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How is the M1 so much faster than other chips?
Apple's M1 is seriously fast, but how did they do it? Processor performance isn't witchcraft, it's physics and design. We compare the M1 to Microsoft's similar SQ2 and dig into just how Apple managed this feat.
2020 put us on the edge of a processor revolution
Intel put out another high-end chip, 10th-gen “Comet Lake”, which added a few cores but is still based on its aging 14nm transistor design, and AMD countered with Zen 3, an improved version of its desktop architecture that now goes up to 16 cores. While Zen 3 didn’t increase core counts or clock speeds dramatically, it did deliver a big boost in instructions per-clock without increasing power consumption.
RISC-V is trying to launch an open-hardware revolution
RSC-V is a new fully open-source processor design and instruction set. Developed at UC Berkeley, RISC-V is trying to do away with license fees and proprietary tech to make processor design accessible to companies all other the world.
Do Apple's new Mac chips mean ARM has won?
For the latest episode of our explainer show Upscaled, we dive into the history of the RISC architecture. With Apple dropping Intel for its own RISC-based CPUs, this will be the first time in decades we've seen a company try to produce high-end RISC processors.
Imagination Tech CEO: 'The industry needs MIPS as much as MIPS needs the industry'
At an earlier press event in Shenzhen, Imagination Technologies' CEO Sir Hossein Yassaie delivered a clear message: his company's $100 million acquisition of MIPS isn't a short term strategy. Additionally, he has ambitious plans with the latter's chip architecture -- a well-known rival of ARM and Intel's x86. In his presentation, Yassaie boasted that there are currently over 300 SoCs based on MIPS. And out of the five billion devices shipped with Imagination Tech's IP to date, three billion of them use MIPS. These include phones, tablets (especially in China), wearables, printers, networking devices, storage devices and more.
Imagination Tech reveals Warrior CPU core to fight (uphill) battle against ARM
This news isn't remotely surprising, given Imagination Tech's recent acquisition of CPU designer MIPS, but reporting it still gives us a little flutter of excitement. And for good reason: Imagination has just revealed that its first MIPS-based CPU core, which should be able to run Android, will be introduced by the end of this year, and that it'll go by the totally appropriate codename of Warrior (or, less dramatically, "MIPS Series5"). The core's first battle will be to prove that the MIPS architecture really can be a competitive alternative to ARM (which uses a similar low-power RISC architecture) and that Imagination didn't just blow $100 million on hot air. Speaking of which, the attached press release comes with plenty of bold claims, including a statement that the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Warrior will offer "best-in-class performance and efficiency," and a promise that Imagination "will change the landscape for CPU IP." We have no idea how all of this is going to play out, but we fully intend to be ringside when it does.
Imagination Technologies snaps up CPU designer MIPS in an attempt to wrestle ARM
Looks like we can kiss goodbye to any lingering politeness in the rivalry between these two UK chip houses, because the smaller one has just embarked on a cheeky expansion. Having been known mainly for its PowerVR graphics processors, not least in many Apple products, Imagination Tech could potentially push into the CPU arena too, through its $60 million acquisition of MIPS Technologies. Just like ARM, MIPS designs low-power RISC processors for consumer electronics, but it has generally focused on smaller chips for devices like routers and TVs rather than smartphones and tablets. In addition to a portfolio of 82 exclusive patents, a squad of 160 MIPS engineers will now be transplanted to Imagination, where they'll no doubt be debriefed and reassigned to conquering the world. Meanwhile, in some sort of flanking move, ARM has paid a far higher sum of $170 million to gain access to a number of other MIPS patents. [Thanks, Michael]
Insert Coin: The Parallella project dreams of $99 supercomputers
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. Parallel computing is normally reserved for supercomputers way out of the reach of average users -- at least at the moment, anyway. Adapteva wants to challenge that with its Parallella project, designed to bring mouth-watering power to a board similar in size to the Raspberry Pi for as little as $99. It hopes to deliver up to 45GHz (in total) using its Epiphany multicore accelerators, that crucially, only chug 5 watts of juice under normal conditions. These goliath speeds currently mean high costs, which is why they need your funds to move out of the prototype stage and start cheap mass production. Specs for the board are as follows: a dual-core ARM A9 CPU running Ubuntu OS as standard, 1GB RAM, a microSD slot, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Ethernet and a 16- or 64-core accelerator, with each core housing a 1GHz RISC processor, all linked "within a single shared memory architecture." An overriding theme of the Parallella project is the openness of the platform. When finalized, the full board design will be released, and each one will ship with free, open-source development tools and runtime libraries. In addition, full architecture and SDK documentation will be published online if-and-when the Kickstarter project reaches its funding goal of $750,000. That's pretty ambitious, but we're reminded of another crowd-funded venture which completely destroyed an even larger target. However, that sum will only be enough for Adapteva to produce the 16-core board, which reportedly hits 13GHz and 26 gigaflops, and is expected to set you back a measly $99. A speculative $3 million upper goal has been set for work to begin on the $199 64-core version, topping out at 45GHz and 90 gigaflops. Pledge options range from $99 to $5,000-plus, distinguished mainly by how soon you'll get your hands on one. Big spenders will also be the first to receive a 64-core board when they become available. Adapteva's Andreas Olofsson talks through the Parallella project in a video after the break, but if you're already sold on the tiny supercomputer, head over to the source link to contribute before the October 27th closing date.
