https://liliputing.com/2020/12/qualcomm-snapdragon-888-promises-faster-cpu-an...

Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 promises 25 percent boost in performance, efficiency (among other things)



First up, the new processor is Qualcomm’s first 5nm system-on-a-chip, which the company says brings improvements to performance and efficiency. Second, it’s the first processor to incorporate ARM’s Cortex-X1 technology, with the Kryo 680 octa-core CPU featuring:

1 x 2.84 GHz highest-performance Cortex-X1 “supercore”
3 x 2.84 GHz high-performance Cortex-A78 cores
4 x 1.8 GHz efficiency Cortex-A55 cores
All told, Qualcomm says you can expect a 25-percent improvement in overall performance, and a 25-percent reduction in power consumption.

But the CPU is just one component of the Snapdragon 888 processor. Qualcomm says the new Adreno 660 GPU also brings a 35-percent boost in graphics and a 20-percent reduction in power consumption, the Spectra 580 image signal processor offers 35-percent faster performance and allows you to use a smartphone camera to capture up to 120 pictures per second at resolutions of 12MP, the Hexagon 780 AI processor brings significant improvements as well, and the new integrated Snapdragon X60 5G modem brings support for download speeds as high as 7.5 Gbps and upload speeds up to 3 Gbps using Qualcomm’s 3rd-gen 5G modem technology.

The company says its AI Engine delivers up to 26 TOPs of performance. And the company has also brought a Hypervisor to its mobile chipset for the first time, allowing for quick switching between operating systems or allowing for apps to be isolated from the base operating system for privacy or keeping work/home profiles completely separate, for example.

Other technology baked into Snapdragon 888 includes a FastConnect system with support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, Quick Charge 5 technology that will allow you to take a phone from a 0 to 50 percent charge in as little as 5 minutes, and support for Qualcomm’s 3D Sonic fingerprint solution.

Qualcomm is shipping 5nm chipsets in volume.   They are VERY GOOD 5nm chipsets.

Qualcomm is rocking 26 Trillion Operations Per Second of pure AI performance,
Dude, that jest makes Intel and Apple weep bloody tears, now doesn't it?


I told you them durn phone boys were gonna wanna play hard ball in this 5nm ball game ......     They got their sharp metal edged hockey sticks out and got all them narsty metal spikes on their helmets and shoulder pads too.

Blood on the grass, Dude, steaming piles of spilled guts too -- yep, you betcha ......

https://liliputing.com/2020/12/report-apple-is-gunning-for-intel-in-the-deskt...

We already see that the older 7nm Neoverse ARM 24 core CPU (Huawei's Kunpeng 920 design) from 4 years ago is still able to kick Intel's ass today.   We should not be surprised that current modern designs from APPLE are going to do the same Intel ass kicking with the 5nm designs being most of four years more modern compared to the older 7nm Neoverse ARM 24 core designs from Huawei.


Even if all this information is accurate, it’s still a little vague on details and Apple’s plans could change in the coming months. But here are a few highlights from the Bloomberg Apple report that was cited:

According to Bloomberg, Apple could release new chips as soon as spring, 2021, with more processors coming from Apple in the fall.

Next-gen MacBook Pro laptops and iMac all-in-one desktops could be powered by chips with as many as 16 high-performance CPU cores and 4 efficiency cores (although Apple may also decided to go with  8 or 12 performance cores for the 2021 models instead).
Apple is said to be developing chips with as many as 32 high-performance CPU cores for high-end desktop computers.

The company is also developing high-performance GPUs with 64 or 128 dedicated graphics cores. This may be an optional upgrade for high-priced, high-power systems.

By comparison, the Apple M1 processor that powers the current-gen MacBook Air and 13 inch Macbook Pro is an 8-core processor featuring 4 high-performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, and it still trounces Intel’s latest laptop chips in most benchmarks.


ONCE AGAIN, AMD needs to be benchmarking this sort of stuff, not focusing on Intel any further as Intel now has an entire lineup of phone boys forming up to take their turns abusing Intel's aching buttocks with their steel toe ass kicking boots.

Up your game, AMD.   Kicking up some more on a dead Intel donkey's butt isn't nearly enough for you to be accomplishing for the next calendar year.
Dial in some AI, get yourself ready for the next big contest .......

https://liliputing.com/2020/12/microsoft-brings-x64-emulation-to-windows-on-a...


Microsoft brings x64 emulation to Windows on ARM


Windows on ARM was supposed to deliver the best of the both worlds: the low power consumption, long battery life, and always-connected capabilities that come with ARM-based chips, and compatibility with millions of Windows applications.

In practice, it’s been more of a mixed bag. Not all Windows applications have been compatible, and performance hasn’t always been stellar.

