TechEye |  |
- Apple execs have hissy fit over losing book case
- More executions happen in Hawaii
- Abu Dhabi invests $10 billion in New York
- Krzanich set to wow Vegas
- Nvidia spills beans on K1
| Apple execs have hissy fit over losing book case Posted: 06 Jan 2014 02:14 AM PST Fruity cargo cult Apple is feeling that the US legal system is persecuting it over its faith in the Messiah Steve Jobs. Jobs came up with a wizard wheeze to kill off Amazon and make users pay more money for eBooks by arranging a price fixing racket with other publishers. Over the years, Apple has come to believe its own bullshit which is that it is OK to run a price-fixing cartel if it is you that is doing the fixing. However, its reality distortion field came crashing down when a court bluntly told them that it was illegal. Now Jobs' Mob is back in federal court trying to re-litigate its loss of a huge e-books price-fixing case in July. According to documents filed in the case, Apple's top executives remain "extremely angry" and will "never get over the case". They are so made they are prepared to ignore court orders connected to the case. Their main problem is that the court case questions a central item of faith within the Apple creed; Steve Jobs was a good man who cared for Apple fanboys. Yet this case shows him raising the cost of ebooks by 50 percent overnight because he felt like it. Losing the case will also cost Apple billions in damages. Losing the case is completely unsurprising. The evidence as described in the ruling shows that Apple's top executives, Eddy Cue and Jobs meeting with the heads of the major book publishing houses and got secret agreements from almost all of them to set prices across the board. It was an open and shut case, yet Apple's top execs remain livid about the loss. They believe the judge's requirement that the company's e-book division cooperate with a court-appointed compliance monitor is "flatly unconstitutional," and have vowed to overturn it on appeal. According to Social Reader, the court appointed monitor, Michael Bromwich has complained to the court that Apple's lawyers are stonewalling. It is refusing to let him have a meeting with CEO Tim Cook, top designer Jony Ive, Cue, or most of the members of the board. An Apple lawyer said that the company was very concerned about the request for interviews with Board members and senior executives, that they were very busy, and that we would see "a lot of anger" about the case that still existed within the company. However, that is disobeying a court order and is bluntly in contempt. Only Apple would think that it has a right to ignore the law. What is even more amazing is that Bromwich has been receiving hate mail from Apple fanboys who wrote following Apple's Objections filed with the Court on November 27. It seems that the fanboy boys believe that if Steve Jobs jacked up the price of ebooks it must have been good for them.        |
| More executions happen in Hawaii Posted: 06 Jan 2014 02:12 AM PST AMD's Radeon "Hawaii" GPU is likely to have more execution units than previously believed and may have 3072 Stream Processors. According to XbitLabs, AMD's latest code-named Hawaii graphics processors may feature more stream processors than officially advertised. A leaked die-shot of AMD Hawaii has revealed that the graphics processor can feature more execution units than are enabled even in case of the flagship Radeon R9 290X. This means that a fully-fledged Hawaii will have 48 compute units, or as many as 3072 stream processors (SPs), 192 TMUs and 64 ROPs. At the moment it is not clear if the Hawaii die-shot is correct or not but it does seem to be a good bet. AMD sells two graphics cards based on Hawaii GPUs. The first is the Radeon R9 290X with 2816 stream processors or 44 compute units, 176 texture-mapping units and 64 raster operating units. Then there is the Radeon R9 290 with 2560 stream processors, 40 CUs, 160 TMUs and 64 ROPs. AMD is yet to announce a specification of a fully unlocked Hawaii graphics chip and has never officially demonstrated a die-shot of the GPU. Looking at the leaked die-shot, it would appear that the graphics processor can feature more execution units than are enabled even in case of the flagship Radeon R9 290X. By adding up the numbers and dividing by your shoe size you can guess that a fully-fledged Hawaii sports 48 compute units, or as many as 3072 stream processors, 192 TMUs and 64 ROPs. If this is all true then you are left wondering why AMD disabled them. XbitLabs thinks that it can only be to ensure steady supply of Radeon R9 290X even if there are problems on the manufacturing side. Since it is hard to produce highly-complex chips with all execution units working perfectly and at desired clock-rate, GPU designers disable certain units to boost the number of chips that hit performance targets and can be shipped to customers. AMD is, of course, saying nothing.     |
