Year: 2024
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Computer Historian Finds Pentium Rug
Computer historian and reverse engineer Ken Shirriff found a traditional Navajo rug woven to resemble a die shot of the original Intel Pentium. Commissioned by Intel as a gift to the American Indian Science & Engineering Society, it’s exhibited at the National Gallery of Art. It’s fun to think back to a time when Intel…
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Akeana Emerges with High-Performance RISC-V Cores
Akeana offers a range of configurable RISC-V cores targeting various applications. While high-end RISC-V adoption remains uncertain, Akeana’s high-performance CPUs and experienced team position it well if/when high-end RISC-V cores take off.
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AMD Gambles $4.9 Billion on ZT Systems to Accelerate AI Sales
AMD’s acquisition of ZT Systems aims to bolster its AI accelerator business with complete system designs. It should strengthen AMD’s position in the competitive AI market, but a previous acquisition proves such deals can go bust.
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Tests Show Arm Server Chips Rival x86 Processors
AWS’s Graviton 4 processor, based on Arm’s Neoverse V2 CPU, delivers performance comparable to AMD’s high-core-count Epyc processors in many server workloads. While Epyc still holds advantages in certain areas, Graviton’s lower cost and strong performance in HPC workloads make it a compelling option. The rise of Arm-based servers marks a significant shift in the…
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Fractile Computes in Memory for AI Inference
Startup Fractile claims its data-center NPU will be 100× faster than an Nvidia H100 at 1/10th the cost. The secretive company indicates it’s employing in-memory computation to improve MAC-unit utilization and power efficiency.
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Please Welcome New XPU-Family Additions
I’m pleased to announce two new members of the XPU.pub family. To provide headlines beyond XPU.pub posts and a discussion forum, I’m introducing XPU.news. It’s a site organized like Hacker News and focused on processors. Please register, submit links, and discuss your ideas. (Your browser will probably throw a security warning the first time you…