The Legacy of Computing Icons: A Look Back at IBM's Francine Allen and Intel's Francoise Piedol

Francine Allen, a pioneer in parallel computing and compiler efficiency, spent over 45 years at IBM working on parallel optimization and inter-procedural analysis. Her work still leads the way today, making her an icon in the field of computer science. Allen's contributions to the development of compilers like Stretch, Harvest, Cobalt, and Parallel Fortran One are a testament to her dedication and expertise.

Allen's research also laid the groundwork for parallel processing, which has become a crucial aspect of modern computing. Her work on this topic paved the way for the development of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and Supercomputers. Francine Allen's legacy is a reminder of the importance of investing in education and research, especially in areas like computer science.

Meanwhile, another icon in the computing world, Francis Allen, worked alongside Bill English, who was known as one of the pioneers of the PC industry. Francis Allen's work on compilers, particularly the Stretch Harvest compiler, has had a lasting impact on the field of computer science. The development of the Cobalt Compiler, Parallel Fortran One, and other notable projects demonstrates her expertise and commitment to innovation.

Francis Allen's contributions extend beyond her technical achievements. She led the way into research for parallel processing, which has become a fundamental aspect of modern computing. Her work on this topic continues to influence the development of new technologies and has had a lasting impact on the field.

In contrast, Bill English passed away at the age of 91, leaving behind a legacy that will continue to inspire future generations of computer scientists. Francis Allen was 88 when she passed away, but her contributions to the field of computer science will live on for many years to come.

The History of Computing: A Deep Dive with Jim Vincent

Jim Vincent, a long-time programmer and friend of the show, recently joined us in our Computer History Museum tour to share his insights into the history of computing. As part of our ongoing series, we sat down with Vincent to explore some of the fascinating stories behind the development of iconic computer systems.

Vincent's expertise spans over three decades, during which he worked on various projects and collaborated with leading figures in the field. His experience provides a unique perspective on the evolution of computing, making him an excellent guide for anyone interested in learning about the history of computers.

The Former Principal Engineer at Intel, Francois Piedol, Returns to Share Insights into Intel's Troubles

Francois Piedol, a former principal engineer at Intel, recently shared his thoughts on the current state of Intel's manufacturing woes. In a recent video, Piedol offered his analysis on what he believes led Apple away from Intel and how Intel can overcome its current challenges.

Piedol echoes other criticisms that Intel is currently being led by non-technical people. He argues that this has resulted in a culture where MBAs are favored over those with technical backgrounds. This perspective highlights the importance of having technical expertise at the helm of major corporations.

In contrast, AMD's CEO is an electrical engineer with extensive semiconductor and silicon design experience. Piedol notes that this difference in leadership has contributed to AMD's success compared to Intel.

Piedol also criticizes Intel for its mismanagement of AVX-512. He argues that the inclusion of AVX-512 leads to larger, more complex CPU dies, as well as increased power costs. These concerns are echoed by Linus Torvalds, who recently dubbed AVX-512 a "power virus" due to its potential to consume excessive power.

Torvalds also complained about AVX-512 taking away top frequency for Intel's CPUs, which is essential for performance in certain workloads. This highlights the importance of balancing different aspects of CPU design to achieve optimal performance.

Finally, Piedol criticized Intel for wasting die space on its Xeon line, arguing that the company should instead specialize in Xeon CPUs for niche applications rather than wasting up to 10% of its chip space. He also touched on issues with Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, highlighting the importance of focusing on core CPU business.

PC World's Review of Piedol's Video

Gordon Ma, a friend of our show and a PC enthusiast, recently wrote an in-depth review of Piedol's video. Gordon parsed the discussion into two key points that are worth discussing:

Firstly, Piedol emphasizes that Intel is currently being led by non-technical people, which has resulted in a culture favoring MBAs over technical experts. This raises questions about the suitability of these leaders for making strategic decisions in an industry as complex and technologically driven as computing.

Secondly, Piedol criticizes AVX-512 for its potential to consume excessive power and increase CPU die complexity. He argues that this technology takes away top frequency for Intel's CPUs, which is essential for performance in certain workloads. These concerns are echoed by Linus Torvalds, who recently dubbed AVX-512 a "power virus."

Gordon Ma's review provides a detailed analysis of Piedol's video and highlights the importance of these issues in the computing industry.

Conclusion

The legacy of Francine Allen, Francis Allen, Bill English, Jim Vincent, Francois Piedol, and Gordon Ma serves as a reminder of the importance of innovation and expertise in the field of computer science. Their contributions have had a lasting impact on the development of modern computing, and their stories continue to inspire future generations.

As we look back at these icons, we are reminded of the need for continued investment in education and research. The computing industry is constantly evolving, and it will be crucial to address emerging challenges and innovations with expertise and dedication.

