klelatti

48 ms·

901.
The Shit Content Self Referrential Magical Roundabout(thisisnotvalue.substack.com)
1 points by klelatti 4y ago|0 comments
902.
The Economics of TSMC’s Giga Fabs(asianometry.substack.com)
2 points by klelatti 4y ago|0 comments
903.
by klelatti 4y ago
Very largely agree. Faggin made it all happen. Just that Noyce had an important role.
904.
by klelatti 4y ago
This is the program which IIRC led to the BBC Computer literacy program and in turn Acorn and then Arm. Noyce is looking at a picture of the 8080 I think.
905.
by klelatti 4y ago
As an aside the Intel Busicom contract calls it the NCM - ARU which I eventually worked out stands for Nippon Calculating Machine - Arithmetic and Register Unit.
906.
by klelatti 4y ago
It's an interesting challenge but the 4004 ended up in pinball machines and traffic lights I believe as well as Faggin's test equipment! I'm not sure what is missing for it to fail to qualify as a microprocessor. It was limit
907.
by klelatti 4y ago
Hi everyone, author here. Didn't expect to be on the front page of HN! I've long been fascinated by the early days of the microprocessor. A lot has been written about the 4004 but it's always seemed to me that Bob Noyce doesn
908.
The Arc of History and Performance per Watt(thechipletter.substack.com)
2 points by klelatti 4y ago|0 comments
909.
Noyce and the Microprocessor(thechipletter.substack.com)
27 points by klelatti 4y ago|16 comments
910.
by klelatti 4y ago
It feels like there is a new industry springing up selling courses and advice on building 'writing online' skills which gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, lots of the advice seems relatively sound and helpful to those who w
911.
by klelatti 4y ago
100%. Look what happened with GPUs and Imagination. Personally I think CPUs and ISA will become less important as more functions are passed to special purpose engines. Perhaps RISC-V extensions might be a trigger but I suspect Arm will offe
912.
by klelatti 4y ago
The long arc of history is towards performance per watt. Apple knew that when it invested in Arm and chose Arm for Newton, for the iPod and the iPhone (note Apple has been selling Arm based products continuously since 1993 apart from 1998-
913.
by klelatti 4y ago
Doesn’t have to be reality. Even when a firm is profitable and has scale it can still act as a funnel for new business. It also helps to keep some competitors out. One less toehold for newcomers to get traction in a market. Just look at the
914.
by klelatti 4y ago
The bit you’ve missed out here is that the ARM64 ISA is very different to earlier Arm ISAs and that Apple almost certainly was deeply involved in its development and was first with a production core. Given that and in the absence of a clear
915.
by klelatti 4y ago
IIRC they were using TSMC before TSMC had a material process lead and supported them (and moved away from Samsung) with big contracts and a long term commitment. Hardly surprising that they have first go a new process. Not a risk less bet b
916.
by klelatti 4y ago
You obviously think that Arm's ISA and related IP has very little value so not much point in debating further.
917.
by klelatti 4y ago
Apple’s net margin is around 25% so that’s around $300 per Mac sold so with your $2 it’s about 2/3% for which it probably gets access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE) as well as use of an ISA that Apple has long experience using and
918.
by klelatti 4y ago
There were at a minimum 1.5 billion A series based CPUs sold last year - possibly a lot more. Arm’s total royalty sales were $1.5bn. I think we can safely say that the fees Apple pays - with its architecture license - are not material in th
919.
by klelatti 4y ago
Maybe some of the Brexit crowd was thinking about the long term but Johnson certainly wasn’t: he was thinking about his chances of getting into No 10.
920.
by klelatti 4y ago
Absolutely. Levelling up is a case in point. Sounds good and wins votes but never any serious intention to follow through.
921.
by klelatti 4y ago
I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies.
922.
by klelatti 4y ago
Fair enough but in that case what’s missing and stopping them now? Edit: rereading it sounds like you think Apple might want their own (version of) ISA which is reasonable except they already had huge input into A64 and are adding their own
923.
by klelatti 4y ago
IIRC the whole relationship got off to a bad start when Intel failed to deliver 64 bit (x86-64) in time for the first MacBook Pros. Apple had to ship OSX on 32 bit only to replace it a year later when Core 2 Duo came out. Given Tim Cook&#x2
924.
by klelatti 4y ago
But: - ARM64 was announced in October 2011. Apple was shipping SoCs based on ARM64 only two years later. Apple can do these things very quickly when it wants to. - Apple had all the info it would need to base a decision on Arm or RISC-V at
925.
by klelatti 4y ago
As you know Arm makes most of its money selling actual designs, not the ISA. I suspect Apple pays very small fees which are not material in the context of the Mac. For that it probably gets access to the full range of Arm IP, including for
926.
by klelatti 4y ago
Sorry this makes no sense: 1. Apple clearly has no problem with 'toxic' (not sure what that means) IP as long as they have access on acceptable terms - which they clearly do with Arm. 2. Apple were almost certainly one of (maybe t
927.
by klelatti 4y ago
I think it's important to draw a distinction between 'can' and 'will' here. With the the A7 SoC and the A64 ISA it became clear that the ISA and Apple's Silicon design capabilities were sufficient to build SoC&
928.
by klelatti 4y ago
I had a similar experience with a Tesco (U.K. Supermarket) Hudl (their short lived tablet brand) bought in 2015. Not a bad experience and attractive price but awful battery life and got quite hot too!
929.
by klelatti 4y ago
‘Too much management’ has long been a tabloid argument to restrict funding - see the Daily Mail front page yesterday. There was a TV programme ‘Can Gerry Robinson save the NHS’ fifteen years ago that had some very interesting examples of pr
930.
by klelatti 4y ago
I suspect for Gates it might have been a condition of getting the publisher to promote the hard copy version. If the pdf is free then hard copy sales would be much smaller. Still he could have paid for the promotion etc. I guess that Sinofs

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