE boundaries of Apple, as it also produces Cloud hardware and services along with AI hardware and services. It also develops it own battery and charging technologies. Not to mention participating in and designing the core communications technologies that are the backbone of today's modern day devices. Apple devices included of course. 

In software, GMS is being replaced by HMS etc. 

Qualcomm and especially Samsung are also well placed to do the same if necessary but for different reasons, they have no need to.

It's worth noting that Huawei has also been reportedly greenlighted to use ARMv9 and just like all vendors, has the option of using RISC-V too. 

“You know those handcars, the little machines that people stand on and pump to move along on the train tracks? That’s Karelia. Apple is the steam train that owns the tracks.”

You could argue that the popular narrative here isn’t completely accurate. Apple blogger John Gruber stated that Sherlock’s web integrations were planned at Apple before Watson debuted, and that Apple offered Wood a job working on Sherlock two different times. But these facts couldn’t stand in the way of a good story, and the term “Sherlocked” stuck.

https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/

So "Sherlocked" really means a popular cover story of some instance of outrageous Apple behavior, when in fact, Apple would be expected to be working on said feature, but delivering it later, and fully baked in integration.

Rectification Campaign to Energy Crunch

How Chinese politics is leading to a chilly winter in Europe

Energy markets are a hot topic now with gas prices going vertical in Europe and coal prices breaking all time highs. There have been numerous hypotheses lodged online blaming some very plausible causes including reduced gas storage and nuclear and some where the causal link appears to be missing, like renewables. Renewables are variable, but without them Europe would undoubtedly need more gas and be in more strife. 

Over the last year I’ve been working on a project with ANU on China’s coal markets and logistics and how domestic drivers lead to massive changes in imports. This focus has perhaps given me a different lens to look through recent energy market developments that I will briefly present here. 

China’s energy markets and global markets, especially for LNG and pipeline gas have become increasingly integrated over the last five years.

...

By mid to late 2020, coal was looking to be in serious trouble. Chinese inventories were high and shipping data showed that much of the supply of coal to southern China was now coming from Northern China ports squeezing leaving little room for thermal coal imports and not just from Australia which was singled out for special treatment. Then something strange happened.

From early 2021 China started to draw its coal inventories down hard and deliveries from Northern Ports to Southern ports started to drop (red arrow above). This might not be a big deal, but China’s power demand was flying at the time with electricity consumption up ~14% yoy in April-June and steel output up 21%. Coal stocks started to decline rapidly as can be seen below.

So demand was very strong but supply fell behind sharply both for domestic production and imports. China’s coal production is heavily concentrated in a few provinces as you can see below:

Over this period Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi output was poor - especially in the context of surging electricity consumption driven by industrial output of metals. 

Imports were also weak from two major suppliers: Australia for political reasons, and Mongolia ostensibly for COVID reasons. 

There is however another possible reason. During this period there was something of an anticorruption crackdown in Inner Mongolia which borders Mongolia. Decisions on mine approvals and the like are invariably contentious, especially during a period where the government is talking about greening the economy and commodity imports are often a source of graft. This article in Guancha may provide the answer.

You can run that via google translate, but circa March of this year Xi was making explicit reference to anticorruption measures around the coal sector in Inner Mongolia. The collapse in imports and production over this period likely led to a shortage of approximately 30MT attributable to lost production and another 12MT from Mongolian imports. If you look at global seaborne coal imports, that is about two months of global imports, including China. 

In gas equivalent terms, we know China takes about 330kg of coal per MWh of power, and a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine uses around 7GJ of gas per MWh. All in you are looking at bump in LNG demand to fill this hole equal to 5% of *annual* gas demand in Europe per IEA data.

What can or should we take away from this? 

• Firstly that global energy markets are tightly coupled now via fossil fuels. Expansions in LNG infrastructure and pipelines mean that regional prices should, in general be more tightly correlated. 

• European gas demand is falling but varies with renewable generation and weather. More storage of gas but also pumped hydro and nuclear will be required.

• China is so big that seemingly obscure provincial corruption crackdowns in key areas can roil energy markets. 

• China does not seem to be stepping back from mass campaigns and the like any time soon. 

• The cost of fossil fuels is not just emissions but also in exposure to this volatility - if the energy transition seems expensive, remember that heating your home this winter in Northern Europe means you are paying a premium for China’s institutional and political volatility.

  
  

cloudguy said:

A14 is only hexacore. Strange. Was certain that it was going to be octa-core. Hexacore is good enough to replace the i3 and i5 in the Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but for MacBook Pro and iMac they are going to need an octacore design at minimum.

Fusion 360, a popular 3D design software, is set to achieve full native support for Apple Silicon chipsets (i.e. M1 & M2) by the summer of 2023. The delay in support is due to the need for 100% compatibility between components from over 100 third-party vendors, including Autodesk.

avon b7 said:

9secondkox2 said:

avon b7 said:

This doesn't look good for Apple on the face of it.

Apple has the last word on 'trust'?

I can't see that going down well in the EU. 

I suppose Epic will accuse Apple of discrimination. 

We'll see. 

Previous judgements disagree with you. Apple indeed has “sole discretion.” 

It’s not like epic didn’t breach the contract. End of.

epic going on to criticize apple is a smokescreen. Being critical doesn’t award you what you lost due to illegal activity. 

Epic violated their contract and paid the price. Inciting a mob doesn’t change that. Epic can be mad, but only at themselves. Shameful really. 

Goodbye epic. Good luck on your own.  

We'll see. 

If Epic brought the same case to an EU court there is no guarantee it would see the same result. 

As for violating a contract clause, that doesn't mean much. The presence of a clause doesn't make it legal. A clause itself can be challenged in court.

Like I said, we'll see.

I suppose Epic will try to challenge the move.