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Canonical Continues Exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 Images - Now In Microsoft's Cloud

Phoronix - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 3:29pm
Ubuntu maker Canonical has spent the past several months exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 based images for leveraging the x86_64 micro-architecture feature level capabilities to target the level embracing AVX/AVX2, FMA, BMI2, and other instructions supported largely since Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator era processors. As shown in benchmarks Ubuntu x86-64-v3 builds can deliver better performance for the AMD/Intel systems of the past number of years. Canonical's latest foray in this area is offering up Microsoft Azure images that are tailored for x86-64-v3...

Microsoft's New Era of AI PCs Will Need a Copilot Key, Says Intel

Slashdot - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 3:21pm
An anonymous reader shares a report:Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and AMD have all been pushing the idea of an "AI PC" for months now as we head toward more AI-powered features in Windows. While we're still waiting to hear the finer details from Microsoft on its big plans for AI in Windows, Intel has started sharing Microsoft's requirements for OEMs to build an AI PC -- and one of the main ones is that an AI PC must have Microsoft's Copilot key. Microsoft wants its OEM partners to provide a combination of hardware and software for its idea of an AI PC. That includes a system that comes with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), the latest CPUs and GPUs, and access to Copilot. It will also need to have the new Copilot key that Microsoft announced earlier this year. This requirement means that some laptops, like Asus' new ROG Zephyrus, have already shipped with Intel's new Core Ultra chips and aren't technically AI PCs in the eyes of Microsoft's strict requirements because they don't have a Copilot key. But they're still AI PCs in Intel's eyes. "Our joint aligned definition, Intel and Microsoft, we've aligned on Core Ultra, Copilot, and Copilot key," explains Todd Lewellen, head of the PC ecosystem at Intel, in a press briefing with The Verge. "From an Intel perspective our AI PC has Core Ultra and it has an integrated NPU because it is unlocking all kinds of new capabilities and functions in the AI space. We have great alignment with Microsoft, but there are going to be some systems out there that may not have the physical key on it but it does have our integrated NPU."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What Nvidia's Blackwell efficiency gains mean for DC operators

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 3:00pm
Air cooling's diminishing returns on full display with Nv's B-series silicon

Analysis  Hotter and more power-hungry CPUs and GPUs were already causing headaches for datacenter operators before Nvidia unveiled its 1,200W Blackwell GPUs at GTC last week.…

Two Nights of Broken Sleep Can Make People Feel Years Older, Finds Study

Slashdot - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 2:40pm
Two nights of broken sleep are enough to make people feel years older, according to researchers, who said consistent, restful slumber was a key factor in helping to stave off feeling one's true age. From a report: Psychologists in Sweden found that, on average, volunteers felt more than four years older when they were restricted to only four hours of sleep for two consecutive nights, with some claiming the sleepiness made them feel decades older. The opposite was seen when people were allowed to stay in bed for nine hours, though the effect was more modest, with participants in the study claiming to feel on average three months younger than their real age after ample rest. "Sleep has a major impact on how old you feel and it's not only your long-term sleep patterns," said Dr Leonie Balter, a psychoneuroimmunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and first author on the study. "Even when you only sleep less for two nights that has a real impact on how you feel." Beyond simply feeling more decrepit, the perception of being many years older may affect people's health, Balter said, by encouraging unhealthy eating, reducing physical exercise, and making people less willing to socialise and engage in new experiences.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blender 4.1 Benchmarks Confirm Even Faster CPU Render Times Under Linux

Phoronix - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 2:38pm
Blender has long enjoyed faster CPU rendering under Linux compared to using Microsoft Windows. Across many different processors over the years consistently we see faster Linux CPU render performance than under Windows, though that's typically the case for most renderers. With yesterday's release of Blender 4.1, there is even faster Linux CPU render speeds. Here are some initial Blender 4.0 vs. 4.1 benchmarks...

Boeing and subsidiary file trade secrets lawsuit against Virgin Galactic

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 2:30pm
Oh, and there's small matter of an alleged $26M in unpaid bills

Updated  Boeing and its subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation have sued Virgin Galactic, alleging the space tourism company has misappropriated trade secrets.…

RHEL 9.4 Beta Brings Full Support For Intel SGX & DSA Accelerator Drivers

Phoronix - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 2:14pm
Red Hat has made the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 Beta available to their customers this week for those wanting to test the next iteration of RHEL9...

The AI Boom is Sending Silicon Valley's Talent Wars To New Extremes

Slashdot - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 2:02pm
Tech companies are serving up million-dollar-a-year compensation packages, accelerated stock-vesting schedules and offers to poach entire engineering teams to draw people with expertise and experience in the kind of generative AI that is powering ChatGPT and other humanlike bots. They are competing against each other and against startups vying to be the next big thing to unseat the giants. From a report: The offers stand out even by the industry's relatively lavish past standards of outsize pay and perks. And the current AI talent shortage stands out for another reason: It is happening as layoffs are continuing in other areas of tech and as companies have been reallocating resources to invest more in covering the enormous cost of developing AI technology. "There is a secular shift in what talents we're going after," says Naveen Rao, head of Generative AI at Databricks. "We have a glut of people on one side and a shortage on the other." Databricks, a data storage and management startup, doesn't have a problem finding software engineers. But when it comes to candidates who have trained large language models, or LLMs, from scratch or can help solve vexing problems in AI, such as hallucinations, Rao says there might be only a couple of hundred people out there who are qualified. Some of these hard-to-find, tier-one candidates can easily get total compensation packages of $1 million a year or more. Salespeople in AI are also in demand and hard to find. Selling at the beginning of a technology transition when things are changing rapidly requires a different skill set and depth of knowledge. Candidates with those skills are making around double what an enterprise software salesperson would. But that isn't the norm for most people working in AI, Rao says. For managerial roles in AI and machine learning, base-pay increases ranged from 5% to 11% from April 2022 to April 2023, according to a WTW survey of more than 1,500 employers. The base-pay increases of nonmanagerial roles ranged from 13% to 19% during the same period.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Miscreants are exploiting enterprise tech zero days more and more, Google warns

