Support for RISC-V in Android is taking another step forward. The latest update that we have is that now not only are we accepting patches, but we have begun to mature support for RISC-V in Android. RISC-V is a modular ISA, meaning that there are a large number of optional extensions. We have also determined an initial set that we feel is critical to ensure that any CPU running RISC-V will have all of the features we expect to achieve high performance. This set includes the rva22 profile as well as the vector and vector crypto extensions. Excellent news.
The initial support was posted on October 25th 2023 on the Linux kernel mailing lists for review by the Linux developers community. With the set of patches released by Linaro engineers, it is also possible to boot an AOSP image with Graphics Software Rendering using Google's SwiftShader. Since 2014, Linaro Engineers have been working closely with Qualcomm Engineers to enable Snapdragon platforms to work with Mainline Linux. Running a recent upstream Linux kernel immediately after the announcement of a new SoC is a significant achievement, and is a testimony to the close working partnership between Qualcomm and Linaro. Interestingly enough, during the recent announcement of the PC-focused X Elite SoC, Qualcomm also highlighted that Linux will be fully supported by the platform, and to underline that point, the company showed off X Elite laptops running both Windows and Linux. While it'll take more to convince me that Qualcomm now actually cares about properly supporting its SoCs and the open source community, they're at least positive signs.
MicroTCP is a TCP/IP network stack I started building as a learning exercise while attending the Computer Networking course at the Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. It's just a hobby project and is intended to just be a minimal, yet complete, implementation. At this moment MicroTCP implements ARP (RFC 826, complete), IPv4 (no fragmentation), ICMP (minimum necessary to reply to pings) and TCP (complete but not stress-tested). Note that complete" should not be intended as fully compliant" but just as a measure of progress on all of the major features. For instance, it's complete enough to handle HTTP traffic on a local network. People like this usually end up writing a simple operating system, so it's interesting to see a TCP/IP stack instead. While clearly a hobby project, small, portable TCP/IP stacks can potentially be useful for very specific use cases, like bringing connectivity to ancient operating systems or other small hobby projects.
About a year or so ago, the Asahi Linux people told me I was being paranoid about Apple's macOS or firmware updates bricking or otherwise negatively affecting Asahi Linux installs, and that you shouldn't rely on Linux on Apple M devices for anything serious. They told me Apple explicitly supports alternate operating systems on ARM Macs and that Apple can be fully trusted and relied upon. ...so anyway bugs in Sonoma are making Macs with Asahi installed unbootable. macOS Sonoma and macOS Ventura 13.6 were released with multiple serious bugs in their upgrade and boot process. Combined, these bugs can create conditions where a machine always boots to a black screen, no matter what power button press combination is used. This leaves users stuck, and the only solution is to use DFU recovery. Apple obviously doesn't care about anyone running anything but macOS on M Macs, and unsurprisingly nobody at Apple even thought to test for this so of course this happened. I'd say I told you so" but I'm tired of warning people about Apple's behaviour because apparently people just love endlessly banging their bloodied head against a wall.
We've already covered the end of life of Windows CE, but Ars has a short but interesting look back at the history of this undeservedly unloved operating system. It was a proto-netbook, it was a palmtop, it was a PDA, it was Windows Phone 7 but not Windows Phone 8, and then it was an embedded ghost. It parents never seemed to know what to do with it after it grew up, beyond offer it up for anybody to shape in their own image. And then, earlier this month, with little notice, Windows CE was no more, at least as a supported operating system. I will never forget Windows CE.
In this release, the FreeBSD base system and kernel have been updated to 1302508, and it contains software updates, some improvements to Update Station, and new features to NetworkMgr. Also, os-generic-userland-devtools has been removed from the default installation to downsize the live system image. GhostBSD is an excellent option if you want a more turnkey FreeBSD-based desktop.
The goal of this post is to share how we, at the Browser Company, have made it possible to use Swift to build a modern Windows application. There is no UI framework for Windows written in Swift, and Windows itself is written in C++ - so that may leave you wondering, how can I build my app on Windows"? Modern Windows applications use WinRT, a technology built on top of COM, which can interop really well with Swift, as we presented in our previous post. To be able to build idiomatic UI for Windows in Swift, we have built a language projection tool which creates idiomatic Swift language bindings for WinRT, and today we are open sourcing it at https://github.com/thebrowsercompany/swift-winrt. Swift/Winrt is based on Microsoft's code generators for C++ (github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt) and C# (github.com/microsoft/cswinrt), and thus is written in C++. Cool stuff.