The story of computing is a rich tapestry of innovation, perseverance, and collaboration. By exploring the legacies of these icons, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complex forces that shape our world and continue to inspire future breakthroughs in the field of computer science.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone welcome back to another hardware news recap for the week and this one will be talking about rtx 3000 series news and the fact that the 2070 super isn't dead quite yet we talked about an update to mind factories nvidia and amd gpu rma rates those were shown a lot already at this point but the numbers that were initially released were significantly different than they have been updated to arm's co-founder is not particularly interested in nvidia purchasing the company although samsung and tsmc are also interested and then we'll be covering intel's data breach of 20 gigabytes of information hitting the internet before that this video is brought to you by thermal takes tough ram rgb memory available from 3 000 megahertz up to 4 400 megahertz and 8 gigabyte by two configurations the thermaltake tough ram uses 10 addressable rgb leds for bright illumination and comes in both black and white kits of memory learn more at the link in the description below so first up a quick update on the gn store we just had a massive restock of our blue beard glasses so these are the cobalt blue beard glasses with the teardown logo on them they have mosfets inductors capacitors fans all kinds of pc components hidden inside of the logo and a gold trim on the rim these have been really popular since we got them so big restock on those on store.camerasnexus.net and they're shipping now and then if you're on back order for the mouse mats or the modmats those are on track so we're looking at getting those probably shipped out to you all around end of august is when the order should arrive and it'll be going out so the mouse mats in particular were insanely popular they sold out right away when we listed them and even the back order has already sold through significantly so if you want to grab one go to store.gamers store.gamersaccess.net and place that and it will be shipping around the end of august same for the large mod mats and the medium mattes will be restocked around that as well and of course in the meantime we've also got the pc component shirts that we've just refreshed on stock for uh this brand new design one other announcement that might interest all of you as well is that we're gonna be doing a stream me versus jay jay's two cents on saturdays that's probably the day this hardware news video goes up it'll be at 12 p.m west coast time and 3 p.m east coast time for the us we'll put some other time zones on the screen but this is gonna be a troubleshooting challenge hosted by linus from linus tech tips and austin and so the plan as i understand it now is that jay and i will be provided broken systems and we're supposed to troubleshoot them into working and whoever can get the system functional and reaching the benchmark scores that ltt's team tested before they sent it that's the person who will be the winner so really looking forward to it it'll be a lot of fun it's happening in place of ltx and it'll be streamed on linus's channel so linus tech tips for that and then after that we're going to be doing our own stream hopefully if the system actually works we're going to be doing an overclocking linus computer stream where we'll try and oc the system he sent us after we're done fixing it so you'll want to check around that'll be on our channel and that'll probably be somewhere starting within the 6 to 8 p.m east coast time area depending on how long the stream with linus goes we'll start about 30 minutes to an hour after his ends okay first news item is the rtx 3000 series so uh and the 2070 super first of all there was a rumor propagated earlier this week that the 2070 super was discontinued already and we reached out to a couple of board partners it appears to be that this rumor was not entirely accurate the 2070 super gpu is still being ordered by at least a couple of the largest board partners for nvidia who are actively making more video cards and actively ordering the gpu from nvidia and its suppliers so the card is not then entirely discontinued it's not dead yet but it will be eventually because the 3000 series is coming out obviously it appears that at least some partners are still manufacturing some have likely discontinued and that's probably where the rumor originally came from but it's not accurate to just have a blanket statement that says it's dead now that said the 3000 series should be announced probably on or or very close to september 9th we've received information from board partners directly speaking with gamers and access about this and that's the current intent for an announcement for the rtx 3000 series or whatever it ends up being called pricing is not really known yet no one has any idea and nvidia keeps the pricing very close as we said last time to the leather jacket oftentimes at press events where they're done in person jensen the ceo is backstage deciding on final pricing right before the event goes live so we'll find out more about that closer but either way it's looking like september is the intended launch date and shout out to igor from igor's lab for absolutely nailing that timing when he predicted it several months ago back in may or so final note on this too of course as the 3000 series is getting made the existing card supply is supposed to shorten a bit we're speaking with some of the board partners and currently the demand is still extremely high from the work from home measures that are being taken by a lot of companies and the supply is also dwindling because nvidia is ramping into its next generation and manufacturing those instead so you will probably see supply shortages pretty soon if if not already or at least compounding of it but then it'll be picked back up when the 3000 comes out in september next up an update on the mine factory numbers mine factory is one of the most prominent german retailers serving the market and the retailer regularly makes data available pertaining to the component sales and market share for at least its customers for pc diy components mine factory recently published its rma rates for nvidia and amd gpus and this data it's interesting but it only represents a glimpse into the market and keep in mind that we're looking at specifically one retailer in one country really or one region at best so we don't have anything that should be taken as conclusive this isn't market-wide market share or anything like that but uh still interesting to to go over so a couple of important caveats to address first mind factory is updating this sheet every five minutes so the numbers are constantly changing and that means they'll be changed from when we go through this too second they didn't disclose the timeline for which it's collecting this data we guess it's been collected over the last year but that's just a guess and also mind factory didn't disclose the reason for the rmas so this data can't be taken as empirical for trying to determine the hardware failure rate for a specific model or vendor for instance it's entirely possible and these rx 5000 rma raids have been affected by the poor driver support early on in the life of the product which isn't the same