Summary of the first half of August 2020

[cobito]

Failure rate of graphics cards

A German computer retailer has published a table with the number of RMAs they receive from each graphics card model. The cards that tend to fail the most are those with a 2080 Ti GPU.

Linux 5.8 available

The new kernel version comes with AMD's power controller for Zen and Zen 2 processors, support for LZO-RLE compression in the F2FS file system, and compatibility with IBM's POWER10 processors, among many other things.

How the 8086 was made

Unlike many articles about the first x86, this one talks about how the integrated circuit was physically constructed.

On Apple's use of ARM

Apple is gradually abandoning Intel processors, providing x86 support through emulation. This article analyzes the implications of this major change.

AMD drivers 20.8.1 available

Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.8.1 fixes a bug that caused the refresh rate to freeze at an arbitrary value when switching windows with FreeSync enabled, causing stuttering.

What went wrong at Intel

A former Intel chief engineer talks about why, in his opinion, the company is losing the performance battle. One of the criticisms is directed at AVX512, a set of instructions that, along with 512-bit registers, attempts (unsuccessfully) to compete with the computational power of a GPU.

Core i7-10610U

Yesterday, an anonymous user brought us this Comet Lake-U with 4 cores and HT. It seems that the TDP increase from the classic 15W to the U series' 25W has not been very successful because the 4 cores barely perform like a 2-core processor with HT. The portable CPU is in 66th position in the overall ranking. Since we only have two Comets so far, it doesn't make sense to show the ranking by architecture.

LibreOffice 7 available

The seventh major version of the open-source office suite comes with support for the ODF 1.3 format, Vulkan graphics acceleration, and better compatibility with Microsoft Office formats.

Vulnerability discovered in ARM CPUs

The security flaw is in Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips that power a good part of tablets and phones. According to reports, an attacker can steal data from internal memory and access various hardware devices by getting the victim to play a simple video.

AMD FX 4100

An anonymous user has brought us a 2011 Bulldozer that has 4 cores that seem more like 2. Its performance is comparable to Ivy Bridge laptop models from around the same era. When comparing both architectures, it's worth noting that AMD has a TDP of 95W (3.7GHz) while Intel's TDP is 35W (2.5GHz).

Toshiba leaves the laptop market

The veteran Japanese company has sold its laptop division stake to Sharp. The manufacturer has been in the scene since 1985 and is credited with the first home-use laptop computer.

Boeing 747s still use floppy disks

The industry in general is conservative, and aviation is especially so. These planes have to be updated at least every 28 days; otherwise, they cannot take off.

Core i5-6400

Yesterday, kynes brought us this Skylake with 4 cores from 2015 in all modes. It's quite difficult to compare it with other CPUs in the database since, in different tests, it resembles different generations and ranges. It's in 54th position in the overall ranking and the eighth of the 21 Skylakes we have.

Intel's graphics card will come out in 2021

Unlike other accelerators the company has released in the past, the Xe-HPGS is a GPU aimed at gamers and will have raytracing support.

Intel architecture day

The company's marketing team has published a post full of internal publicity and future expectations from an engineering perspective. Despite everything, the video they put out is informative.

Core i5-2450M

An anonymous user brought us this Sandy Bridge with 2 cores from 2012 yesterday. Its performance is similar to CPUs in the most basic Sandy and Ivy Bridge ranges. It's in seventh position of the 10 processors we have in this architecture and is far from making it into the top 100 overall.