Tilera sees sense in the server wars, puts just 36 cores in its newest processor
While Tilera's forthcoming 100-core processors threaten to set off fire alarms around the world, the company has finally brought out its more sensible 36-core variant. The 1.2GHz Tile-GX36 sips just 24 watts and is designed to be especially handy with short and sharp jobs like processing internet transactions. It's a reduced instruction set (RISC) chip, so it's less power hungry and cheaper than Intel's x86 silicon. It also sports 64-bit architecture, whereas rival ARM is set to remain 32-bit until 2014. Then again, with Tilera lagging behind in terms of brand recognition and software support, a two-year head start might not be long enough.
The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs
You've heard of ARM, right? The little chip design company that started out as twelve engineers in a barn in Cambridge, UK, but is now responsible for 25 billion of the microprocessors on this planet? Good, so now you need to meet John Biggs, who's been there since the very beginning -- since before the barn, in fact, when ARM was just a pesky little project within Acorn Computers. Read on for John's straight-up perspective on the company's frangible beginnings, its deep rivalry with Intel, and what those three letters actually stand for.
IBM and NCSA end their Blue Waters affair, go back to just being supercomputing friends
It seems that IBM and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois have hit a snag in their once fruitful relationship. After nearly four years of partnering for the Blue Waters petascale supercomputer, the NCSA's recently released a joint statement explaining that IBM's "terminated" its involvement with the project. If you'll recall, IBM was supplying its latest Power7 rigs to get all that data flowing, but the company's now decided that Ol' Blue will require more resources than initially anticipated. Apparently, there were talks to try and keep the spark alive, but since those fell through both have decided to return each others CDs and hoodies assets involved with the project (per contract terms): IBM gives back the money, while the NCSA returns any hardware supplied. The two plan on remaining in touch for future endeavours, and the NCSA doesn't appear to be too down either as it'll be consulting with the National Science Foundation to keep Blue Waters afloat. You'll find the official statement in the source link below, but we've included a video rendition of how we'd like to imagine it past the break. [Photo credit: kosheahan]
The Acorn A7000+ portable mod is what your MacBook looks like in an alternate universe
Aside from its attempted rebirth as a laptop manufacturer back in 2006, we haven't heard all that much from Acorn Computers in the past, oh, two decades or so. And if you're not a UK native, there's a pretty good chance that you didn't hear all that much about the "British Apple" before then either. But while the company's more official attempt to go portable was nothing to write home about, its late-period A7000+ desktop has now seen a successful second life at the hands of a British modder as the A7KP. The Acorn's innards have been stuffed into a five pound (relatively) portable setup, featuring a 10.4-inch LCD, 4GB of flash memory, and a battery that offers up three hours of RISC OS-based fun. It's enough to make you wonder how you ever played Lemmings on anything else.