Since May, uBO has been in a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube. And they've shown incredible resilience, especially when you consider that there are only two people on the uBO team dealing with YouTube. The uBO team members are all volunteers. They've gone above and beyond to meet every little request from their users. But there's a limit to how much they can take. At some point, the constant demands become too much, and they will leave uBO for good. It's one thing to play cat and mouse with YouTube. It's quite another to deal with a wave of angry users. Maybe that's how YouTube will win this war of attrition. If you use YouTube enough, YouTube Premium is a great deal - albeit it a deal that's steadily getting worse as Google increases its price.
Apple released their first Quicktake camera, the Quicktake 100, in 1994, ten years after the Apple //c. On the box, they very boldly wrote: Requirements: 386, 486 or superior; 2MB of RAM, 10MB of free hard disk space; an 1.44MB floppy drive; a VGA, SVGA or superior card". But was this true? No. They were just being lazy, or trying to get you to upgrade a perfectly functional 8-bit, 1MHz computer with 128kB of RAM and 140kB floppies. In fact, it was absolutely possible to do digital photography on an Apple //c. Useless projects are the best projects.
Modern PCs provide plenty of metering and power-management options. Version 23.10 of the Genode-based Sculpt operating system makes these features available via an interactive user interface. One can watch the temperature of each CPU core, monitor the individual CPU frequencies, switch between power profiles, and reveal details about power draw. Go to the download page to get started with Sculpt OS. It's used as the day-to-day operating system by Genode developers, so it's quite capable.
The Trinity Desktop Environment, the KDE 3 fork, has released a new version. R14.1.1 comes with the ability to drag and tile windows to the display's borders and corners, adds several improvements to keyboard shortcuts settings, a few new wallpapers, better support in SunOS/Illumos/DilOS and support for libxine2's logarithmic volume settings. It also has some important fixes for tdepowersave's display brightness control, arts sound server start up crash, TQt3's recursive mutexes and for the high CPU usage detected on some RPM distros with R14.1.0. Behind the scenes, an effort to clean up and enhance TQt3 and tqtinterface code has started and will be going on across multiple releases. You can update to the latest version through your package manager, or install TDE for the first time using the project's instructions.
When I first heard about Be My AI-a new collaboration between Open AI and Be My Eyes, an app that connects sighted volunteers with blind people who need help via video call-I didn't let myself get too excited. Be My AI promised to allow blind people to receive an A.I.-generated description of any photo we uploaded. This was a tantalizing prospect, but it wasn't the first time a tech company had promised to revolutionize the way people with disabilities access visual content. Microsoft had already given us Seeing AI, which in a very rudimentary way provided a rough idea of what was going on in the images we shared, and which allowed us-again, in a fairly basic way-to interact with information contained in written texts. But the details were missing, and in most cases we could know only that there was a person in the picture and what they were doing, nothing more. Be My AI was different. Suddenly, I was in a world where nothing was off limits. By simply waving my cellphone, I could hear, with great detail, what my friends were wearing, read street signs and shop prices, analyze a room without having entered it, and indulge in detailed descriptions of the food-one of my great passions-that I was about to eat. I like to make fun of AI" - those quotes are there for a reason - but that doesn't mean it can't be truly useful. This is a great example of this technology providing a tangible, real, and possibly life-altering benefit to someone with a disability, and that's just amazing. My only gripe is that, as the author notes, the images have to be uploaded to the service in order to be analysed. Cynical as I tend to be, this was probably the intent of OpenAI's executives. A ton of blind people and other people with vision issues will be uploading a lot of private data to be sucked up into the Open AI database, for further AI" training. But that's easy for me to say, and I think blind people and other people with vision issues will argue that's a sacrifice they're totally comfortable making, considering that they're getting in return.
Does anybody care about Android 14? This year's release of the world's most popular operating system feels like one of the smallest ever, bringing just a handful of new features. Even during the Android portion of Google's big I/O keynote, Google spent most of its time showing off a new generative AI feature that creates wallpapers for you, as if there aren't enough wallpapers in the world. Last year's Android 13 release felt small, but that was because it was the second major Android OS release that year. Android 12L-the big tablet and foldable release-came out earlier. What's Android 14's excuse? We're not really sure. We still have a few things to go over, though, like new lock screen customizations, genuinely exciting changes to the way the back button works, and a pile of under-the-hood changes. Android 14 is definitely the smallest version number update I remember from Android history. I'm not entirely sure why this wasn't called Android 13.1.