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 2:00pm
Crooks know where the big bucks are

The discovery and exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in enterprise-specific software and appliances appears to be outpacing the leveraging of zero-day bugs overall, judging by Google's latest research.…

Pragmatic Semiconductor opens UK's first 300mm wafer fab in Durham

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 1:30pm
Facility to bring major leap in domestic chip production amid government support

UK chipmaker Pragmatic Semiconductor has officially opened its latest manufacturing facilities in Durham, just over a year after its CEO threatened to move the company out of the country over the government's lack of support for the chip industry.…

In-app browsers are still a privacy, security, and choice problem

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 12:30pm
Regulators reminded that longstanding concerns haven't been addressed

Competition cops in Europe and the United Kingdom have started paying attention to in-app browsers, a controversial mechanism for presenting web content within native apps.…

Visa and Mastercard Agree To $30 Billion Settlement Over Credit Card Fees

Slashdot - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 12:00pm
Two of the world's largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants. From a report: The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by $30 billion over five years, according to a press release announcing the settlement Tuesday morning. The settlement, which only applies to US merchants, is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2005. However, nothing is considered finalized until it receives approval from the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Even then, the case can also be appealed in what could be a lengthy battle. Typically, swipe fees cost merchants 2% of the total transaction a customer makes -- but can be as much as 4% for some premium rewards cards, according to the National Retail Federation. The settlement would lower those fees by at least 0.04 percentage point for a minimum of three years. Additionally, the settlement would require Visa and Mastercard to maintain the swipe fee rates that existed as of December 31, 2023 for five years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Belgian beer study acquires taste for machine learning

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 11:45am
Researchers reckon results could improve recipe development for food and beverages

Joining the list of things that probably don't need improving by machine learning but people are going to try anyway is Belgian beer.…

Street newspaper appears to have Big Issue with Qilin ransomware gang

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 11:00am
The days of cybercriminals having something of a moral compass are over

The parent company of The Big Issue, a street newspaper and social enterprise for homeless people, is wrestling with a cybersecurity incident claimed by the Qilin ransomware gang.…

Microsoft Engineer Sends Rust Linux Kernel Patches For In-Place Module Initialization

Phoronix - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 10:52am
What a time we live in where Microsoft not only continues contributing significantly to the Linux kernel but doing so to further flesh out the design of the Linux kernel's Rust programming language support. A previously unimaginable combination of Microsoft, the Rust programming language, and the Linux kernel...

Intel Xe Developers Begin Looking At Cross-Device & Cross-Driver HMM

Phoronix - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 10:22am
The Intel open-source engineers working on the modern Xe DRM kernel graphics driver have begun looking at Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) support for cross-device and cross-driver scenarios as the latest exciting feature work for this still-experimental driver...

Windows Format dialog waited decades for UI revamp that never came

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 10:15am
'Temporary' isn't always

Windows has a built-in reminder of the perils of temporary solutions thanks to the 30-year-old porting efforts of former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer.…

Software Industry Calls for More UK Government Support

Slashdot - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 10:00am
Britain's government has been urged to provide more support for the software industry with measures including tax incentives and talent visas. From a report: More than 120 industry leaders have called for government intervention to improve conditions for European software companies. Europe has long struggled to scale up homegrown tech companies as successfully as the U.S., with many startups forced to seek investment abroad as they scale up. A new policy document -- published by industry body Boardwave and seen by Reuters -- highlights what it calls Europe's "dreadful" track record of scaling software companies, with one recent study showing only one software-focused firm, Sage, counted among Britain's top 100 publicly-traded businesses, compared to dozens in the U.S. Phill Robinson, Boardwave founder and a former executive at software giant Salesfore, shared the report with Britain's technology minister Michele Donelan last week, warning that mid-sized software companies had received little government attention compared to Big Tech firms and buzzy venture-funded startups.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TornadoVM v1.0.3 OpenJDK/GraalVM Plug-In For Java Heterogeneous Hardware Support

Phoronix - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 9:57am
TornadoVM is the OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that opens up the Java programming language to heterogeneous hardware support by allowing the easy targeting of Java code to TornadoVM targets including OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V -- in addition to CPUs. With the SPIR-V and OpenCL support in turn this means Java can run not only on GPUs but also some FPGAs and other devices...

UK skies set for cheeky upgrade with hybrid airship

El Reg - Wed, 27/03/2024 - 9:30am
Depending on planning permission being given for facility

The Airlander hybrid airship looks set to go into production within a few years, if its maker can get planning approval for a factory.…

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