But at least Microsoft is tackling one of those issues – the company has announced that the latest preview build of Windows 10 on ARM adds support for x64 emulation, which means that 64-bit apps designed for computers with Intel and AMD chips can now run on PCs like the Surface Pro X, which have Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.

As the ARM PC chipsets roll out this year and next, being able to run your mass of Microsoft stuff becomes relatively more important to various folks (those that will not run Linux for example).

Once again MS will charge you LOTS of money to do this, but you knew that little factoid already.

Reality Check:

I got a notification I had a two kernel upgrades waiting in que, the original and the major fixes reissuance due to issues that were found during original roll out.   Ths was stated as two full kernel upgrades after it went through Ubuntu and then the Mint adoption processes.

Every support package was listed twice as they all got upgraded twice (building one on the other).   Both my browsers were there, with Firefox getting triple pumped due to its own internal changes as the Linux kernel related items only got double pumped.

All my graphics this and that got at least one upgrade.   Ditto for the Libre Office and other major softwares.

Since I have been on Linux Mint, this is the biggest single update package I have ever seen come over the wire, ever.

I noted the time and started it installing.  Including the one hard reboot at the end, the entire thing took 6 minutes to do, complete.    Amazing .....

Folks, in the days of 2400 baud modems it took me half a day just to download all the raw software.   My main C: drive SSD really does make the largest difference in update speeds, as it can read and write the changes about as fast as the screen can keep up with the stuff flowing through the high speed cable modem.

Six Minutes to install a really major update .........    only one (1) hard reboot at the end.

Modern Linux Mint, ya gotta love it.



Let's look forward a bit to when 4 threads per core SMT becomes real, as you know it will happen on Linux first.   Assuming (a big ASSume here on this one) that my old Core DUO will be supported on the first wave, I will suddenly be "thread count equivalent" to just about all the windows running Intel processors from the last 15 years or so.

Not bad for my old aging dual core rag-a-muffin Dell box.


Now, looking forward to the future there is a Linux software shift coming right at you ...... lots of older packages like Flash are getting dropped by the distros and the general recommendation is now to do a separate media full install (usb preferably, DVD if you must) on your next update.

Many of you who have Timeshift installed and working have noticed that your boot media (hard drive) is getting sorta full ---- this is because you are backing up some bigger and bigger over the air updates as the system sees them as changes that must be backed up.    Plus, your old stuff and old games and all the other detritus you have built up over the years are bulging your waistline more and more .......

As I look at my stuff, I see things that I might not even bother reinstalling as I seldom if ever use them.   So a general housecleaning isn't a bad thing for me.

In any case, Linux Mint is forcing you to do a clean install between 19.3 and 20.0 because the changeover in operating system modes itself is causing some minor breakage.    Silly stuff, like wifi breaking repeatedly .......  still, no point in going there as a clean install off of media avoids all these problems.



===================================================



WARNING !!!!

Ubuntu has made a right mess of this 20.04  LTS main distribution.    Stay on Mint 19.3 until late next year at the very earliest --- do not do the 20.04 upgrade right now.

Clem apologizes for the huge rat's nest Ubuntu has gifted him with.   This clusterfook will likely cause some folks to turn away to other distributions as Mint can't fix it right now because it is still broken inside Ubuntu.   And Ubuntu is foundering around, regressing this and that and basically messing it up weekly (differently each time) making it even worse and worse.

You get current instructions to go to menu>system>passwords to fix an item ....... so you click menu>system>passwords ---  and it isn't there any more !!!   It is somewhere else now !!!

Periodically, Mint discusses leaving Ubuntu as an operating basis and one time that I can remember it got serious enough for Clem and group to actually roll out a Mint variant based on Debian Rolling Stable  (the stuff Ubuntu is based upon)  ...... and we may be there again very soon if Ubuntu cannot get their act together any better than they are doing right now.

I repeat .....

DO NOTHING ..... DO NOT UPGRADE TO MINT 20.04 AT THIS TIME.  We are promised that 20.1 will get better and that most of the way through the next 20.2 period there will be a PAINLESS automatic upgrade path from Mint 19.3 to 20.2 provided by the Mint folks.  Yep, it will take that long for Ubuntu to quit wiggling all over the place.

Having been through the current painful fix it yourself method, I recommend WAITING until Clem's automatic method is all proven out.
 

https://liliputing.com/2020/12/lilbits-google-acquires-company-that-lets-you-...


Google acquires company that lets you turn Windows PCs into Chromebooks



A company called Neverware has been offering software called CloudReady that lets you turn old computers into pseudo Chromebooks since 2015. But in order to do that, the company has been using software based on Chromium OS, the open source version of Chrome OS.

