Daily Tech News 5 November 2021

• Alder Lake is here. (AnandTech)
  
  Intel's 12th generation CPUs are fast - significantly faster than both their own 11th generation and AMD's Zen 3, at least on single-threaded tasks. On Passmark, which tracks pretty well with the code I need to run, the 12900K is a solid 20% faster than competing chips at least in single-threaded tests.
  
  Multi-threaded, it's over 50% faster than the 11900K - but that's with the addition of eight low-power cores, which should indeed add 50% performance overall. That brings it close to AMD's 5900X, though still well behind the 5950X.
  
  The low-power cores are far from useless, delivering about 60% of the performance of the full cores for integer tasks, and 50% for floating point. (They probably have exactly half the floating point hardware.)
  
  Which means that those low power cores are faster than the full cores on the four year old Ryzen 1700 I am typing this on. (I do have something much faster, but Eternal October arrived and I haven't had time to set it up yet.)
  
  And looking at the die photos, the low power cores are a quarter the size of the full cores - so if you are running multi-threaded tasks, you could get twice the overall performance in the same die area.
  
  In fact, the chart shows that on integer tasks, and with fast DDR5 RAM, the low-power cores are only about 10% behind AMD's prior generation chips.
  
  
  

• So what's the catch? If you're familiar with Intel's 9th, 10th, and 11th generation chips you already know: At full speed this thing could melt the polar ice caps. (AnandTech)
  
  While it's rated at 125W - not much more than the 105W for AMD's high-end desktop chips - that's only the "base" power. "Turbo" power - meaning what it is supposed to run at under load - is 241W. What it actually runs at under load is 272W. AMD's 16 core parts peak at 141W.
  
  You will need water cooling for this one.
  
  
  
• If you don't need the absolute fastest (and hottest) CPU available, though, the 12600K actually looks very attractive. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This has six full cores and four low-power cores - designated 6+4, vs. 8+8 for the 12900K. Ignoring the low-power cores for the moment, you get 70% of the performance for half the price, and also drastically reduced power and heat, maxing out at 150W.
  
  In the mid tier, where it competes with AMD's 5600X, it is pretty clearly the best value right now. Again it's about 20% faster on single-threaded tasks and indeed faster than any processor from AMD or Apple. On multi-threaded tasks the win is less than 10%, but that's probably not the key focus for this chip. Peak power at 150W is double the 75W of the 5600X, but it's not a space heater.
  
  
  
• If you need a matching motherboard, the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero is one. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's a high-end board - it costs as much as the 12900K itself - but ticks every feature box except 10Gb Ethernet. It does have 2.5GbE, and dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, and support for up to five M.2 drives.
  
  
  
• With Alder Lake bringing PCIe 5 support to the consumer market engineers are already turning their attention to PCIe 6. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Test chips and boards are now available for companies preparing PCIe 6 hardware, which is expected to ship to the server market either late next year or early 2023.
  
  
  
• Why is everything so hard in a large organisation? Because people. (do not look into laser with remaining eye)
  
  Solution: Get rid of the people.
  
  
  
• Another day, another Node.js security catastrophe. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  A key problem is that JavaScript was intended to run in the browser. It has no "standard library", something every language needs to perform useful work.
  
  So the community rallied together to build a standard library, producing Node.js and NPM, both of which are unmitigated clusterfucks.
  
  
  
• You're owning it wrong: Apple SVP Craig Federighi explained to Apple customers that no soup for you. (9to5Mac)

  Our mission is to provide people with the choice of what we view as the best.

  What you want is irrelevant. You get what you are given, and you sing Apple's praises.
  
  
  
• When you care enough to hire the very second best: Beancounters at IBM have instructed Red Hat to hire all new employees at one tier lower than previously. (The Register)
  
  If you depend on any Red Hat software or services, flee, now.
  
  
  
• Jeffy B. lost again in his series of suits against SpaceX. (The Register)
  
  The one page decision grants everything SpaceX asked for and tells Bezos' Blue Origin to take a long walk off a short pier.
  
  
  
• Asus is preparing an affordable 13" tablet PC with an OLED screen. (Ars Technica)
  
  It's only 1920x1080 and not 3000x2000, but for a device starting at $600 that's understandable. Less understandable is the Atom N6000 CPU and the 4GB of RAM on that $600 model.
  
  On the other hand, it does include a headphone jack and a micro SD slot, features that are disturbingly absent on an increasing number of devices. On the third hand, no Four Essential Keys. Asus is one of the better companies when it comes to the FEK, but is still hit-and-miss.
  
  And on the fourth hand, it comes with Windows 11.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 03:09 AM

| Access Comments