| Abu Dhabi invests $10 billion in New York Posted: 06 Jan 2014 02:11 AM PST ATIC supremo Ibrahim Ajami has told Reuters he is investing $10 billion in GlobalFoundries' upstate New York semiconductor factory. ATIC owns GlobalFoundries (GloFo), after buying out AMD in March 2012. It is controlled by the Abu Dhabi state investment fund Mubadala. Ajami said that Mubadala has confirmed that it will invest an additional $9-10 billion for expansion of its fab in New York. ATIC wants to start making profits by 2015, and also plans to invest in GlobalFoundries' chip manufacturing facilities in Germany and Singapore, Ajami said. The New York factory, which started in 2012, has the capacity to produce 300 mm wafers at about 60,000 a month, however Ajami wants the plant to make 20 and 14 nanometres chips in the next three to four years. The investment does sound rather a lot, but TSMC plans to invest $17 billion in new facilities in southern Taiwan, where it will make 20 nm chips. Growth rates are in the high single-digits for the semiconductor industry, which has been hit by falling demand for personal computers as people switch to mobile devices such as tablets, Ajami said. However, chip manufacturers will continue to grow at a double-digit pace as more firms outsource production to companies like GloFo, he said.     |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2014 01:35 AM PST Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich is following Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Bette Midler, Cher, Terry Fator, Lance Burton, Wayne Newton, Tony Curtis, Leann Rimes, George Jones, Liberace, Frank Sinatra and the infamous Céline Marie Claudette Dion who hope that a turn on a Los Vegas stage might save their bottom lines. Krzanich will take the stage at the International Consumer Electronics Show claiming that the chipmaker will do what it takes to remain relevant. It is expected that he will show everyone some of the mobile and wearable technology from Intel's New Devices division. The tame Apple Press claims that Krzanich has appointed former Apple executive Mike Bell the head of the division in the hope that the luck of Steve Jobs will be upon him. Krzanich will also emphasise how Intel has sped up the pace at which it brings new products to market and say how keen he is to ensure that the company does not miss new opportunities such as wearable devices and other personal technology. Chipzilla is dependent on servers and PCs and has more than 80 percent of the market for PC processors and more than 95 percent share in server chips. In November, the company forecast that sales will be about the same as the $52.6 billion it will report for 2013, below the $53.7 billion analysts were projecting, according to the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Krzanich is expected to say that Intel will focus on providing what the market wants in chips rather than following the company's traditional method of designing and producing products aimed at determining the direction of technology. It will have to pull finger in its R&D if it wants to participate in the latest buzzword "the Internet of things" which is things like intelligent fridges and wearable computing such as smart watches, glasses. Cynics, like us, do not see Intel being able to do much that is interesting in 2014, unless Krzanich pulls a rabbit out of hat at Vegas.     |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2014 01:29 AM PST Nvidia is telling the world+dog about its K1 mobile chip which it claims will provided beefed-up graphics for mobile gadgets and cars. For those who came in late the K1 is Nvidia's first mobile chip to incorporate the Kepler graphics technology. Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show was trying to talk up the companies move into mobile as if it was all part of the cunning plan and not a response to declining PC sales. He said that Nvidia hoped that adding cutting-edge graphics technology to its mobile chips will entice more manufacturers and consumers to see tablets as viable alternatives to consoles for playing high-end games like first-person shooters. Huang claimed that the K1 brought mobile computing to the same level as desktop computing and the same level as supercomputing. You have to admire Huang’s hyperbole, which sometimes is so big he can take a skiing holiday on its upper slopes. Nvidia has not had much luck in mobiles. Its Tegra 4 processors are used in Microsoft Surface 2 tablet and a smartphone made by Xiaomi in China, but generally it has not gone anywhere given the amount the company spends in R&D. In the third quarter, sales from Nvidia's Tegra mobile chips fell 54 percent and sales from its PC graphics chips, which account for the majority of the company's total revenue, declined 2 percent. K1 was previously codenamed Logan, an alias of the comic book superhero Wolverine and not a Sandman on the run from turning 30. An automotive version of the chip will be ideal for camera-based computation in future self-driving cars with applications like pedestrian detection and collision avoidance, Huang said. Nvidia's Tegra K1 lineup will also include a version with 64-bit features. A 32-bit version of the K1 chip to appear in devices in the first half of 2014, with the 64-bit chip appearing later in the year. Nvidia is hoping that the car industry and cloud computing will fuel future growth. It has made deals with Audi, BMW and Tesla to use Tegra chips in dashboard entertainment and navigation systems. One thing you will not find Huang mentioning is the handheld gaming device called Shield, which appears this time last year. Nvidia has not said how many Shield devices it has shipped since their launch in July.     |
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