Now Google has acquired the company and, among other things, that means that CloudReady will eventually become an official Chrome OS release with more of the features you’d get if you bought an off-the-shelf Chromebook.

When that happens, existing users will be able to upgrade automatically, while new users will get the latest software. In the meantime, Neverware says there will be no changes to its pricing or support services — there’s a free version of CloudReady for home users, as well as Education and Enterprise editions available for $20 or $49 per year per user.

Soon you will have another good way to continue to use your old Windows hardware instead of just trashing it out .......        

It will be interesting to see how Google handles the "end of life" obsolescence issue on this stuff since a good Linux distro could keep the same hardware running just about forever.

Cloudready has been used in school systems for 6 years now to re-purpose out of date Wintel computer labs and "to extend the use life" of some out of support Chromebooks that still had sturdy hardware.   You stick a button USB drive in a free port and set the machine's BIOS to boot from USB so the kiddies get their "Chromebook" started automatically.  

School systems are not made out of money and tricks like this are appreciated by supporting teachers, IT staff, parents, etc.

HONEST, uncheated benchmarks between Apple, AMD and cheating liar Intel

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3600897/tested-how-apples-m1-chip-performs-ag...

This is the second page of the PCWorld article (it contains all the graphs).   Article is long to read and is complex, but the graphs show the AMD all-in-one laptops skunking Tiger Lake from Intel while slightly beating the Apple M1.

Mind you, not on all tests ---- if you want Intel style "pure gaming" results look for single thread  (short duration) performance graphs and Tiger Lake from Intel does better, but at much greater power draw current and much higher and faster heat build up numbers.   If you game for long (for over 4 minutes) the Intel advantage completely evaporates due to heat build up and extreme CPU and GPU throttling, so you have to ask yourself how real Intel marketing's "claimed advantages" really are.                     ....... i.e. not very real

Comparing the two x86 contenders against Apple M1 laptops show that M1 is a contender when using the new Cinebench R23 test that was recompiled to run native to Apple M1 standards, but this is still not a general across the board winner --- that role goes to the AMD Ryzen 4700 and 4800 APU units with 8 cores and 16 threads.

Cinebench R23 Performance

Maxon released a new version of Cinebench R23 with native M1 support, but there are some other key changes which should be mentioned as well. With Cinebench R20, the benchmark would run render a single scene and produce a score based on its completion. With Cinebench R23, the render scene is the same, but Maxon has interestingly changed it to render the same scene over and over for 10 minutes ALLOWING THE PROCESSORS AND LAPTOP THERMAL SYSTEMS TO WARM UP TO THEIR "NORMAL RUN" DEFAULT THROTTLING POINTS. The benchmark will even run beyond 10 minutes if the scene is still rendering when the timer hits zero.  

This longer test run acts to prevent some of Intel's little Intel Marketing games that took place with the older versions of Cinebench testing metrics.

Larger numbers are better on this test.
If you don't see the numbers, you are not able to see the whole bar length.

(hit your scroll bar below the post, or right click on the chart to "open image in a new tab" to see all of it in the same glance)



On a six-core Intel H-class chip, Cinebench R15 takes 34 seconds to complete while Cinebench R20 takes about 108 seconds. With Cinebench R23 it now takes a minimum of 600 seconds to run under the new method. On a desktop or workstation with far more cooling it’s not an issue, but on laptops an all-core test that runs for at least 10 minutes can be far harsher—especially on CPUs that either make more heat, or laptops with more limited cooling. It’s actually called a “throttle test” which is a different method than before for Cinebench.

None of this bothers Apple’s M1 much though. Based on TSMC’s most advanced 5nm process, it’s a stone cold killer, with Macworld reporting no fan noise at all during the run. That can’t be said of the x86 laptops, which all vary from fairly quiet to a little rackety.

The performance is impressive though, with the eight-core M1 Mac now ahead of the four-core 11th-gen Tiger Lake as well as the older six-core Core i7-10710U. But if you give Intel’s older six-core more thermal head room it’s almost dead even with the silent M1.

AMD, however, just shrugs at all this and yawns as all of its eight-core Ryzen 4700U and the various Ryzen 4800H series chips easily beat all comers when set to their performance modes and after being run for a few minutes.

https://liliputing.com/2020/12/kfc-and-cooler-master-introduce-the-kfconsole-...

KFC and Cooler Master introduce the KFConsole gaming PC (no, really)

https://youtu.be/73SqN-ueP7g    

Yes, click on the YouTube and see this commercial take on exactly what you can do with all that excess Intel Tiger Lake heat.

Finger Lickn' Good, jest let Intel Tiger Lake heat that chicken up for your dining pleasure .......












..... will next year's hotter running more powerful 10nm Rocket Lake classify as an air fryer for the french fries ????