In 2021, at the height of cryptocurrency mining, Nvidia released the Nvidia CMP 170HX. Designed as a compute-only card to accelerate Ethereum's memory-hard Ethash Proof-of-Work mining algorithm with its 1500 GB/s HBM2e memory bus, Nvidia implemented the hardware using the GA100 silicon from their Ampere architecture. Thus, the CMP 170HX is essentially a variant of the all-mighty Nvidia A100, Nvidia's top-performing datacenter GPU at that time. Naturally, the existence of the CMP 170HX raised many questions, including its potential in applications beyond mining. Today, following the discontinuation of Ethash, these $5000 GPUs from closed mining farms are sold on second-hand markets for $400-$500 in China. It's time to answer these questions. This article contains a basic performance overview, a hardware teardown, a watercooling installation guide, and a repair log. I'm glad smart people are at least trying to turn otherwise useless hardware designed for one of the most brazenly useless applications in human history into something potentially useful.
We have written articles in the past year about some of Microsoft's different product launches, like how its first real hardware device was an add-in card for the Apple II, or its not-so-smartwatch platform, SPOT. However, many people may not be aware that Microsoft had a small involvement in a movement to create a standardized PC platform that evolved into a huge video game platform in Japan. The platform is called MSX, and on October 21, 1983, just over 40 years ago, the first such PC that used the platform went on sale in Japan, the Mitsubishi ML-8000. The launch price for the PC was 59,800 yen or close to $400. One of my oldest computer memories is using an MSX with a friend at his parents' house. I must've been 7 years old or something like that. The MSX was weirdly popular in The Netherlands due to Philips building quite a few of them.
Do you know that the modern web browser can access real musical instruments? With the help of Web MIDI API, we can create a web application that can access MIDI devices connected to our computer. In this article, I will explain how I use Google Sheets as a music sequencer for composing and playing ambient music with a hardware synthesizer. Next thing you tell me browsers have an API for gamepads and joysticks connected through the game port.
Arm has traditionally targeted the low end of the power and performance curve, but just as Intel has been looking to expand into the low power market, ARM is looking to expand into higher power and performance segments. The Cortex X series is at the forefront of this effort. Here, we'll be looking at the Cortex X2 as implemented in the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. This SoC features a single X2 core, alongside four Cortex A510 and three Cortex A710 cores. The Cortex X2 in this SoC typically runs at 2.8 GHz, although lscpu indicates its clock speed can range from 787.2 MHz to 3.187 GHz. An in-depth look at this performance ARM core.
Chip companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD are all either planning or said to be planning another attempt at making Arm chips for the consumer PC market. Qualcomm is leading the charge in mid-2024 with its Snapdragon X Elite and a new CPU architecture called Oryon. And Reuters reported earlier this week that Nvidia and AMD are targeting a 2025 release window for their own Arm chips for Windows PCs. If these companies successfully get their chips into PCs, it would mostly come at Intel's expense. But Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger doesn't seem worried about it yet, as he said on the company's most recent earnings call. The biggest issue for Windows on ARM will be, as always, application compatibility. ARM applications haven't exactly been pouring in for Windows, and translation layers in Windows haven't been earth-shattering either. As long as this problem remains, Intel indeed has little to worry about. I'm just excited there's finally some movement in ARM laptops, because Linux is exceptionally well positioned for the transition to ARM. Every major distribution has a fully functional ARM version, with pretty much full package repository support. There really is very little difference in running desktop Linux on ARM (or even POWER9, for that matter). The power of open source.
While Qualcomm has become wildly successful in the Arm SoC market for Android smartphones, their efforts to parlay that into success in other markets has eluded them so far. The company has produced several generations of chips for Windows-on-Arm laptops, and while each has incrementally improved on matters, it's not been enough to dislodge a highly dominant Intel. And while the lack of success of Windows-on-Arm is far from solely being Qualcomm's fault - there's a lot to be said for the OS and software - silicon has certainly played a part. To make serious inroads on the market, it's not enough to produce incrementally better chips - Qualcomm needs to make a major leap in performance. Now, after nearly three years of hard work, Qualcomm is getting ready to do just that. This morning, the company is previewing their upcoming Snapdragon X Elite SoC, their next-generation Arm SoC designed for Windows devices. Based on a brand-new Arm CPU core design from their Nuvia subsidiary dubbed Oryon", the Snapdragon X Elite is to be the tip of the iceberg for a new generation of Qualcom SoC designs. Not only is it the heart and soul of Qualcomm's most important Windows-on-Arm SoC to date, but it will eventually be in smartphones and a whole lot more. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now let's focus on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC and the Oryon cores underpinning it. Some more in-depth information about Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X Elite, this time from AnandTech.
