bcrl

96 ms·

931.
by bcrl 5y ago
A fab that isn't advancing its leading edge process at the rate the industry is moving ahead is, by definition, falling behind its competitors. When they can no longer provide a competitive process relative to other fabs, they will lo
932.
by bcrl 5y ago
Only leading edge processes can command a price premium, and for some products (like the high performance CPUs that Intel and AMD make), trailing processes are not economically viable. If a process is not economically viable, I'd cons
933.
by bcrl 5y ago
It has stopped advancing. That's kinda the definition of bad in semiconductors.
934.
by bcrl 5y ago
Amazon currently lists the 32GB Nemix DDR4-2666 UDIMM for $169.99 while a non-ECC UDIMM is $129.99. So you're right, at $40 it is closer to a 30% premium right now. But that one time cost of $40 per DIMM is worth it if it even saves
935.
by bcrl 5y ago
The most painful case I had was actually bad memory in a FIFO in an ethernet switch. A few months before one of the Red Hat releases, IT had installed a brand new shiny enterpricey Ethernet switch with lots of line cards and many ports. T
936.
by bcrl 5y ago
It's not about "likelihood", it's about being able to trust the hardware. The CPU running in your system probably has ECC protected caches, and many RAS features that happen to be designed in because most CPU vendors de
937.
by bcrl 5y ago
DDR4-3200 is an expensive boutique product. Drop the speed requirement a little and you'll find the pricing is in line with my comment.
938.
by bcrl 5y ago
Error Correction isn't the important part of ECC: it's Error Checking. There was a very long thread recently about this in the context of row hammer over at the forums on Real World Tech. While ECC can't fix row hammer, it
939.
by bcrl 5y ago
Your incumbent killed the local ISP's project. Fibre customers generally won't change ISPs in the first 2-3 years of having service, so being undercut by the incumbent makes it worthless to continue with the cost of construction
940.
by bcrl 5y ago
The difference is mostly due to the fact that the grid in Europe tend to be mostly buried. A large part of the electrical grid in North America is aerial due to cost and geographical constraints (burying in solid rock is expensive, and doe
941.
by bcrl 5y ago
The build is so soothing and awesome to watch. It really comes through when someone takes on and enjoys such complex and challenging hobby project.
942.
by bcrl 5y ago
In my personal experience, it doesn't take much to make the difference between a computer setup that causes RSI versus one that doesn't. When I was using my Amiga 500 for a number of years, I started developing carpal tunnel symp
943.
by bcrl 5y ago
The purpose of the exercise was to improve my ability to develop functionality using Verilog. Using a library would have been too easy.
944.
by bcrl 5y ago
Learning about CRCs was fun for me. I had to dig into the math to figure out how to calculate the 32 bit ethernet CRC for packets being sent across a 256 bit bus for a 10 Gbps NIC I implemented on a Xilinx KC705 a few years ago. I found t
945.
by bcrl 5y ago
It's more a question of Amdahl's law: the introduction of SSDs brought I/O latencies from the 5 to 10 milliseconds of HDDs down to tens to hundreds of microseconds. Going from tens of microseconds to 100-200 nanoseconds is m
946.
by bcrl 5y ago
It's not software that's the problem, it's the hardware that still doesn't perform at the level that was expected when it was under development. This is because of the fact that the 3DXPoint / Optane cells have hig
947.
by bcrl 5y ago
The claim that the new implementation is faster fails to do the sort of benchmarks that systems developers must look into to justify this kind of change. A benchmark that runs the new memset implementation repeatedly in a loop ends up prim
948.
by bcrl 5y ago
The Amiga supported spaces in filenames in 1985... =-)
949.
by bcrl 5y ago
Back in high school I implemented a version of exec.library that ran in real mode on my 286 and was built using Microsoft C 5.1 for DOS. Got it booting off a floppy and taking complete control over the system complete with preemptive multi
950.
by bcrl 5y ago
I continue to use Fedora despite it now having broken video drivers due to Wayland (my old fanless Nvida card broke a couple of releases ago and hasn't been fixed), broken DNS (systemd-resolved breaks mysteriously for some common wirel
951.
by bcrl 5y ago
Situation: there are 14 competing standards. "14?! Ridiculous! We need to create one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases." "Yeah!" Situation: there are 15 competing standards. -- https:/&#x2F
952.
by bcrl 5y ago
Actually, Hydro One doesn't use local contractors all that much as it's heavily unionized. Even in discussions about permitting, hands are often tied as it is almost impossible to assign work previously done by union employees to
953.
by bcrl 5y ago
That raises another difference between Hydro One and Hydro Ottawa: Hydro Ottawa has sensors on primary all over the network (something like every 3-5 km). The sensors make it possible to locate faults within a fairly small part of the dist
954.
by bcrl 5y ago
I forgot to mention that Hydro Ottawa does the build for the future thing. Hydro Ottawa's design standards are to design for a minimum of 3 communications strands on all new poles. This results in significantly less make-ready on Hyd
955.
by bcrl 5y ago
Having dealt with Hydro One on permits and pole replacements from the telecom side of things, I can say that their methodology is not geared towards minimizing costs. They wanted me to pay $20,000 to replace 8 suspect / restricted ins
956.
by bcrl 5y ago
Maybe the saying should be amended to "guns don't kill, governments do". After all, only the government can get away with killing people legally.
957.
by bcrl 5y ago
A previous employer had to implement EBCDIC support to interoperate with mainframes just 5 or 6 years ago. Yes, banks are still adding features and new code that runs on their mainframes. IBM still seems to be cranking out new generations
958.
by bcrl 5y ago
It's not that Motorola failed to delivery a faster 68k, it's that IBM's actions forced them to invest in PowerPC at a time when they should have been focused on advancing 68k. The 68040 was quite competitive at the time with
959.
by bcrl 5y ago
Zoning mistakes have also resulted in the death of vibrant neighborhoods. Having mixed residential and commercial zoning enables things like grocery, corner and hardware stores that make a good place to live even better. Zoning shouldn&#x2
960.
by bcrl 5y ago
And they're a horrible mistake of history that was a bad idea. The planet is a closed loop system with limited resources. Our use of those limited resources should be closed loop as well.

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