Daily Tech News 13 October 2022

• Microsoft had its big Surface product announcement and there's never been a better time to buy a Surface Laptop 4. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which is a bit awkward because they just announced the Surface Laptop 5.
  
  Not only did Microsoft drop the AMD option, they went with U-series 12th generation chips. Intel has two main ranges of 12th gen laptop chips: The H series for full-size laptops which has six Performance cores, and the P series for smaller laptops which has four Performance cores (except for the high-end 1280P which has six again).
  
  Microsoft went for the 15W U series chips, which have just two Performance cores, and are, despite also having eight Efficiency cores, the same speed on multi-threaded tasks as the two generations old Ryzen 4680U in some Surface Laptop 4 models, and 20% slower than the Ryzen 4980U in the 15" Surface Laptop 4.
  
  Pfeh.
  
  
  
• Microsoft also announced the $4299 Surface Studio 2, with a quad-core 11th gen CPU that is barely faster than the laptop I am using right now, which rest assured, did not cost me $4299. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The mechanical design of the Studio is great. It has a 28" 3:2 screen - 4500x3000 pixels - which is hinged so you can lie it almost flat as a drawing surface. Which is a good thing because it's not much use for anything more demanding than that.
  
  It does have RTX 3060 graphics, which this laptop definitely does not have.

• Intel plans to launch new server CPUs. Lots of them. (WCCFTech)
  
  The much-delayed Sapphire Rapids chips with up to 60 cores are now expected in Q1 of next year, just in time to compete with AMD's 96 and 128 core Epyc Genoa and Bergamo ranges. In Q3 Intel will introduce an 8 socket platform - up to 480 cores per server - which will in theory put it ahead of Epyc which only supports dual socket configurations.
  
  Following this will be Emerald Rapids, Granite Rapids pushing the core count to 120 per socket, and Diamond Rapids introducing PCIe 6.0. Those will likely be competing against 256 core Zen 5 monsters using 600W per socket - but able to replace a dozen or more older servers.
  
  
  
• How do other companies (like the hosting provider here) offer bandwidth so much cheaper than AWS? Amazon is making a 98.75% gross margin on bandwidth charges, that's how. (Cloudflare)
  
  In the US, Canada, and Europe, Amazon marks up bandwidth costs approximately 8000%. Lowest markup was an estimated 350% in South Korea, which apparently has higher prices for commercial internet connects than even Australia.
  
  
  
• Honda (a Japanese company) and LG (Korean) are building a joint venture battery factory in Ohio. (CNBC)
  
  There's been a lot of this recently. China has become self-destructively unfriendly to foreign investment, to the point that it is simply toxic and companies are willing to spend whatever it takes to build elsewhere.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which Taiwan says it no longer needs to destroy its chip fabs in the event of a Chinese invasion, because they'd be useless anyway. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The fabs rely on equipment and supplies from multiple Western sources, many of which are already on the restricted list for China. They'd have captured the very latest equipment, but it would be $100 billion worth of paperweights.
  
  
  
• My latest Amazon delivery made it to New House City in record time - and has now been wandering around the countryside in a courier van for two days. The local depot for this particular courier is 70 miles away, and I doubt they're taking the most direct route.
  
  I do kind of miss same-day delivery, but not a million dollars worth of miss.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:04 AM

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