My name is Matt Campbell, and I'm delighted to announce that I'm joining the GNOME accessibility team to develop a new accessibility architecture. After providing some brief background information on myself, I'll describe what's wrong with the current Linux desktop accessibility architecture, including a design flaw that has plagued assistive technology developers and users on multiple platforms, including GNOME, for decades. Then I'll describe how two of the three current browser engines have solved this problem in their internal accessibility implementations, and discuss my proposal to extend this solution to a next-generation accessibility architecture for GNOME and other free desktops. No clever quips or snarky nonsense - just read the proposal, and contribute if you can.
A browser(/web) engine essentially takes in a URL(/etc) and gives you it rendered into a window for you to view and interact with. <shadow> does this too, almost entirely from scratch, made in JS. It runs in your browser! Node backend soonTM too? The host browser(/etc) is only used for networking (fetch) and renderer backend (<canvas>). I feel like I have opinions, but I can't express them. This is equal parts genius and madness.
The device looks like a conventional computer monitor but opens up like a clam. The screen itself is a common flat panel liquid crystal display or LCD, a nearly translucent screen that is typically lit from behind by powered lights. For Eazeye, the backing lights are replaced with a bright white carbon fiber panel that can tip backwards up to 45 degrees. The panel bounces ambient light from the monitor's surroundings through the LCD screen, which, under the right lighting conditions, provides enough illumination for the screen to be used like normal. I can see this working quite well in certain environments, like offices and well-lit rooms. It sure is a very interesting idea, and I like the design, too.
Google paid $26.3 billion to other companies to ensure its search engine was the default on web browsers and mobile phones, a top company executive testified during the Justice Department's antitrust trial Friday. The amount of payments Alphabet Inc.'s Google made to other companies for the default status - such as Apple Inc. for placement on the iPhone and other devices - has more than tripled since 2014, according to Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior executive responsible for both search and advertising. Google's search advertising brought in $146.4 billion in revenue in 2021, a number that has also climbed over the same years, Raghavan said. The payments for the default were the company's biggest cost, he added. Utterly bananas. Is it any wonder, then, that nobody can compete with Google? How are you supposed to compete as a search engine when Google shells the entire nominal GPD of Bosnia and Herzegovina every year to be the default everywhere where it matters? And that's 2021 - who knows how much it is now!
The Linux Mint project has announced that they're finally working on bringing the Cinnamon desktop environment over to Wayland. The work started on Wayland. As mentioned earlier this year, this was identified as one of the major challenges our project had to tackle in the mid to long term. Priority had been given to ISO tools and Secureboot over new features for 21.3 already, we felt it was time to invest some resources into Wayland as well. We wanted to have a clear picture of the work involved, so we wanted to start now. In terms of timing we don't think we need Wayland support to be fully ready (i.e. to be a better Cinnamon option for most people) before 2026 (Mint 23.x). That leaves us 2 years to identify and to fix all the issues. It's something we'll continue to work on. Whenever it happens, assuming it does, we'll consider switching defaults. We'll use the best tools to do the job and provide the best experience. Today that means Xorg. Tomorrow it might mean Wayland. We'll be ready and compatible with both. I respect this position. Linux Mint has always been just a bit more conservative than many of the other desktop-focused distributions, and this has earned it a well-deserved reputation for being stable and reliable. I use Linux Mint on my gaming PC for that very reason (albeit with the Xanmod kernel) - during the little time I have to play games, I don't want to deal with issues arising from using bleeding edge software.
Microsoft is starting to roll out new changes to Windows Ink that let you write anywhere you can type in Windows 11. After months of previewing the changes, the handwriting-to-text conversion now works inside search boxes and other elements of Windows 11 where you'd normally type your input. Microsoft has started rolling out the KB5031455 non-security update as a preview to Windows 11 users yesterday. You simply have to head to Windows Update and toggle the Get the latest updates as soon as they're available" setting to get this update before it's available fully in the coming weeks. While my handwriting is not great and I never use it for any computing tasks, stuff like this has always been pretty cool. Microsoft has been working on this since Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing 1.0 from 1992, and the recognition is actually very, very good. Being able to input handwriting straight into text fields will be a boon for artists and note-takers who use Windows on tablets, though, so it's definitely worth installing this update if you belong to that group.
Google quietly planned to put a lid on Apple's search ambitions. The company looked for ways to undercut Spotlight by producing its own version for iPhones and to persuade more iPhone users to use Google's Chrome web browser instead of Apple's Safari browser, according to internal Google documents reviewed by The New York Times. At the same time, Google studied how to pry open Apple's control of the iPhone by leveraging a new European law intended to help small companies compete with Big Tech. Google's anti-Apple plan illustrated the importance that its executives placed on maintaining dominance in the search business. It also provides insight into the company's complex relationship with Apple, a competitor in consumer gadgets and software that has been an instrumental partner in Google's mobile ads business for more than a decade. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and this is clear example of that - a rare case where Google's means line up with consumers' needs to actually own their devices, including the ability to install whatever browser (engine) one wants and set it as default on your phone. That being said - seeing Google squirm over whatever Apple's plans for its own possibly search engine are is highly entertaining and mildly satisfying. Apple switching iOS over to something other than Google will have some major fallout for the ad giant, and that alone would be fun to watch, in a let-it-burn kind of way.
