Weekend tech reading: AMD 'Zen' and their return to high-end CPUs, tracking Windows pirates

Matthew DeCarlo

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AMD is making a comeback to high-end CPUs with upcoming 'Zen' based processors AMD's 2015 Financial Analyst Day has offered us a glimpse into what the company has in store for us the silicon pipeline for the next few years. And one of the most anticipated arrivals is AMD's next-generation, high-performance X86 core, codenamed Zen.

In terms of performance, AMD is promising an ambitious 40 percent increase in instructions per clock (IPC). With a new chip comes a new platform, this time called AM4. All of AMD's desktop CPUs will use this socket, including any Zen-based APUs it produces down the line. AM4 will introduce support for faster DDR4 memory, but other implementations of the chipset will continue to use DDR3.

amd zen cpus windows nsa linux xeon piracy windows 7 radioshack rootkit virtual reality vr self-driving car self-driving truck the void

New Linux rootkit leverages GPUs for stealth A team of developers has created a rootkit for Linux systems that uses the processing power and memory of graphics cards instead of CPUs in order to remain hidden. The rootkit, called Jellyfish, is a proof of concept designed to demonstrate that completely running malware on GPUs (graphics processing units) is a viable option. This is possible because dedicated graphics cards have their own processors and RAM. ITworld

Daimler's self-driving big rig debuts on Hoover Dam Although much attention has been paid to autonomous vehicles being developed by Google and traditional car companies, one truck maker believes that automated tractor-trailers will be rolling along highways before self-driving cars are cruising around the suburbs. On freeways, there are no intersections, no red lights, no pedestrians, making it a far less complex trip, said Wolfgang Bernhard, a management board member of Daimler AG, at a Tuesday event in Las Vegas. LA Times

Microsoft logs IP addresses to catch Windows 7 pirates A presumed pirate with an unusually large appetite for activating Windows 7 has incurred the wrath of Microsoft. In a lawsuit filed at a Washington court, the Seattle-based company said that it logged hundreds of suspicious product activations from a Verizon IP address and is now seeking damages. Torrent Freak

The Intel Xeon E7-8800 v3 Review: The POWER8 Killer? The story behind the high-end Xeon E7 has been an uninterrupted triumphal march for the past 5 years: Intel's most expensive Xeon beats Oracle servers - which cost a magnitude more - silly, and offers much better performance per watt/dollar than the massive IBM POWER servers. Each time a new generation of quad/octal socket Xeons is born, Intel increases the core count, RAS features, and performance per core while charging more for the top SKUs. AnandTech

RadioShack name going on the block Monday The RadioShack trademark and the rest of the intellectual property trove of the electronics retailing pioneer is going up for auction Monday as efforts continue to gather cash for creditors. Loaded with debt, RadioShack filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in February and scrambled to shut down or sell off stores. Company spokeswomen Merianne Roth confirmed Thursday that qualified bids were received by a court-set deadline, so the auction will go off as scheduled. Morningstar

Carl Sagan's solar sail spacecraft is finally getting a real-world test The Planetary Society is preparing to test a spacecraft proposed by legendaryastronomer (and founder of the Planetary Society) Carl Sagan. The vessel is called LightSail, and as you might expect, it uses a light sail for propulsion. The fascinating design has been successfully tested on Earth, but now it’s going to be launched to the upper atmosphere to test the deployment of its huge mylar sails in flight. ExtremeTech

A master key to the ultimate dumb device Lock-in. That's what we call it when you're dependent on a specific vendor for particular services. When you buy a single-serving coffee machine boasting convenient, mess-free coffee inserts, like Keurig K-Cup or Nespresso, you're bound to its brand of coffee pods. When you purchase digital music on iTunes, proprietary formats and digital rights management (DRM) make it difficult to listen to it outside of Apple's service. The Atlantic (also, R&D spending surge indicates Apple is working on something positively massive )

Scroll back Working on my game Mushroom 11, I was faced with many different design and technology challenges. I wasn't expecting to find references to issues like dynamically changing shapes or vertex animation, but I was quite surprised that camera work, a subject with more than 30 years of history in games, was hardly discussed. I decided to start a journey through the history of 2D gaming, documenting their challenges, approaches and how the evolution of their solutions. Itay Keren

If you like Dishonored you'll also like... As with so many of the best open world games, the real star of Dishonored is its setting: Dunwall city. The game's tale of urban blight, thievery, and betrayal plays out in a darkly-mirrored London that provides safer refuge to rats than the poor people who carry the city on their shoulders. There's little in the way of hope for them, but then again, the blackness of its heart is what I love about Arkane’s 2012 stealth-action game. PC Gamer