as a hardware failure overall mind factory is reporting the rma numbers for what appears to be a total of 172 000 or so gpus of which 50 400 belong to amd and the remaining 122 000 or so belong to nvidia earlier reports indicated 40 000 units and 76 000 units respectively which was accurate to the numbers provided by mind factory at the time but is no longer accurate mind factory released the data before completing it which gave we think a somewhat irresponsible picture of market share because it painted amd in a massively more favorable light in terms of the distribution of its product than reality would support according to the data minefactory saw a total of 3016 rmas for nvidia and 1625 for amd given that nvidia sales are higher this distribution makes sense the data encompasses most of each company's current product stack with data representing the 1660 ti at the bottom of the stack for nvidia and going all the way up to a 2080 ti looking at the data the rtx 2080 ti has the single highest rma rate for any gpu model with an rma rate hovering just over five percent the cost may factor into this because people who spend over a thousand dollars on a video card are probably less willing to wait around for a fix for amd mind factory's rma data encompasses data from the 5500 xt up to the 5700 xt it looks like the rma rate for the 5500 xt is fairly low and gets progressively higher as we move up the stack to the 56 and 57. overall amd's 5500 xd has the lowest rma rate yet reported at 1.1 percent but also the lowest sales figures for nvidia its gtx 1660 ti has the lowest rma rate at 1.2 percent mind factories data also has numbers for specific aib models and partners as well although not all rma quotes from all models and vendors were available we've been covering for a couple of weeks now the concept that nvidia wants to buy arm arms owner softbank is potentially positioning to sell the company and nvidia has been one of the first to enter the ring as interested there's at least one person though other than maybe regulators who doesn't like the idea of nvidia owning arm and it just so happens that it's the same person who co-founded arm so arm co-founder herman hauser recently made it clear in a bbc interview that he's not really for the deal quote it's one of the fundamental assumptions of the armed business model that it can sell to everybody hauser said to bbc the one saving grace about softbank was that it wasn't a chip company and retained arms neutrality if it becomes part of nvidia most of the licensees are competitors of nvidia and will of course then look for an alternative to arm hauser was also against softbank acquiring arm in 2016 but softbank vowed to keep arms focus in cambridge and increase employment there which he fears won't be the case should nvidia get a hold of arm it will become one of the nvidia divisions and all the decisions will be made in america no longer in cambridge said hauser hauser said that he wants to see arm become an independent uk company again and that the uk government should make a move to make that happen quote the great opportunity that the cash needs of softbank presents is to bring arm back home and take it public with the support of the british government hauser's comments come at a time when nvidia is reportedly in advanced discussions at this point with softbank about a potential acquisition of arm and video would obviously be extremely interested in this for a number of reasons but as hauser points out arm is manufacturing things for everybody including apple which is trying to move away from nvidia and amd so this is almost like some weird attempt at forcing apple to continue working with nvidia indirectly but either way such a deal would almost certainly attract the scrutinous gaze of lawmakers and regulators so it's questionable whether it even go through and overall nvidia is not the only company that's interested in an arm acquisition and here's the rest of that list in this next story nvidia isn't the only silicon designer throwing in to acquire arm it appears as if arm is increasingly becoming the center of a bidding war between global chip makers that include samsung and tsmc with additional interest from boardmaker foxconn some early reports for this suggested that samsung was only interested in acquiring a minority stake looking at around three to five percent as reported by korean times from an anonymous industry official speaking with the outlet according to the report the investment would be more similar to an equity investment as samsung has made in other companies like asml which is probably the largest or one of the largest manufacturing providers for fabrication plants like for example tsmc would use some of their stuff the same report out of korean times also suggested that arm would be quote acquired by the consortium led by multiple parties from the semiconductor industry given the complex nature of arm's shareholding structure end quote however samsung has refuted this statement saying that it is quote groundless additionally according to another report from nikai asian review both tsmc and foxconn have been approached sources told the outlet that financial data and projections were given to both companies regarding an investment in art however while it appears both tsmc and foxconn may be interested the two are monitoring how talks with nvidia progress quote the two are still interested but are balking at a full acquisition end quote sources told nikai asian review this statement seems to echo that of samsung's alleged interest in buying a smaller stake rather than trying to buy the company outright next up the hits keep coming for intel it seems intel is now dealing with other than the fallout of a seven nanometer delay and a in a complete reshuffling of its executive stack as we talked about last week it's also now dealing with a major intellectual property leak we won't be directly linking to the leak downloads as we're uncertain of a number of things one of which is if it's secure to download and if you're interested in this stuff we'd recommend exercising caution in downloading any massive 20 gigabyte set of files from the internet because we don't know if it contains any potential security vulnerabilities that said the leaked documents were published by till cottman a swiss software engineer who has seemingly published a few of these in the past from different companies and zdnet did some digging into this as well and reporting on cotman's claims cottman claims to have received this set of leaked information from hacker who purportedly gained access to them earlier this year cotman noted that on twitter this may have been closer to the may timeline for original acquisition of the documents and that there's still more documents to come yet so this is just the start of it according to the hacker the files were scraped allegedly from an unsecured server hosted on akami's cdn and furthermore the leaked files contain information on intel's various lake platforms such as tiger lake and elkhart lake and going back as far even as kaby lake while the files don't seem to contain anything intrinsic to cpu design the information still seems to be very sensitive and no doubt valuable according to cotman the leak contains the following intel emmy bring up guides flash tooling and samples for various platforms kb lake bios reference code and sample code intel cefdk or consumer electronics