Virtualization of Microsoft Windows 9x systems is a bit problematic due to 2 major bugs: TLB invalidation bug and CPU speed limit bug. This program contains a set of patches to fix these bugs, and can be booted from a floppy on a virtual machine. It either applies the patch to the installed system, or it patches the installation files in order to create (relatively) bug-free installation media. A must-have for your Windows 95/98/ME virtual machines.
But even without filing lawsuits, artists have a chance to fight back against AI using tech. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive look at a new open source tool still in development called Nightshade, which can be added by artists to their imagery before they upload it to the web, altering pixels in a way invisible to the human eye, but that poisons" the art for any AI models seeking to train on it. Excellent. This is exactly the kind of clever thinking we need to stop major corporations from stealing everyone's creative works for their own further gain. I hope we can develop these poisons further, to the point of making these AI" tools entirely useless. Get permission, or get poisoned.
While most X.Org Developers Conference talks are around graphics drivers / infrastructure work itself, one of the other interesting XDC 2023 talks was Alexandros Frantzis around the ongoing work of providing a native Wine Wayland driver so that this open-source project can interact directly with Wayland and so Windows games/applications running under Linux will no longer need to go through XWayland. The entire presentation is available on YouTube.
So you ended up with this JavaScript quirk where it was possible to create unique URLs that ran a bit of JavaScript on whatever page you happened to be looking at. It could even make changes to that page. Move things around. Replace words. Open links. And pretty early on, people realized that these JavaScript URLs were also bookmarkable, just like any other URL. And, crucially, easily shareable as links. I had almost forgotten about these things.
As generative AI models become more widely available, you may be integrating them into your apps. In line with Google's commitment to responsible AI practices, we want to help ensure AI-generated content is safe for people and that their feedback is incorporated. Early next year, we'll be requiring developers to provide the ability to report or flag offensive AI-generated content without needing to exit the app. You should utilize these reports to inform content filtering and moderation in your apps - similar to the in-app reporting system required today under our User Generated Content policies. I like that this will be a system-wide requirement, which will slowly make it a common sight on Android, and thus, something users expect and know how to work with. In the same blog post announcing this new generative AI" policy, Google also announced tighter rules around certain broad application permissions, limiting full-screen notifications, and more/
Last weekend, we noticed that an attempt to download Google Chrome using Microsoft Edge results in the latter opening its sidebar with a poll, asking you to explain to Microsoft how you could dare try downloading Google Chrome. Of course, the exact wording is more tame, but you get the idea. Now, besides dismissing several banners and a full-size ad injected on the Chrome website, Edge wants you to answer a questionnaire with the following options. Frequently bought together.
Apple is releasing a slew of updates for its latest operating systems today, including iOS and iPadOS 17.1, macOS Sonoma 14.1, watchOS 10.1, and others. The company is also releasing security updates for a few previous-generation operating systems, so that people who aren't ready to upgrade (and older devices that can't upgrade) will still be protected from new exploits. If you have a bunch of Apple devices, it's going to be a busy day. You might also want to take a look at your Apple subscriptions, because the company massively increased its prices across the board without advance notice.
A director from the White House announced that Apple plans to significantly expand access to device repairs for independent repair shops and consumers across the United States. The move is part of the Biden administration's push for right to repair" reforms. According to a statement by National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard (via Reuters), Apple will make parts, tools, and documentation needed for repairs available to independent repair shops and consumers nationwide. This will allow third-party technicians and do-it-yourselfers to fix Apple products at fair and reasonable prices quickly. There's going to be a gotcha. With Apple, there always is.
State attorneys general in 41 states and the District of Columbia sued Meta today. The move comes after the conclusion of a multistate probe launched in 2021, where a bipartisan coalition of state enforcers began examining how Facebook and Instagram features are designed to allegedly addict and harm kids. Back in 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general's office led the multistate probe investigating Instagram's impacts on young people" after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that Facebook knew Instagram was toxic" to teen girls but downplayed risks to the public. In a press release today, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell accused Meta of deliberately" exploiting young users' vulnerabilities for profit." Everyone liked that.
