Summary of the week of July 24, 2023

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Debian supports RISC-V

The Debian development team has decided to start supporting the open RISC-V architecture. At the moment the repository is almost empty but over time it will be filled with all the official distribution packages.

Intel introduces AVX10

Intel continues to try to improve its AVX extension after the small fiasco of AVX512. AVX10 will implement the extension in the E cores with vectors of a length of 256 bits while in the P cores, lengths of 512 bits will continue to be allowed.

Security flaw found in Zen 2 processors

A Google security expert has found a vulnerability in Zen 2 processors that has been named Zenbleed. This security flaw would allow an attacker to steal data such as encryption keys and passwords from the processor. The impact on performance of the patch that AMD has already started to apply is not known.

61TB SSD drives

A memory manufacturer has presented a 30 TB NVMe SSD module intended for data centers. By the end of the year, it plans to reach 61TB, surpassing the largest mechanical disks currently available. The price of the 30TB unit is €2400.

A wireless RTX

Asus is manufacturing RTX 4070s without cables. The power is provided by a direct connection to the motherboard that is not standardized. This connector is located next to the PCIe 5.0 slot.

Mini immutable distribution

Someone has created a new very simple immutable Linux distribution that allows you to boot a system without the need for installation, with support for Docker and an SSH server. The new development is called Lightwhale.

The possibility of eliminating 32-bit from Linux

For some time, there has been talk of eliminating all code related to 32-bit in the Linux kernel. In this entry, a detailed analysis is made of what it would entail, which architectures would be affected, and what hardware would be left without support.

HBM3 Gen2 memory reaches 1.2TB/s

The second generation of HBM3 memory has reached a rate of 1.2 TB/s with a capacity of 24 GB. HBM4 is expected to exceed 2 TB/s.

On High-NA lithography

In this extensive article, they analyze the future High-NA lithography whose increase in numerical aperture will allow reducing the step from 26 to 16nm.

What disappears with Plasma 6

The KDE team is finalizing the details of Plasma 6, which is scheduled to be released in about 6 months. In this entry, they explain what features they are going to eliminate, such as KHotkeys that do not work with Wayland or the Widgets in windows, whose usefulness was limited to showing off the technical capabilities of the environment despite confusing the user.