12-minute Mandelbrot: fractals on a 50 year old IBM 1401 mainframe When I found out that the Computer History Museum has a working IBM 1401 computer[1], I wondered if it could generate the Mandelbrot fractal. I wrote a fractal program in assembly language and the computer chugged away for 12 minutes to create the Mandelbrot image on its line printer. In the process I learned a bunch of interesting things about the IBM 1401, which I discuss in this article. Ken Shirriff

Researchers create lens to turn smartphone into microscope Researchers at the University of Houston have created an optical lens that can be placed on an inexpensive smartphone to magnify images by a magnitude of 120, all for just 3 cents a lens. Wei-Chuan Shih, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, said the lens can work as a microscope, and the cost and ease of using it -- it attaches directly to a smartphone camera lens... Phys.org

'The Void' is a VR experience which fuses physical and virtual reality environments Whilst the the virtual reality industry’s focus right now is largely on in-home entertainment, the out-of-home VR sector shows immense promise. A new project called ‘The Void‘ is an out-of-home experience that aims to let players explore physical environments in virtual reality. Confused? Let us explain. Road to VR (also, 'Mythbusters' is already shooting in virtual reality )

Android and iOS apps on Windows: What is Microsoft doing -- and will it work? At its Build developer conference last week, Microsoft made a pair of announcements about Windows development that were more than a little surprising: Windows will support applications developed for iOS and Android. This immediately felt like a dangerous move. Windows will not be the first operating system to run foreign applications. Famously, IBM advertised OS/2 as a "Better Windows than Windows" in the 1990s... Ars Technica

NSA's phone spying program ruled illegal by appeals court A U.S. spying program that systematically collects millions of Americans' phone records is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, putting pressure on Congress to quickly decide whether to replace or end the controversial anti-terrorism surveillance. Reuters (also, The NSA has an actual Skynet program )

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"Zen will use a new Socket, the AM4, which will also be used for AMD APUs in 2016. The chip will also support DDR4 RAM."

WoooHoooo, here we go! Good times ahead once more.
 
That's sweet music to my ears! My last AMD CPU was the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz (Socket AM2). I bought three of those back in 2007. I had to check my order list to get that information. Nice little trip down memory lane. I might just build myself a Zen rig when the time comes. Depends on Intel's offerings, ofc.
 
I own a Sabertooth FX990 R2.0 with a 8350,I can't wait to see this CPU perform I hope it's amazing.I will own it for sure can't freaking wait!
 
I certainly hope that AMD can turn things around and go toe to toe with Intel once again like back in the Athlon 64 days. Competition is a good thing for the consumer.
 
My first chip was the 2600+ barton followed by the 3700+ san diego. After that I totally missed out on dual core and went straight to the Q6600 and then the 2500K. Zen is going to have to be the clear winner in the $250-$350 range to get on my wishlist.
 
AMD has some groundbreaking silicon that is going to give the consumer some real GPU processing power.

But the media is not alking much about how this will happen.

DX11 is DEAD. The media needs to put a stake in it. DX12 which will be in the Windows 10 giveaway is going to change the way games are designed and played.

AMD's new hardware was all designed with Mantle and now that Microsoft has taken core features of Mantle to create DX12, AMD is very well positioned to take advantage of all that Mantle (cough, cough) DX12 will unlock.

Microsoft is now committing DX12 to XBOX and that means new games by Christmas and more studios on board. In fact MS has remarked that that DX12 will be the fastest adoption since DX9. Game studios are highly competitive and eye candy does sell games.

Microsoft says adoption rate of DirectX 12 is the fastest since DX9:
"The adoption rate of DirectX 12 is off to a huge start, with Microsoft saying "it's been the fastest adopted API in more than a decade"

tweaktown dot com/news/44918/microsoft-adoption-rate-directx-12-fastest-dx9/index.html , with Microsoft saying "it's been the fastest adopted API in more than a decade

The current crop of games when ported to DX12 will not come close to exploiting the extent of it's impact. Today's games are written to the maximum's of DX11 which for starters can only process 5000 AI objects compared to DX12's 100,000 AI objects. DX11 also hampers games as it can only process 10,000 draw calls as oppossed to DX12's 600,000 draw calls.

SO most games will not appear that much better with DX12 simply becasue they have not been written to be any better.


BUT; they will be playable on cheaper APU silicon!!

Using DX11 an Intel i7-4960 + GTX 980 can only present 2.2MILLION draw calls.
Using DX12 an AMD A6-7400 alone can produce 4,.4MILLION draw calls.

The point? Todays games ported to DX12 will all be very playable on AMD APU's.

It's your money!!! A $100 AMD APU outperforms an Inte/nVidia $2000 system.
 
