Podcast #372 – Steam Controller and Steam Link, Acer XR321CK Ultrawide Freesync Display, and more!

4 Comments

1. 

   max666 on October 22, 2015 at 10:38 pm

   Thanks Allyn, GWX Control
   Thanks Allyn, GWX Control Panel is awesome!
   But I’m with Ryan, I think you should test for us if Win 10 upgrade really removes Media Center on your cablecard pc >;)

   Reply
2. 

   Anonymous on October 23, 2015 at 2:22 am

   No reason for Apple to
   No reason for Apple to acquire AMD! AMD’s Custom and Semi-Custom division could be contracted to produce x86 based APU SKUs for all of Apple’s PC and laptop lines and any custom x86 parts that Apple commissions from AMD will be for Apple’s exclusive use. Apple could Fund the entire development of these custom x86 APUs with Apple not having to own an x86 license! Apple can still retain exclusive rights to the custom parts from AMD, just like M$ and Sony have for their console parts that are based on custom x86 console APUs from AMD. AMD in effect controls the x86 64 bit ISA Rights, and has an agreement with Intel for the x86(16/32 bit) ISA, but Apple could purchase and fund exclusive rights to use the specific APUs that AMD designed for Apple’s use. Apple can not make or manufacture x86 parts on its own, but it can always contract with AMD for more of the parts, and contract for newer parts to be made when it’s time to update the technology.

   I’m pretty sure that AMD’s 16 Zen core, Greenland GPU, and HBM memory workstation/HPC APU SKUs on an interposer would not need any outside funding from Apple, as part of the R&D funding for the HPC/Workstation development came from U-Sam’s exascale research grants! So Apple could go with the standard AMD workstation APU on an interposer for its Mac Pro Lines, and get dual 8 or 16 core workstation interposer based APUs for their line of Mac Pros. And having the up to two 16 Zen cores/GPU/HBM interposer based APUs fit in the same location as the current Mac Pro’s GPUs would free up the motherboard area to host dual PCI x16 slots and plenty of space for some PCI NVM slots. Even the standard memory slots could be optional with enough HBM on the APU’s, and a workstation part will probably support up to 32GB of HBM2 per APU.

   Where Apple could make good for itself in supporting/using AMD’s custom and semi-custom design division is getting AMD to design a custom APU on an interposer for Apple’s line of laptops, with the entire Mac Books custom x86 APUs taking up little more than the size of a 4/8 Zen cores groupings with a much larger array Greenland graphics ACE units and HBM2. AMD could start with 4 zen cores and move up to 8 for the highest end MacBook Pros. AMD could easily design for the MacBook Air a low power Zen variant with 4 x86 cores using its high density design libraries and save enough space for 4 Zen cores at 14nm plus at least 8 or 12 ACE units. AMD saved around 30% off of the space for the Carrizo cores at 28nm, just by using its high density libraries and no die shrink was needed! At 14nm and High density libraries AMD could definitely make a low wattage 4 core x86 APU with 8/12 Greenland graphics ACE units for the MacBook Air’s usage, and make Other Zen cores using the regular higher performance lower density design libraries for the MacBook Pro line. The nice thing about interposer based APU is that the CPU portion can be fabbed separately and fitted on the interposer, and the CPU cores connected to the separately fabbed GPU cores/ACE units by a very wide parallel direct connection, the same kind of wide parallel connection that HBM memory gets but even wider for the CPU to GPU connection. So the interposer based APUs could be easily customized to fit many different computing needs.

   Reply
3. 

   Ben-Jammin on October 23, 2015 at 10:22 pm

   Hey guys I listen to your
   Hey guys I listen to your podcasts all the time, the computerphile in me loves the site a ton. I was wondering if you could create a homepage link to a compilation of all the picks of the week. The hardware/software selections even if dated are super interesting and helpful even for people fixing older systems. Think it would be a nice touch.

   Reply
4. 

   Anonymous on October 24, 2015 at 6:30 am

   I am wondering if Apple is
   I am wondering if Apple is actually going to switch fully to ARM across their full product line. Apple’s own ARM designs can power all of the low power designs. They may use AMD64 based designs for a while, but they could actually switch to ARM based cores made by AMD until they can make a high-end processor of their own. The ARM core (K12) AMD is working on shares a lot of design elements with Zen, so the performance may be similar. The K12 will probably deliver the highest single thread performance of any ARM based design, if it is available in the near future. Current ARM cores are a long way from the single thread performance of Intel or AMD CPUs. It is hard to tell how the GPUs compare due to the massive difference in power budget for desktop vs. mobile. I would assume Apple would want to buy GPUs or APUs from AMD for their higher power consumption form factors. They are already using AMD GPUs in a lot of their devices. AMD could easily pair their GPU with either a Zen core or an ARM core.

   Reply

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