The big question coming up is how Google's focus on AI will impact that core business. Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience is still only available on an opt-in basis, so we don't yet know how much it'll impact the company's ad business. Google is already moving to head off that problem. On Google's earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company would be experimenting with new formats native to the way SGE works - the company has already shown off some ideas - so perhaps we'll start to see some of those formats debut in the coming weeks and months. Later in the call, chief business officer Philipp Schindler added that it's extremely important to us that in this new experience, advertisers still have the opportunity to reach potential customers along their dsearch journeys." This is not news.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was interviewed by Business Insider, and when asked about his greatest strategic mistake, the answer was obvious. The decision I think a lot of people talk about - and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO -was our exit of what I'll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones. Microsoft's failures to anticipate the mobile market is legendary at this point, but I don't think I've ever heard a Microsoft CEO state they should've tried harder and stuck with it. I was a huge fan of Windows Phone 7 and 8, and even imported the first devices running those platforms from the US, because the platforms were not available in The Netherlands at the time. However, Windows Phone was a dead end. Even regular Windows has a big application problem, and it was a millions of times worse on Windows Phone. I doubt any amount of money or development resources would've changed the fate of Windows Phone. It would've been good for the industry as a whole had Microsoft not failed, but the reality of it is that Android and iOS were already so far ahead it was impossible for anyone, even someone as large and wealthy as Microsoft, to catch up. Add to that the countless terrible business and technological decisions the company made with Windows Phone, and it just wasn't meant to be. I understand that Nadella pines for the slice of the money pie they've could've had, but I doubt he sincerely thinks things could've turned out any differently.
For years, Qualcomm has been making Snapdragon chips for Windows PCs, and for years, those chips' performance have failed to dislodge Intel's or AMD's chips to any significant degree. Its latest Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (and the closely related Microsoft SQ3) appears in just two consumer PCs, the cumbersomely named Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with 5G and Lenovo's ThinkPad X13s Gen 1. But that may be changing. Nearly three years ago, Qualcomm bought a company called Nuvia for $1.4 billion. Nuvia was mainly working on server processors, but the company's founders and many of its employees had also been involved in developing the A- and M-series Apple Silicon processors that have all enabled the iPhone, iPad, and Mac to achieve their enviable blend of performance and battery life. Today, Qualcomm is formally announcing the fruit of the Nuvia acquisition: the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is a 12-core, 4 nm chip that will compete directly with Intel's Core processors and AMD Ryzen chips in PCs-and, less directly, Apple's M2 and M3-series processors for Macs. We've heard a lot of these claims over the years, and to be honest, I'm a little tired of promises. Show me the goods. Apple did.
Nvidia and AMD could sell PC chips as soon as 2025, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Nvidia and AMD would join Qualcomm, which has been making Arm-based chips for laptops since 2016. At an event on Tuesday that will be attended by Microsoft executives, including vice president of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri, Qualcomm plans to reveal more details about a flagship chip that a team of ex-Apple engineers designed, according to a person familiar with the matter. Nvidia is such a natural partner for Microsoft when it comes to ARM chips, I'm surprised it's taking them this long to jump back into the ring after the failed Surface RT. AMD making ARM chips is fascinating and surprising, though, but I guess they don't feel they can compete on performance-per-watt with x86.
Dave Cutler is a seminal figure in computer science, renowned for his contributions to operating systems. Born in 1942, he played pivotal roles in the development of several OSes, most notably VMS for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Windows NT for Microsoft. Cutler's design principles emphasize performance, reliability, and scalability. His work on Windows NT laid the foundation for many subsequent Windows versions, solidifying its place in enterprise and personal computing. A stickler for detail and a rigorous engineer, Cutler's influence is evident in modern OS design and architecture. He's a recipient of the Computer History Museum's Fellow Award for his unparalleled contributions. I don't often link to videos, but when I do, it's a good one.
At midnight US Pacific Time tomorrow, Windows Embedded Compact 2013 - or perhaps better colloquially referred to as Windows CE 8.0 - will slip from history as it exits is Extended Support Phase with Microsoft and it, as well as the entire history of Windows CE, becomes an unsupported, retired former product. Windows CE 8.0 was released on 11th August 2013 and slipped into the end of its mainstream support on 9th October 2018. Yet few even noticed either occurrence. As a product CE 8.0 release failed to gain much of any traction or fanfare. Even here in the Windows CE community, most people disregard Windows Embedded Compact 2013 as a complete non-starter. As with Windows CE 7.0 before it. Few, if any devices were ever released on the platform and as a result most people - myself included - have never even seen a physical CE 8 device. I've used and own a lot of Windows CE-based devices over the years, and contrary to most people's opinions, I absolutely adore Windows CE. Back when Apple was still busy not dying, and Android was barely a blip on anyone's radar, Windows CE-based devices were incredibly powerful, versatile, and capable. Platforms like PocketPC and Windows Mobile may not have been the most graceful platforms, but they were so far ahead of anyone else when it came to pure functionality and capabilities it wasn't even close. I was streaming Futurama episodes from my Windows XP machine to my PocketPC, while checking my email and browsing with Pocket IE - in the early 2000s. No other platform could do this in a PDA form factor - not even Palm OS. I hope, against my own better judgment, that Microsoft will do the right thing and publish the source code to Windows CE on Github. The number of Windows CE devices out there is immense, and giving the community the option of supporting them going forward would save a lot of them from the trash heap.
