Summary of the week of October 4, 2021

[cobito]

Analysis of the Apple A15

The SoC that will power the iPhone 13 comes with 2 high-performance cores and 4 low-power cores. The cache grows from 8 to 12MB compared to the A14, equaling that of the M1.

Samsung and AMD ally

The SoCs for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S will have an RDNA 2 GPU with support for Ray Tracing.

Firefox and Brave will open microsoft-edge addresses

One of Microsoft's latest moves to extend the use of Edge has been to create microsoft-edge: addresses that, unlike https:, are obligatorily opened with Edge. From now on, Firefox and Brave will be able to open those links as well.

The impact of free software and hardware

The EU has published a study on the impact of open-source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness, and innovation in the economy.

Windows 11 is now available

Today, October 5, Microsoft has officially presented Windows 11. It requires a 64-bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, UEFI with secure boot, a TPM 2.0 module, and a GPU compatible with DX12.

Chip hoarding

TSMC claims that some companies are hoarding chips that they are not going to use. It is not clear if this stock is a consequence of the breakdown in the supply chain of other components, logistical problems, or any other cause that is not mere speculation.

The successor to EUV

High-NA EUVL is the predecessor technology to the current EUV that will allow 2nm lithographies to be created from 2023.

Firefox 93 comes with significant changes

The new version of Mozilla's browser comes with support for decoding images in AVIF format (based on the AV1 codec). In addition, the PDF viewer now allows you to fill out forms.

A free alternative to Teams

Twake is a free alternative to Microsoft Teams that offers functionality similar to Trello and Slack.

Nvidia continues to try to buy ARM

To convince the EU on antitrust issues, Nvidia has said that it will keep ARM as a neutral technology to prevent companies like Qualcomm, Samsung, or Apple from monopolizing parts of the ISA.

Windows 11 slows down some processors

The new version of Windows seems to be slowing down Zen+, Zen 2, Zen 3, and EPYC. The reduction in performance reaches 15%. There is a patch in sight that solves the problem.

Intel wants to create new plants in Europe

Intel is going to invest 80 billion in Europe to renew and create new production plants in the next 10 years. The United Kingdom is left out as it is not covered by community subsidies.

Disassembling the Steam Deck

Valve has published a video showing how to disassemble the Steam Deck. It shows how much of the hardware is modular and could be replaced with some ease.

[Yorus]

I like the new video format, very current for those who don't stop still