firmware development kits and bootloader information silicon or fsp source code packages for various platforms various intel development and debug tools and this one is uh particularly interesting when we spoke with david cantor about it an analyst in the industry whom we've interviewed before he seemed to be the most interested in the line about simic simulation for rocket lake s and other platforms and then there's also a number of other things we'll put it on the screen but uh road maps and documents like that that would be more widely interesting binaries for camera drivers made for space x by intel uh trace hub and decoder files kb lake fdk training videos that cotman noted as quote very horrible so those are probably cringey to watch boot guard sdks intel snowbridge and snowfish process simulate simulator adks and a couple of other things one of the things that we've seen sort of quoted a lot was people control effing documents for backdoor and we're not really we're not experts in this field but seeing what people were coming up with it does seem a little bit unlikely that an engineer would put in like comment that the government back door goes here this is where it goes insert the code here but uh anyway that's been something people have been discussing and we'll kind of wait on the sidelines and see what the security experts think as they get into some of it the firmware stuff would be the most interesting from that angle and we'll just have to wait and see because that's not our area of expertise so stay tuned for next week we'll probably be reporting on more of it intel issued a statement confirming the leak but refuted cotman's claim that it was hacked uh instead intel maintained that the information originated from its resource and design center all three of the big silicon companies have this for their products amd as well and we've actually received leaks from design centers like this in the past typically it's partners who have access to this information it's made so that they are able to design products around the parts by intel and nvidia most recently we received several leaks from an insider with amd who had access to a similar design center from amd so that's what intel's saying that would be much less severe than a server hack if it's accurate the quote is we are investigating the situation the information appears to come from the intel resource and design center which hosts information for use by our customers partners and other external parties who have registered for access we believe an individual with access downloaded and shared this data says intel next up for the last couple of weeks we've discussed andy's meteoric rise on the stock markets and its record earnings over the past quarter and these upward ascension seems to be continuing the company is riding historic highs and its market capitalization stock price and x86 market share are all increasing right now in lockstep amd's stock price has been trending upwards so far pretty much all year with a few hitches in between but within the last few weeks it entered new territory part of this was because of intel's seven nanometer delay announcement where the two sort of went in opposite directions on the stock charts as you might expect on august 5th amd's share price peaked at 85 31 and broke the 100 billion dollar market cap barrier for the first time however at time of writing amd's stock has tumbled down a bit to 83 26 with a market cap of 98 billion separately amd has also notched its highest x86 market share since 2013 as new market share data has been published by mercury research and points to this amd has also secured its highest ever notebook market share and continues to claw away server market share from intel for the numbers themselves mercury research reports that amd has captured 18.3 percent of the overall x86 market again that's the highest share andy has had since about seven years ago and to break it down by segment amd currently holds about 19.2 percent of x86 desktop that's an increase of 2.1 percentage points yearly and 0.6 quarterly not to be confused with 2.1 percent or 0.6 percent and then moving on to notebooks and the essene record market share as well with a reported share of 19.9 percent a 5.8 point gain yearly when it comes to servers and the ceo lisa sue recently said that the company finally achieved a double-digit share but stopped just short of citing any numbers and the bases its server share numbers off of idc's research which reports only on 1p and 2p server market share so that'd be the sockets in the board mercury research reports not only 1p and 2p but also 4 and 8 configuration x86 servers as such there's a discrepancy between what amd's claiming and what mercury is showing mercury research reports that andy has captured 5.8 percent of the x86 server market intel should be better represented when counting 4p and 8p servers so we'll have to see what idc's numbers say to see where amd got its uh quote from up next this past week we sadly lost not one but two iconic names in computing and computing history and these are names you should probably be familiar with if you're interested in computers as a hobby both bill english and francis allen have passed away in the past week each well known for their seminal contributions to home computing and to computer programming respectively bill english is credited along with douglas engelbart who passed away in 2013 for the creation of the computer mouse english built a prototype based on engelbart's concept in 1963. the first prototype was built from a block of wood with one red switch and metal discs for wheels that recorded movement we've actually personally seen this mouse at the computer history museum in mountain view california and we've shown it a few times in these news recaps since seeing it if you're ever in that area check out the computer history museum to see some contributions from both of these people in person this early version of the venerable rodent that we all use now is shown during the 1968 mother of all demos convention where it was shown alongside other early things like word processing hyperlinks and video calls english later moved into the famous xerox palo alto research center where he began to refine the mouse by including a trackball rather than metal discs this version of the mouse would serve as an early progenitor for computer mice as popularized by apple and microsoft in the coming decades of home computing francis allen was a leading computer scientist and the first woman to receive am touring awards and the first female ibm fellow frances allen is well known for contributions in software compiler research specifically as it relates to parallel computing and compiler efficiency according to ibm where she spent some 45 years her work on parallel optimization and inter-procedural analysis still leads the way today francis allen's work and research produced the stretch harvest compiler the cobalt compiler the parallel fortran one as well and she led the way into research for parallel processing which would become the basis for gpus and super computers among other things bill english passed away at the age of 91 while francis allen was 88 and again these are icons to know about if you're into into computing as a hobby you should probably read up on it some of it's pretty cool stuff especially if you're into programming reading about cobol and uh and fortran does