It see3ms that some may not have noticded but mcafee had a chart of endpoints of adware servers and lots were located in washington dc.
 
AMD has some groundbreaking silicon that is going to give the consumer some real GPU processing power.

But the media is not alking much about how this will happen.

DX11 is DEAD. The media needs to put a stake in it. DX12 which will be in the Windows 10 giveaway is going to change the way games are designed and played.

AMD's new hardware was all designed with Mantle and now that Microsoft has taken core features of Mantle to create DX12, AMD is very well positioned to take advantage of all that Mantle (cough, cough) DX12 will unlock.

Microsoft is now committing DX12 to XBOX and that means new games by Christmas and more studios on board. In fact MS has remarked that that DX12 will be the fastest adoption since DX9. Game studios are highly competitive and eye candy does sell games.

Microsoft says adoption rate of DirectX 12 is the fastest since DX9:
"The adoption rate of DirectX 12 is off to a huge start, with Microsoft saying "it's been the fastest adopted API in more than a decade"

tweaktown dot com/news/44918/microsoft-adoption-rate-directx-12-fastest-dx9/index.html , with Microsoft saying "it's been the fastest adopted API in more than a decade

The current crop of games when ported to DX12 will not come close to exploiting the extent of it's impact. Today's games are written to the maximum's of DX11 which for starters can only process 5000 AI objects compared to DX12's 100,000 AI objects. DX11 also hampers games as it can only process 10,000 draw calls as oppossed to DX12's 600,000 draw calls.

SO most games will not appear that much better with DX12 simply becasue they have not been written to be any better.


BUT; they will be playable on cheaper APU silicon!!

Using DX11 an Intel i7-4960 + GTX 980 can only present 2.2MILLION draw calls.
Using DX12 an AMD A6-7400 alone can produce 4,.4MILLION draw calls.

The point? Todays games ported to DX12 will all be very playable on AMD APU's.

It's your money!!! A $100 AMD APU outperforms an Inte/nVidia $2000 system.
While I am looking forward to seeing AMD come out on top, the above sounds like an AMD shill to me.
 
It's your money!!! A $100 AMD APU outperforms an Inte/nVidia $2000 system.
While I am looking forward to seeing AMD come out on top, the above sounds like an AMD shill to me.

That last part was too much for me to digest, it's total bullshit and the poster knows it.

I like AMD and actually have an FX-6300, right now it can't beat intel setups on any area but punch per buck, and even low-mid range the i3 has been gaining a lot of ground.
 
I too am still using the Sabertooth and the 8350. Need a big speed bump!
 
Using DX11 an Intel i7-4960 + GTX 980 can only present 2.2MILLION draw calls.
Using DX12 an AMD A6-7400 alone can produce 4,.4MILLION draw calls.

The point? Todays games ported to DX12 will all be very playable on AMD APU's.

It's your money!!! A $100 AMD APU outperforms an Inte/nVidia $2000 system.
Before you make that claim, don't you think you need to provide an example of nVidia's draw calls on DX12?

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/directx-12/
In addition, NVIDIA will match Microsoft OS support for DX12. Over 70% of gaming PCs are now DX11 based. NVIDIA will support the DX12 API on all the DX11-class GPUs it has shipped; these belong to the Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectural families. With more than 50% market share (65% for discrete graphics) among DX11-based gaming systems, NVIDIA alone will provide game developers the majority of the potential installed base.
 
Using DX11 an Intel i7-4960 + GTX 980 can only present 2.2MILLION draw calls.
Using DX12 an AMD A6-7400 alone can produce 4,.4MILLION draw calls.
(...)
It's your money!!! A $100 AMD APU outperforms an Inte/nVidia $2000 system.
That is completely wrong. Making more draw calls does not mean higher performance, that notion alone is completely ridiculous.
Consoles, with their customized low-level APIs, have always been able to do an order of magnitute more draw calls than a high-end PC with DirectX could. So tell me, do consoles offer more performance than high-end PCs today (or any time since 2006)?
Draw calls are only about accessing memory pools and communicating with a CPU to fetch elements that should be rendered. Being able to make a lot more of draw calls is completely irrelevant when you lack the processing power required to actually render those elements being called. It doesn't matter if you can theoretically make twice as many draw calls on an APU compared to a GTX 980, it still has a fraction of the floating-point performance, a fraction of the ROP performance, a fraction of the pixel and texel fillrates, and a fraction of the memory bandwidth, so even with more draw calls it still can only render a fraction of what a GTX 980 can.
 
I am quite sure that 8 Zen cores + a full firepro + HBM = a Dandy APU
even 4 excavator cores and HBM would shock the market that is doable by June
 
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