monocasa (u/monocasa)

monocasa commented on How SQLite is tested sqlite.org/testing.html... · Posted by u/whatisabcdefgh

Have you looked at a Juicero teardown [0]? It's overengineered to the point where it's a genuinely astonishing bit of engineering art. It's also an incredibly stupid product. Those things are completely compatible.

[0] https://blog.bolt.io/juicero/

monocasa · 2 days ago

Idk, it looks like most of what this person is complaining is that they don't see a lot of this in high volume consumer products. But like, most high volume comsumer products don't have to crank nearly the same amount of torque either.

It's a silly product, but as far as being over engineered, it looks like it's about what I'd expect for those requirements.

monocasa commented on The Java Ring: A Wearable Computer (1998) nngroup.com/articles/java... · Posted by u/cromulent

rpcope1 · 4 days ago

> Obviously this is a use-case for NFC or a variety of other technologies but for some reason I've seen the iButton-based systems used in a half dozen buildings.

If I had to guess, it's probably because another Dallas Semi product, 1Wire, already gets used a lot for things like facilities, and so far as I can tell iButton seems to integrate OK into that whole ecosystem.

monocasa · 4 days ago

iButtons are in fact a 1Wire implementation.

monocasa commented on Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems qualcomm.com/news/release... · Posted by u/fork-bomber

throwaway31131 · 9 days ago

So much for the $1.4B spent on NUVIA.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/startup-key-apple-goog...

monocasa · 9 days ago

I imagine this is mostly an acquihire to bolster the same teams that the Nuvia acquisition did.

monocasa commented on Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems qualcomm.com/news/release... · Posted by u/fork-bomber

drob518 · 9 days ago

Yea, this to me signals that Qualcomm is starting to hedge its ARM bets. Given all the kerfuffle around licensing they have had with ARM already, I suspect that they are signaling to ARM that they have options and so ARM's leverage is a lot lower than it might be. That said, there are also huge switching costs to Qualcomm's customers, so this is not a move it takes lightly. In the mean time, I'm sure those Ventana engineers can also help them improve their ARM designs, too.

monocasa · 9 days ago

My guess is that this was mostly an acquihire. I had heard that Ventana had a lot of people that were laid off from Intel for instance.

monocasa commented on Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems qualcomm.com/news/release... · Posted by u/fork-bomber

tonetegeatinst · 9 days ago

Does anyone know or have they leaked potential cost of acquisition?

monocasa · 9 days ago

The $2B deal with Intel fell through. Thought they were arguably worth more on paper then. My guess is that they're in a weird place where a fair offer at the moment is less than the investment they've gotten so far.

monocasa commented on Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems qualcomm.com/news/release... · Posted by u/fork-bomber

pieter3d · 9 days ago

A perfect target for Intel then, followed by a rapid exodus of the employees and destruction of the IP (like every other Intel acquisition).

monocasa · 9 days ago

They almost got bought by Intel, but then even Intel noped out.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-failed-to-buy-sifive

monocasa commented on Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems qualcomm.com/news/release... · Posted by u/fork-bomber

nrclark · 9 days ago

Most SOCs on the market today have a mix of various CPU cores. It's common to see designs with a few big ARM Cortex-A cores running an OS like Linux or Android, and then some smaller Cortex-M microcontroller cores that do housekeeping things like security checks, power management, realtime features, peripheral management, etc.

If I were to guess, Qualcomm wants to replace its various Cortex-M cores with RISC-V equivalents. This saves them money on licensing, reduces their dependency on ARM, and doesn't break customer-facing compatibility. Ventana is probably more of an aquihire to get their designer team.

"We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." -Qualcomm, probably

monocasa · 9 days ago

Ventana's cores were 15 instruction wide, massively out of order cores that on paper compete with the application cores in Apple's M series SoCs.

They're a totally different gate count niche than a Cortex-M equivalent.

monocasa commented on Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop tinycorelinux.net/... · Posted by u/LorenDB

Perz1val · 13 days ago

Yea, but those platforms were not 64bit

monocasa · 13 days ago

64 bit generally adds about 20% to the size of the executables and programs as t to last on x86, so it's not that big of a change.

monocasa commented on Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop tinycorelinux.net/... · Posted by u/LorenDB

Rohansi · 13 days ago

> NVIDIA GPU drivers are typically around 800M-1.5G.

They also pack in a lot of game-specific optimizations for whatever reason. Could likely be a lot smaller without those.

monocasa · 13 days ago

Even the open source drivers without those hacks are massive. Each type of card has its own almost 100MB of firmware that runs on the card on Nvidia.

monocasa commented on Intel could return to Apple computers in 2027 theverge.com/news/832366/... · Posted by u/DamnInteresting

JumpCrisscross · 18 days ago

> don’t see it as a bad thing for Intel

Isn't this a ringing success for their strategy of separating chip design from fabrication?

monocasa · 18 days ago

Maybe, it's unclear at the moment.

Apple is known to be one of the kings of putting their suppliers over a barrel. There's a good chance this is mainly a move to negotiate a better deal with TSMC, and even if it's not, the chance that Intel gets a boat load of profit out of it is very small.

And historically when fabs have been separated from a business, it's always been in a way to shed a capital intensive albatross. In that case, they're normally loaded up with so much debt in the divorce that they were essentially never intended to succeed or continue to keep up, but instead just barely stay afloat on the already capitalized investment.