throw me back to our computer history museum tour though so it's an old video it doesn't have that many views if you want to see some of this stuff that we saw in person at the museum i was joined by jim vincent who's a friend of ours and a very long time programmer he was able to give us kind of a walkthrough of the museum at the time next up the former principal engineer at intel francois pidnell is back with another deep dive into intel's troubles francois pidnell is in some ways notorious on the internet for his opinions on the intel and amd war and penal recently shared some insight into what he believes led apple away from intel as we discussed recently and now he's offering his thoughts on the current state of intel's manufacturing woes and how he thinks they can be fixed penal offered up his take via his youtube channel but pc world's gordon ma on and a friend of gn whom we haven't seen because of the lack of travel but we want to get him back on camera soon gordon wrote up a dissection of the video and sort of parsed it into a couple of excellent points that we'd like to highlight and you should absolutely check out pc world's article on it as well if you're interested in this story we'll link it in our show notes uh and sources document first and foremost piedol echoes others criticism that intel is currently being led by non-technical people and that the chipmaker promotes a culture of mbas over those with a technical background the somewhat opposite is true for amd currently his ceo is an electrical engineer with extensive semiconductor and silicon design experience secondly pedenl asserts that avx 512 was a mistake this would no doubt please the curmudgeon linus torvalds who recently dubbed avx-512a power virus avx-512 is a wider vector instruction set aimed at certain workloads however as piedenl puts it avx-512 quote is designed for a race of throughput that is lost to the gpu already piedenal states that the inclusion of abx-512 leads to larger more complex cpu dies as well as having inherent power costs that echoes torvald's sentiments almost exactly as torvald stated he'd rather see fp math used in the gpu and see intel's transistor budget aimed at other things than avx-512 torvalds also complained recently about avx-512 taking away too much top frequency for intel's cpus intel cpus usually down clock when executing 512 instructions so this makes sense and if you want to see more of that torvald's discussion with that in a previous news video finally francois piedtnell criticized intel for wasting dye space specifically on its xeon line saying that intel should instead specialize at xeon cpus for niche applications rather than selling the chips that waste as much as up to 10 percent of its chip space fedenal highlighted applications that don't need 512 as a primary example of where to be more conservative the former intel engineer also touched on intel losing focus on its core cpu business and issues with things like intel's hyper threading the video as well as pc worlds recap are worth a look and both are linked below in our show notes so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always if you want to help us out with our reporting and the work we do here you can go to store.camerasnexus.net and pick up things like our pc component shirts or back order the mouse mats and modmats as they're all coming back in and shipping within a few weeks so you can be guaranteed to get the next run of those the mod mats by the way the large are extremely low on inventory right now we thought we were way ahead of it but you all bought a lot of them uh so we're not that ahead of it so if you want to get one you should probably get a back order and i don't think we're gonna actually have that many left once they are in stock and shipping but they're coming in soon subscribe for more thanks for watching we'll see you all next time sohey everyone welcome back to another hardware news recap for the week and this one will be talking about rtx 3000 series news and the fact that the 2070 super isn't dead quite yet we talked about an update to mind factories nvidia and amd gpu rma rates those were shown a lot already at this point but the numbers that were initially released were significantly different than they have been updated to arm's co-founder is not particularly interested in nvidia purchasing the company although samsung and tsmc are also interested and then we'll be covering intel's data breach of 20 gigabytes of information hitting the internet before that this video is brought to you by thermal takes tough ram rgb memory available from 3 000 megahertz up to 4 400 megahertz and 8 gigabyte by two configurations the thermaltake tough ram uses 10 addressable rgb leds for bright illumination and comes in both black and white kits of memory learn more at the link in the description below so first up a quick update on the gn store we just had a massive restock of our blue beard glasses so these are the cobalt blue beard glasses with the teardown logo on them they have mosfets inductors capacitors fans all kinds of pc components hidden inside of the logo and a gold trim on the rim these have been really popular since we got them so big restock on those on store.camerasnexus.net and they're shipping now and then if you're on back order for the mouse mats or the modmats those are on track so we're looking at getting those probably shipped out to you all around end of august is when the order should arrive and it'll be going out so the mouse mats in particular were insanely popular they sold out right away when we listed them and even the back order has already sold through significantly so if you want to grab one go to store.gamers store.gamersaccess.net and place that and it will be shipping around the end of august same for the large mod mats and the medium mattes will be restocked around that as well and of course in the meantime we've also got the pc component shirts that we've just refreshed on stock for uh this brand new design one other announcement that might interest all of you as well is that we're gonna be doing a stream me versus jay jay's two cents on saturdays that's probably the day this hardware news video goes up it'll be at 12 p.m west coast time and 3 p.m east coast time for the us we'll put some other time zones on the screen but this is gonna be a troubleshooting challenge hosted by linus from linus tech tips and austin and so the plan as i understand it now is that jay and i will be provided broken systems and we're supposed to troubleshoot them into working and whoever can get the system functional and reaching the benchmark scores that ltt's team tested before they sent it that's the person who will be the winner so really looking forward to it it'll be a lot of fun it's happening in place of ltx and it'll be streamed on linus's channel so linus tech tips for that and then after that we're going to be doing our own stream hopefully if the system actually works we're going to be doing an overclocking linus computer stream where we'll try and oc the system he sent us after we're done fixing it so you'll want to check around that'll be on our channel and that'll probably be somewhere starting within the 6 to 8 p.m east coast time area depending on how long the stream with linus goes we'll start about 30 minutes to an hour after his ends okay first news item is the rtx 3000 series so uh and the 2070 super first of all there