NCSA prepares for Blue Waters petascale supercomputer, and we've got the video to prove it
How often do you get to see an unboxing of this magnitude? Our buddy Bill at the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois) has been kind enough to hit us up with a video that shows the arrival and installation of the facility's new IBM 780 hardware at the National Petascale Computing Facility. This hardware will allow scientists to prep code in anticipation of the Blue Waters -- which, as previously reported, will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it goes online in 2011, thanks to its over 16,000 Power7 nodes. Video after the break.
iPad misses out on Office romance, but gains a $900 app and more
Stephen Elop, el presidente of Microsoft's business division has stated that his company has "no current plans" to port its Office productivity suite over to the iPad. Contenting itself with a "wait and see" approach, the Redmond outfit isn't willing to completely close the door of possibility, but earlier hopes of seeing family favorites like Word and Excel on the iPad might have to be doused for the time being. Should that hamper the enjoyment of your new slate, you might want to console yourself with the extravagantly priced SiteClone Publisher, also available for the iPhone, which converts $900 of your hard-earned cashola into a tool that downloads data off particular sites while online, so that the user may access that content even without a connection. Doesn't sound worthy of a tenth of its price, but maybe the government and corporate entities it's aimed at will appreciate it more. Finally, Apple Insider is reporting whispers that Apple retail employees will be getting freebie iPads at some indeterminate point in the future, while NeoSmart has a particularly insightful breakdown of the differences between PowerPC, x86, and ARM CPU instruction sets. Hit up the links below for the full edifying experience.
IBM developing 10 petaflop supercomputer, Power7 to ship next year
The last we heard, IBM was hard at work on its Power7 processor. Now the company's announcing that the thirty-two core chip -- and copious amounts of eDRAM -- are at the heart of its newest supercomputing project. To be housed at the University of Illinois, IBM's Blue Waters will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it goes online in 2011, theoretically capable of achieving 16 petaflop speeds by connecting up to 16,384 Power7 nodes, although IBM said that initially the theoretical peak performance will likely be closer to 10 petaflops -- with more realistic sustained real-world performance near one petaflop. To keep things from overheating, a system was devised that includes water-cooling for the whole rack, including the processor itself. But why should government agencies and large corporations have all the fun? According to CNET, IBM plans to ship Power7 processors with commercial server products sometime next year.
IBM brings the ruckus -- and new Power7 processor
IBM likes its servers and supercomputers. A lot. After giving the Power6 plenty of self-congratulatory publicity, Big Blue is ready to move on to the 7th generation of Power, which is set to be announced at the Hot Chips conference this evening. With eight cores and up to four SMT4 threads running on each, the 45nm Power7 can perform 32 simultaneous tasks per chip. The designers have slapped in a whopping 32MB of eDRAM in each chip for improved latency, dual DDR3 memory controllers for a sustained 100GB per second bandwidth, and even error correcting code and memory mirroring for redundancy. Sounds like a major boon for research into the brains of mice and the history of dirty words, but we don't expect to hear much about this proc outside the server farm.
WinFast HPVC1100 is world's first external SpursEngine encoder
Toshiba's Cell-based SpursEngine HD video co-processor has made plenty of appearances within monstrous gaming machines, but this marks the very first time where it has stepped out of the laptop chassis and into a portable enclosure. Granted, the language barrier is killing us here, but it seems as if the Leadtek WinFast HPVC1100 wraps a SpursEngine encoder into an on-the-go solution that can be lugged around with a standard laptop in order to churn through video while on set, in the field or on the road. Other specs include 128MB of RAM, a PCI-Express slot and a weight of 1.54 pounds; there's no word just yet on pricing or availability. One more shot is after the break.[Via Akihabara News]
Acorn Computers to be reborn as laptop maker
If you're a Brit of a certain age, the name Acorn probably has as much resonance for you as Commodore or Amiga does for us Yanks. No, it's not because you're a squirrelwatcher (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's because of Acorn Computers, the pioneering manufacturer of the late 70s and early 80s, which quit the computer business in the 90s. Now, according to reports, Acorn is set to be reborn as notebook vendor. The revived Acorn will launch next week with four laptops, ranging from a 12-incher to one with a 17-inch display. Rather than running Acorn's old RISC OS, however, the new boxes will be fairly convention Windows XP laptops, and will come bundled with Star Office.