One of the most distinctive features of Apple silicon chips is that they have two types of CPU core, E (Efficiency) cores that are energy efficient but slower than the P (Performance) cores, which normally run much of the code in the apps we use. Apps don't decide directly which cores they will be run on, that's a privilege of macOS, but they register their interest by setting a Quality of Service, or QoS, which is then taken into account when they're scheduled to run. With the introduction of Game Mode in Sonoma, CPU scheduling can now work differently, with E cores being reserved for the use of games. This article looks at another atypical situation, when running a macOS virtual machine (VM) assigned a set number of virtual cores. How does macOS Sonoma handle that? Exactly what is says on the tin.
TalosSpace has more details on the upcoming, recently announced OpenPOWER machines from Raptor. I asked Timothy Pearson at Raptor about the S1's specs, and he said it's a PCIe 5.0 DDR5 part running from the high 3GHz to low 4GHz clock range, with the exact frequency range to be determined. (OMI-based RAM not required!) The S1 is bi-endian, SMT-4 and will support at least two sockets with an 18-core option confirmed for certain and others to be evaluated. This compares very well with the Power10, which is also PCIe 5.0, also available as SMT-4 (though it has an SMT-8 option), and also clocks somewhere between 3.5GHz and 4GHz. S1 embeds its own BMC, the X1 (or variant), which is (like Arctic Tern) a Microwatt-based ISA 3.1 core in Lattice ECP5 and iCE40 FPGAs with 512MB of DDR3 RAM, similar to the existing ASpeed BMC on current systems. X1 will in turn replace the existing Lattice-based FPGA in Arctic Tern as Antarctic Tern," being a functional descendant of the same hardware, and should fill the same roles as a BMC upgrade for existing Raptor systems as well as the future BMC for the next generation systems and a platform in its own right. The X1 has integrated 100% open root of trust" as you would expect for such a system-critical part. This all sounds like exactly the kind of things I wanted to hear, and these details make me sufficiently excited about the near future of Raptor's OpenPOWER workstations. The only little bit of less pleasant news is that the machines won't be available until late 2024, so we've got a little wait ahead of us.
This is a version of the Oberon System 3 (also known as ETH Oberon), compatible with the Oberon+ compiler, IDE and runtimes and the OBX Platform Abstraction Layer (PAL), and thus truly cross-platform (runs on all platforms where LeanQt is available). The migration is still work in progress, but sufficiently complete and stable to explore the platform. The latest commit is tested on both the Mono CLI and as a native executable built with the generated C code. I have to admit that while I'm aware of the Oberon System, I know far too little about it to make any meaningful statements here.
There are few things more frustrating than paying for high-speed PC components and then leaving performance on the table because software slows your system down. Unfortunately, a default setting in Windows 11 Pro, having its software BitLocker encryption enabled, could rob as much as 45 percent of the speed from your SSD as it forces your processor to encrypt and decrypt everything. According to our tests, random writes and reads - which affect the overall performance of your PC - get hurt the most, but even large sequential transfers are affected. While many SSDs come with hardware-based encryption, which does all the processing directly on the drive, Windows 11 Pro force-enables the software version of BitLocker during installation, without providing a clear way to opt out. (You can circumvent this with tools like Rufus, if you want, though that's obviously not an official solution as it allows users to bypass the Microsoft's intent.) If you bought a prebuilt PC with Windows 11 Pro, there's a good chance software BitLocker is enabled on it right now. Windows 11 Home doesn't support BitLocker so you won't have encryption enabled there. Nothing like buying a brand new PC and realising you're losing a ton of performance for something you might not even need on a home PC.