was a rumor propagated earlier this week that the 2070 super was discontinued already and we reached out to a couple of board partners it appears to be that this rumor was not entirely accurate the 2070 super gpu is still being ordered by at least a couple of the largest board partners for nvidia who are actively making more video cards and actively ordering the gpu from nvidia and its suppliers so the card is not then entirely discontinued it's not dead yet but it will be eventually because the 3000 series is coming out obviously it appears that at least some partners are still manufacturing some have likely discontinued and that's probably where the rumor originally came from but it's not accurate to just have a blanket statement that says it's dead now that said the 3000 series should be announced probably on or or very close to september 9th we've received information from board partners directly speaking with gamers and access about this and that's the current intent for an announcement for the rtx 3000 series or whatever it ends up being called pricing is not really known yet no one has any idea and nvidia keeps the pricing very close as we said last time to the leather jacket oftentimes at press events where they're done in person jensen the ceo is backstage deciding on final pricing right before the event goes live so we'll find out more about that closer but either way it's looking like september is the intended launch date and shout out to igor from igor's lab for absolutely nailing that timing when he predicted it several months ago back in may or so final note on this too of course as the 3000 series is getting made the existing card supply is supposed to shorten a bit we're speaking with some of the board partners and currently the demand is still extremely high from the work from home measures that are being taken by a lot of companies and the supply is also dwindling because nvidia is ramping into its next generation and manufacturing those instead so you will probably see supply shortages pretty soon if if not already or at least compounding of it but then it'll be picked back up when the 3000 comes out in september next up an update on the mine factory numbers mine factory is one of the most prominent german retailers serving the market and the retailer regularly makes data available pertaining to the component sales and market share for at least its customers for pc diy components mine factory recently published its rma rates for nvidia and amd gpus and this data it's interesting but it only represents a glimpse into the market and keep in mind that we're looking at specifically one retailer in one country really or one region at best so we don't have anything that should be taken as conclusive this isn't market-wide market share or anything like that but uh still interesting to to go over so a couple of important caveats to address first mind factory is updating this sheet every five minutes so the numbers are constantly changing and that means they'll be changed from when we go through this too second they didn't disclose the timeline for which it's collecting this data we guess it's been collected over the last year but that's just a guess and also mind factory didn't disclose the reason for the rmas so this data can't be taken as empirical for trying to determine the hardware failure rate for a specific model or vendor for instance it's entirely possible and these rx 5000 rma raids have been affected by the poor driver support early on in the life of the product which isn't the same as a hardware failure overall mind factory is reporting the rma numbers for what appears to be a total of 172 000 or so gpus of which 50 400 belong to amd and the remaining 122 000 or so belong to nvidia earlier reports indicated 40 000 units and 76 000 units respectively which was accurate to the numbers provided by mind factory at the time but is no longer accurate mind factory released the data before completing it which gave we think a somewhat irresponsible picture of market share because it painted amd in a massively more favorable light in terms of the distribution of its product than reality would support according to the data minefactory saw a total of 3016 rmas for nvidia and 1625 for amd given that nvidia sales are higher this distribution makes sense the data encompasses most of each company's current product stack with data representing the 1660 ti at the bottom of the stack for nvidia and going all the way up to a 2080 ti looking at the data the rtx 2080 ti has the single highest rma rate for any gpu model with an rma rate hovering just over five percent the cost may factor into this because people who spend over a thousand dollars on a video card are probably less willing to wait around for a fix for amd mind factory's rma data encompasses data from the 5500 xt up to the 5700 xt it looks like the rma rate for the 5500 xt is fairly low and gets progressively higher as we move up the stack to the 56 and 57. overall amd's 5500 xd has the lowest rma rate yet reported at 1.1 percent but also the lowest sales figures for nvidia its gtx 1660 ti has the lowest rma rate at 1.2 percent mind factories data also has numbers for specific aib models and partners as well although not all rma quotes from all models and vendors were available we've been covering for a couple of weeks now the concept that nvidia wants to buy arm arms owner softbank is potentially positioning to sell the company and nvidia has been one of the first to enter the ring as interested there's at least one person though other than maybe regulators who doesn't like the idea of nvidia owning arm and it just so happens that it's the same person who co-founded arm so arm co-founder herman hauser recently made it clear in a bbc interview that he's not really for the deal quote it's one of the fundamental assumptions of the armed business model that it can sell to everybody hauser said to bbc the one saving grace about softbank was that it wasn't a chip company and retained arms neutrality if it becomes part of nvidia most of the licensees are competitors of nvidia and will of course then look for an alternative to arm hauser was also against softbank acquiring arm in 2016 but softbank vowed to keep arms focus in cambridge and increase employment there which he fears won't be the case should nvidia get a hold of arm it will become one of the nvidia divisions and all the decisions will be made in america no longer in cambridge said hauser hauser said that he wants to see arm become an independent uk company again and that the uk government should make a move to make that happen quote the great opportunity that the cash needs of softbank presents is to bring arm back home and take it public with the support of the british government hauser's comments come at a time when nvidia is reportedly in advanced discussions at this point with softbank about a potential acquisition of arm and video would obviously be extremely interested in this for a number of reasons but as hauser points out arm is manufacturing things for everybody including apple which is trying to move away from nvidia and amd so this is almost like some weird attempt at forcing apple to continue working with nvidia indirectly but either way such a deal would almost certainly attract the scrutinous gaze of lawmakers and regulators so it's questionable whether it even go through and overall nvidia is not the only company