kurai_kage

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kurai_kage
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  • Uber, Twitter among companies giving engineers 'fully loaded' M1 Max MacBook Pro

    kurai_kagekurai_kage
    lkrupp said:
    Wait. What? I thought we were just told the new Intel chips (Alder Lake) blow the M1 Max out of the water. 
    I think I read a /s in that comment.  The mobile Alder Lake is marginally faster, running hotter and using significantly more power.  Much of the news was comparing desktop Alder Lake benchmark scores to Apple's mobile offerings.  I'm excited to see the desktop Apple will craft as the Mac Pro successor.
    watto_cobra

  • Cubii Pro Under-Desk Elliptical Review: Keep yourself active while working or watching TV

    kurai_kagekurai_kage
    I used to love to ride a bike, take long walks, or use an elliptical, but a broken tailbone has really prevented any of those activities.  I can take short walks and use a treadmill at mild to moderate speeds, no jogging or running.  The reviewers and commenters note about low impact to their knees is pretty encouraging.  I may have to check one of these out.  

    Apple Health integration is pretty attractive, assuming the unit is charged, could I pedal periodically throughout the day and expect that to be picked up?  Or do I have to explicitly trigger a workout in their app?  
    watto_cobra

  • Compared: M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro versus Mac Pro

    kurai_kagekurai_kage
    emig647 said:
    sdw2001 said:
    Not. Going. To. Happen. Apple Silicon is a totally different architecture.  It's literally a different way of building a computer.  It doesn't matter that the 2019 MP is Lego-like.  They would have to ensure that the board was compatible with everything from Afterburner cards to discreet RAM to GPUs.  While some of these may be options on a redesigned MP with Apple Silicon, they sure as hell aren't going to cannibalize new MP sales by offering a board that makes purchasing a new one unnecessary.  It would also be unprecedented for Apple.  Did they do anything of the kind when they went from G5 to Intel?  Of course not.  We're talking about an even greater transition here.  
    I agree it isnt going to happen. But it is precedented: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Processor_Upgrade_Card
    M1 Max MPX or Afterburning module?  Limited to PCIe bandwidth, though multiple MPX cards could transfer data between themselves at up to 84 GB/s.  That just emphasizes why external modules of any kind will be so much slower than anything Apple puts on die. 
    watto_cobra

  • Intel CEO hopes to win back Apple with a 'better chip'

    kurai_kagekurai_kage
    elijahg said:
    Fred257 said:
    ? I know three engineers who work for Intel, one of them complained to me for years that the only solution was adding more capacitors which adds more heat.  All of this was true but Apples approach wins out because the engineers I talked to at Intel didn’t see a way forward and now the CEO knows today that they’re going to be destroyed by these new chips, obliterated is a more correct term to use…
    Of course you do. There are no capacitors in CPU (cores) for a start, and if you meant transistors you'll find that Apple's M1 has ~16bn transistors, twice as many as the 24-core Xeon 8180. That's ballooned from 3.3bn in the A10.

    Adding transistors doesn't necessarily = more heat, because they're not all constantly switching - which is the only time they are dissipating heat. Application specific silicon can reduce the heat produced but increase the transistor count because there are less total transistor flips for a particular piece of code to execute: it's more efficient. And as above, if that silicon is idle it's not using power. 

    Intel CPUs are so inefficient because they are essentially a CISC interpreter ontop of a RISC CPU. Plus due to backward compatibility, there are thousands of SIMD extensions that are used by barely anything but can't be removed due to the few customers that do need them.
    Quick update to those transistor numbers:

    M1 Pro features 33.7 billion transistors
    M1 Max features 57 billion transistors
    watto_cobra

  • Bitcoin scammers steal $69k using iPhone 13 event as a lure

    kurai_kagekurai_kage
    Like the above commenters, I can't even begin to be sympathetic.  In what world does someone trade less money for more.  (Maybe money laundering???)  Who would ever believe Apple might be involved?  This isn't even remotely close to something Elon would promote.  Ignorant people should NOT be taken advantage of, and that is just what these scams do.
    watto_cobra