Well, this is a pleasant surprise and a massive coincidence. Besides that BMC-focused press release, Raptor Computing Systems tweeted out that they are working on next generation of high performance, fully owner controlled systems! Built using the open POWER ISA 3.1, these new machines will be direct upgrades for existing POWER9 systems." Power ISA 3.1 aligns with new functionality IBM introduced in Power10. This is fantastic news, and it seems they're sidestepping the IBM POWER10 binary blobs issue by relying on a different chip vendor altogether, Solid Silicon, who announced an OpenPOWER CPU that will be used in Raptor's upcoming systems, the S1. It seems unlikely to me that the S1 will be an entirely new, unique processor, so perhaps it's a slightly modified IBM POWER10 design without the binary blobs. I'm incredibly excited about this news, and can't wait to hear what they're planning.
The Intel 14th Gen Core series is somewhat of a somber swansong to the traditional and famed Core i series naming scheme, rounding off what feels like the end of an era. With the shift to their upcoming Meteor Lake SoC, the impending launch of the new naming scheme (Core and Core Ultra) branding, and what Intel hopes to be a groundbreaking mobile chiplet-based architecture. The crux of the analysis is if you're upgrading from an older and outdated desktop platform, the Intel 14th Gen series is a solid performer, but there's still value in current 13th Gen pricing. Those must be considered in the current global financial situation; some users may find a better deal. If you already have 12th or 13th Gen Core parts, then there's absolutely no reason to upgrade or consider 14th Gen as a platform, as none of the features (mainly software) justify a sidegrade on which is ultimately the same platform and the same core architecture. AnandTech always delivers. Unlike Intel.
Speaking of POWER - well, PowerPC - what about OS/2 Warp for PowerPC? What was OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition like? An unfinished product, rough around the edges but simultaneously technically very interesting and advanced and showing promise. Even though the OS/2 PPC release wasn't called beta, it is obvious that this is a beta level product (if even that in some respects). Many features are unfinished or completely missing (networking in the first place). The kernel level code doesn't look much like production build and prints out quite a lot of debugging output on the serial console. The HPFS support was very unstable, and the stability of Win-OS/2 left a lot to be desired. There were too many clearly unfinished parts of the product (documentation, missing utilities etc.). On the other hand a large portion of the system worked well. The user interface and graphics subsystem in general didn't exhibit any anomalies. Multitasking was reliable and all things considered, responsiveness quite good for a 100MHz CPU and code that was not likely to have been performance tuned. The multimedia subsystem worked much better than I expected. Many things were much improved compared to Intel OS/2 - internationalization, graphics subsystem, updated console API and so on. The system seemed to have enough raw power, even if it wasn't harnessed too well. Boot time was rather long but once up and running, the system was snappy (with some exceptions, notably the CD-ROM driver). To reach true production quality, the OS would have needed at least additional six months of intense development, probably more. I'm a tad bit jealous some people manage to find the right hardware to run OS/2 for PowerPC, since it's incredibly high on my list. At least I have this great article to read through every now and then, until the day I manage to get lucky myself.
Just as IBM was posting future" processor compiler patches in 2019 for what ended up being early POWER10 enablement, they are once again repeating their same compiler enablement technique with sending out PowerPC future" patches for what is likely to be POWER11. The PowerPC future" patches sent out today are just like before - complete with mentions like This feature may or may not be present in any specific future PowerPC processor...Again, these are preliminary patches for a potential future machine. Things will likely change in terms of implementation and usage over time. If this is indeed a sign that POWER11 is on its way, I really hope IBM learned from its mistake with POWER10. POWER9 was completely open, top to bottom, which made it possible for Raptor Computing Systems to build completely open source, auditable workstation where every bit of code was open source. POWER10, however, contained closed firmware for the off-chip OMI DRAM bridge and on-chip PPE I/O processor, which meant that the principled team at Raptor resolutely said no to building POWER10 workstations, even though they wanted to. I firmly believe that if IBM tried even the littlest bit, there could be a niche, but fairly stable market for POWER-based workstations, by virtue of being pretty much the only fully open ISA (at least, as far as POWER9 goes). Of course, we're not talking serious competition to x86 or ARM here, but I've seen more than enough interest to enable a select few OEMs to build and sell POWER workstations. Let's hope POWER11 fixes the firmware mess that is POWER10, so that we can look forward to another line of fully open source workstations.
This paper reflects work done in late 2022 and 2023 to audit for vulnerabilities in terminal emulators, with a focus on open source software. The results of this work were 10 CVEs against terminal emulators that could result in Remote Code Execution (RCE), in addition various other bugs and hardening opportunities were found. The exact context and severity of these vulnerabilities varied, but some form of code execution was found to be possible on several common terminal emulators across the main client platforms of today. Additionally several new ways to exploit these kind of vulnerabilities were found. This is the full technical write-up that assumes some familiarity with the subject matter, for a more gentle introduction see my post on the G-Research site. Some light reading for the weekend.
OSnews