that's interested in an arm acquisition and here's the rest of that list in this next story nvidia isn't the only silicon designer throwing in to acquire arm it appears as if arm is increasingly becoming the center of a bidding war between global chip makers that include samsung and tsmc with additional interest from boardmaker foxconn some early reports for this suggested that samsung was only interested in acquiring a minority stake looking at around three to five percent as reported by korean times from an anonymous industry official speaking with the outlet according to the report the investment would be more similar to an equity investment as samsung has made in other companies like asml which is probably the largest or one of the largest manufacturing providers for fabrication plants like for example tsmc would use some of their stuff the same report out of korean times also suggested that arm would be quote acquired by the consortium led by multiple parties from the semiconductor industry given the complex nature of arm's shareholding structure end quote however samsung has refuted this statement saying that it is quote groundless additionally according to another report from nikai asian review both tsmc and foxconn have been approached sources told the outlet that financial data and projections were given to both companies regarding an investment in art however while it appears both tsmc and foxconn may be interested the two are monitoring how talks with nvidia progress quote the two are still interested but are balking at a full acquisition end quote sources told nikai asian review this statement seems to echo that of samsung's alleged interest in buying a smaller stake rather than trying to buy the company outright next up the hits keep coming for intel it seems intel is now dealing with other than the fallout of a seven nanometer delay and a in a complete reshuffling of its executive stack as we talked about last week it's also now dealing with a major intellectual property leak we won't be directly linking to the leak downloads as we're uncertain of a number of things one of which is if it's secure to download and if you're interested in this stuff we'd recommend exercising caution in downloading any massive 20 gigabyte set of files from the internet because we don't know if it contains any potential security vulnerabilities that said the leaked documents were published by till cottman a swiss software engineer who has seemingly published a few of these in the past from different companies and zdnet did some digging into this as well and reporting on cotman's claims cottman claims to have received this set of leaked information from hacker who purportedly gained access to them earlier this year cotman noted that on twitter this may have been closer to the may timeline for original acquisition of the documents and that there's still more documents to come yet so this is just the start of it according to the hacker the files were scraped allegedly from an unsecured server hosted on akami's cdn and furthermore the leaked files contain information on intel's various lake platforms such as tiger lake and elkhart lake and going back as far even as kaby lake while the files don't seem to contain anything intrinsic to cpu design the information still seems to be very sensitive and no doubt valuable according to cotman the leak contains the following intel emmy bring up guides flash tooling and samples for various platforms kb lake bios reference code and sample code intel cefdk or consumer electronics firmware development kits and bootloader information silicon or fsp source code packages for various platforms various intel development and debug tools and this one is uh particularly interesting when we spoke with david cantor about it an analyst in the industry whom we've interviewed before he seemed to be the most interested in the line about simic simulation for rocket lake s and other platforms and then there's also a number of other things we'll put it on the screen but uh road maps and documents like that that would be more widely interesting binaries for camera drivers made for space x by intel uh trace hub and decoder files kb lake fdk training videos that cotman noted as quote very horrible so those are probably cringey to watch boot guard sdks intel snowbridge and snowfish process simulate simulator adks and a couple of other things one of the things that we've seen sort of quoted a lot was people control effing documents for backdoor and we're not really we're not experts in this field but seeing what people were coming up with it does seem a little bit unlikely that an engineer would put in like comment that the government back door goes here this is where it goes insert the code here but uh anyway that's been something people have been discussing and we'll kind of wait on the sidelines and see what the security experts think as they get into some of it the firmware stuff would be the most interesting from that angle and we'll just have to wait and see because that's not our area of expertise so stay tuned for next week we'll probably be reporting on more of it intel issued a statement confirming the leak but refuted cotman's claim that it was hacked uh instead intel maintained that the information originated from its resource and design center all three of the big silicon companies have this for their products amd as well and we've actually received leaks from design centers like this in the past typically it's partners who have access to this information it's made so that they are able to design products around the parts by intel and nvidia most recently we received several leaks from an insider with amd who had access to a similar design center from amd so that's what intel's saying that would be much less severe than a server hack if it's accurate the quote is we are investigating the situation the information appears to come from the intel resource and design center which hosts information for use by our customers partners and other external parties who have registered for access we believe an individual with access downloaded and shared this data says intel next up for the last couple of weeks we've discussed andy's meteoric rise on the stock markets and its record earnings over the past quarter and these upward ascension seems to be continuing the company is riding historic highs and its market capitalization stock price and x86 market share are all increasing right now in lockstep amd's stock price has been trending upwards so far pretty much all year with a few hitches in between but within the last few weeks it entered new territory part of this was because of intel's seven nanometer delay announcement where the two sort of went in opposite directions on the stock charts as you might expect on august 5th amd's share price peaked at 85 31 and broke the 100 billion dollar market cap barrier for the first time however at time of writing amd's stock has tumbled down a bit to 83 26 with a market cap of 98 billion separately amd has also notched its highest x86 market share since 2013 as new market share data has been published by mercury research and points to this amd has also secured its highest ever notebook market share and continues to claw away server market share from intel for the numbers themselves mercury research reports that amd has captured 18.3 percent of the overall x86 market again that's the highest share andy