Summary of the week of December 9, 2024

[cobito]

The 1000-layer frontier

Almost 10 years ago, Samsung introduced the first 16-layer multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chip. Today, the challenge is to go from 200 to 800 layers. Reaching 1000 layers is not an easy task, as with such heights, it becomes complicated to maintain uniformity in the writing process and connectivity between layers.

Flathub with paid programs

The Ubuntu Foundation has announced that Flathub will start distributing paid Linux programs.

Core i7-12850HX

Someone has brought us an Alder Lake with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The Core i7-12850HX reaches half a million points, placing it in the middle of the top 100 in both single and multi-core.

Changing GPUs in Linux

The people at openSUSE have created a tool called switcherooctl from which it is possible to change the graphics card in a multi-GPU system. The program also allows you to choose which GPU to use with which program and switch to the iGPU automatically when no power is needed. It is also compatible with Wayland and any graphics card manufacturer.

Raspberry Pi 500 available

A few days ago, the Raspberry Pi 500 was presented, a desktop computer based on the Raspberry Pi 5. The main improvements come from the CPU (switching from a Cortex-A72 at 1.8GHz to a Cortex-A76 at 2.4GHz) and the RAM, whose capacity has doubled. As for peripherals, there are no significant changes.

Ryzen 5 8500G

Someone has brought us a Zen 4 with 6 cores with a performance similar to the Core i5-12400. The Ryzen 5 8500G does not achieve a great multi-core result despite the 65W TDP and fails to enter the overall ranking. However, its maximum frequency of 5GHz places it in the 32nd position in the single-core ranking.

Security issues with MV in AMD

A security flaw has been discovered that allows bypassing the protection that AMD applies to RAM to protect data in virtual machines. Secure Encrypted Virtualization served to prevent people with physical access to data center hardware from snooping on virtual machines of tenants.

Disabling the instruction cache of Zen 4

Someone has disabled the instruction cache of a Zen 4 to see what happens. The result is that performance is reduced, although not as much as expected. Unfortunately, no power consumption measurements were taken to check the reduction when the cache is disabled.

Core i5-14500T

Krampak has brought us a Raptor Lake with 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The Core i5-14500T reaches half a million points with a TDP of only 35W. With this score, it manages to sneak into the top 100, finishing in the 75th position.