has had since about seven years ago and to break it down by segment amd currently holds about 19.2 percent of x86 desktop that's an increase of 2.1 percentage points yearly and 0.6 quarterly not to be confused with 2.1 percent or 0.6 percent and then moving on to notebooks and the essene record market share as well with a reported share of 19.9 percent a 5.8 point gain yearly when it comes to servers and the ceo lisa sue recently said that the company finally achieved a double-digit share but stopped just short of citing any numbers and the bases its server share numbers off of idc's research which reports only on 1p and 2p server market share so that'd be the sockets in the board mercury research reports not only 1p and 2p but also 4 and 8 configuration x86 servers as such there's a discrepancy between what amd's claiming and what mercury is showing mercury research reports that andy has captured 5.8 percent of the x86 server market intel should be better represented when counting 4p and 8p servers so we'll have to see what idc's numbers say to see where amd got its uh quote from up next this past week we sadly lost not one but two iconic names in computing and computing history and these are names you should probably be familiar with if you're interested in computers as a hobby both bill english and francis allen have passed away in the past week each well known for their seminal contributions to home computing and to computer programming respectively bill english is credited along with douglas engelbart who passed away in 2013 for the creation of the computer mouse english built a prototype based on engelbart's concept in 1963. the first prototype was built from a block of wood with one red switch and metal discs for wheels that recorded movement we've actually personally seen this mouse at the computer history museum in mountain view california and we've shown it a few times in these news recaps since seeing it if you're ever in that area check out the computer history museum to see some contributions from both of these people in person this early version of the venerable rodent that we all use now is shown during the 1968 mother of all demos convention where it was shown alongside other early things like word processing hyperlinks and video calls english later moved into the famous xerox palo alto research center where he began to refine the mouse by including a trackball rather than metal discs this version of the mouse would serve as an early progenitor for computer mice as popularized by apple and microsoft in the coming decades of home computing francis allen was a leading computer scientist and the first woman to receive am touring awards and the first female ibm fellow frances allen is well known for contributions in software compiler research specifically as it relates to parallel computing and compiler efficiency according to ibm where she spent some 45 years her work on parallel optimization and inter-procedural analysis still leads the way today francis allen's work and research produced the stretch harvest compiler the cobalt compiler the parallel fortran one as well and she led the way into research for parallel processing which would become the basis for gpus and super computers among other things bill english passed away at the age of 91 while francis allen was 88 and again these are icons to know about if you're into into computing as a hobby you should probably read up on it some of it's pretty cool stuff especially if you're into programming reading about cobol and uh and fortran does throw me back to our computer history museum tour though so it's an old video it doesn't have that many views if you want to see some of this stuff that we saw in person at the museum i was joined by jim vincent who's a friend of ours and a very long time programmer he was able to give us kind of a walkthrough of the museum at the time next up the former principal engineer at intel francois pidnell is back with another deep dive into intel's troubles francois pidnell is in some ways notorious on the internet for his opinions on the intel and amd war and penal recently shared some insight into what he believes led apple away from intel as we discussed recently and now he's offering his thoughts on the current state of intel's manufacturing woes and how he thinks they can be fixed penal offered up his take via his youtube channel but pc world's gordon ma on and a friend of gn whom we haven't seen because of the lack of travel but we want to get him back on camera soon gordon wrote up a dissection of the video and sort of parsed it into a couple of excellent points that we'd like to highlight and you should absolutely check out pc world's article on it as well if you're interested in this story we'll link it in our show notes uh and sources document first and foremost piedol echoes others criticism that intel is currently being led by non-technical people and that the chipmaker promotes a culture of mbas over those with a technical background the somewhat opposite is true for amd currently his ceo is an electrical engineer with extensive semiconductor and silicon design experience secondly pedenl asserts that avx 512 was a mistake this would no doubt please the curmudgeon linus torvalds who recently dubbed avx-512a power virus avx-512 is a wider vector instruction set aimed at certain workloads however as piedenl puts it avx-512 quote is designed for a race of throughput that is lost to the gpu already piedenal states that the inclusion of abx-512 leads to larger more complex cpu dies as well as having inherent power costs that echoes torvald's sentiments almost exactly as torvald stated he'd rather see fp math used in the gpu and see intel's transistor budget aimed at other things than avx-512 torvalds also complained recently about avx-512 taking away too much top frequency for intel's cpus intel cpus usually down clock when executing 512 instructions so this makes sense and if you want to see more of that torvald's discussion with that in a previous news video finally francois piedtnell criticized intel for wasting dye space specifically on its xeon line saying that intel should instead specialize at xeon cpus for niche applications rather than selling the chips that waste as much as up to 10 percent of its chip space fedenal highlighted applications that don't need 512 as a primary example of where to be more conservative the former intel engineer also touched on intel losing focus on its core cpu business and issues with things like intel's hyper threading the video as well as pc worlds recap are worth a look and both are linked below in our show notes so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always if you want to help us out with our reporting and the work we do here you can go to store.camerasnexus.net and pick up things like our pc component shirts or back order the mouse mats and modmats as they're all coming back in and shipping within a few weeks so you can be guaranteed to get the next run of those the mod mats by the way the large are extremely low on inventory right now we thought we were way ahead of it but you all bought a lot of them uh so we're not that ahead of it so if you want to get one you should probably get a back order and i don't think we're gonna actually have that many left once they are in stock and shipping but they're coming in soon subscribe for more thanks for watching we'll see you all next time so\n"