Computers & the Internet News and Discussions

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Biden announces $42 billion high-speed internet initiative

PUBLISHED MON, JUN 26 2023 11:31 AM EDT UPDATED 13 MIN AGO

Emma Kinery
@EMMAKINERY https://www.cnbc.com/emma-kinery/

KEY POINTS

* President Joe Biden is kicking off a more than $42 billion plan to give every American household access to high-speed internet by 2030.
* The initiative is the next stage of Biden's push to invest in America ahead of his reelection bid.
* White House officials compared the plan to Franklin D. Roosevelt's effort to bring electricity to rural America in the 1930s.

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden is kicking off a more than $42 billion plan to give every American household access to high-speed internet by 2030.

The funds, already allotted by Congress through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce, are slated to be divvied up over the next two years through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. The initiative is the next stage of Biden's push to invest in America ahead of his reelection bid.

"Let us agree in the 21st century America, high-speed internet is not a luxury, it's a necessity," said Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at the White House. ... "Whether it's connecting people to the digital economy, manufacturing fiber optic cable in America or creating good-paying jobs building internet infrastructure in the states, the investments we're announcing will increase our competitiveness and spur economic growth across the country for years to come," said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

Each state will receive a minimum of $107 million, with 19 states receiving over $1 billion. Texas is slated to receive more than $3.3 billion under the program.

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Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/26/biden-h ... ative.html

[weatheriscool]

NEO Semiconductor 3D X-DRAM With 8x the Density Of DDR5 Computer Memory
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/06/n ... emory.html

June 28, 2023 by Brian Wang

Neo Semiconductor has announced the world’s first 3D stackable DRAM technology, called 3D X-DRAM, that could revolutionize computer memory. Neo estimates 3D X-DRAM can achieve 128Gb density with 230 layers. This is 8 times greater compared to today’s best solutions with DDR5 technology.

Neo Semiconductor is located in San Jose, California.

3D stacking of silicon has been around for a few years. You’ve probably seen it in AMD’s latest Ryzen CPUs with 3D V-Cache technology, however, this is the first time 3D stacking tech has been brought to computer system memory (i.e. DDR4 & DDR5). Compared to current 2D solutions, 3D-XDRAM allows DRAM modules to be vertically (3D) stacked on top of each other to enhance density and overall memory capacity. Neo’s new 3D X-DRAM technology uses a 3D NAND-like DRAM cell array structure. It is reportedly cheap to make and easy to produce.

Based on Neo’s analysis, we could have individual memory DIMMs with 4TB to 8TB of capacity in the future with 3D X-DRAM, which is an astonishing capacity considering most servers max out at 8TB currently using a full bank of DIMMs.

[raklian]

[weatheriscool]

Overclocker Breaks 4GHz Barrier for the First Time on Asus ROG Matrix GPU
All previous attempts have come extremely close to this magical boundary, but this is the first time anyone has nudged a GPU past it.
By Josh Norem July 7, 2023

The seal has been broken. That is, the mysterious 4GHz seal, as no GPU has ever crossed this threshold. Though it's still not something the average overclocker could pull off at home with mere liquid cooling, it's still a significant milestone in the annals of GPU clock speeds. Perhaps one day, we will be able to cross 5GHz, but we'll have to wait until 2025, when Nvidia's next-gen GPUs arrive, to find out about that. It should also be pointed out that this barrier was broken not in PC gaming but in a compute benchmark, which is less stressful on the GPU. Still, it's a notable achievement, as just passing 3GHz was a huge deal with previous-generation cards.

The overclocker who will go down in history is Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch, and we've written about his accomplishments previously. A week ago, Splave was tickling 4GHz on the same GPU, the ultra-premium Asus ROG Matrix card. He previously cranked it up to a painfully close 3.945GHz on liquid nitrogen. Now he's been able to push it 60MHz higher, resulting in a 4,005MHz overclock. The hardware setup for this run was almost the same as on his previous attempt, though he did swap out the Corsair DDR5 memory for some sticks made by G.Skill.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/over ... matrix-gpu

[weatheriscool]

Intel Returns to Profitability After 2 Quarters of Brutal Losses
Though the company is still down year-over-year, its fortunes have finally improved after painful back-to-back quarters.
By Josh Norem July 28, 2023

Intel announced its Q2 2023 earnings this week, and they were a breath of fresh air for the beleaguered company. In its report, Intel posted an actual profit for the second quarter, reversing a sizable downslide in revenues for Chipzilla that began in Q4 2022 and saw a historic plunge in Q1. At the time, the company said it expected the bleeding to stop soon, and it has apparently done that. Though the company is still down from its numbers in 2022, it seems both Intel and the PC industry have begun to recover from the recent global PC downturn.

Regarding top-line numbers, Intel earned $12.9 billion in revenue in Q2, down 15% from the $15.9 billion it made a year ago. Of that revenue, $1.5 billion was profit, which marks a complete reversal over the previous quarters of historic losses. In Q4 of 2022, the company reported a $664 million loss, then followed that up in Q1 with a shocking $2.8 billion loss in Q1 of 2023, the largest quarterly decline in its 55-year history. Those brutal quarters prompted the company to take evasive maneuvers, as it embarked on a cost-cutting spree that saw it shelving future R&D plans, slashing executive compensation, and even driving a stake into the beloved NUC line of Mini PCs. In its earnings report, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger attributed its newfound efficiencies as a partial contributor to its revenue rebound.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/i ... tal-losses

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Seagate Ships First HAMR Drives for Revenue at 32TB
The company’s goal is to ship 100TB drives by 2025.
By Josh Norem July 31, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/s ... ue-at-32tb

During last week’s Q2 earnings call, storage giant Seagate revealed it’d shipped enough heat-assisted recording HAMR hard drives to hyperscale customers to generate revenue. This is a first for the company and a critical milestone in the technology’s path to the broader market. It had previously shipped several HAMR drives to some of its customers for validation and testing but stated it wasn’t sending them in enough volume to affect its balance sheets. As of June 2023, it has officially entered a new era for the fledgling technology, which has been almost 20 years in the making.

The company’s first HAMR drive is shipping with 32TB capacity and uses Seagate’s mature 10-platter design. It had previously been cagey about how many platters it would use but confirmed it was a 10-platter design in June. The company expects to increase capacity to 36TB and then 40TB using the same method, according to Anandtech. Beyond that, it’s expected to reach 50TB and even 100TB by 2025, but we’ll have to see how that unfolds.

[weatheriscool]

Technological breakthrough may be key to overcoming current 5G network limitations
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-tec ... nt-5g.html
by Bangor University

Researchers from Bangor University's Digital Signal Processing Center (DSP) have made a breakthrough in the development of a novel Point-to-Multipoint (P2MP) Optical Transceiver.

Optical Transceivers are widely used in data communication systems to transmit and receive signals over a network. The novel P2MP flexible transceiver overcomes the limitations of previous technologies in terms of just operating at pre-defined speeds over point-to-point transmission systems only.

As a direct result of the disadvantages associated with traditional optical transceivers, a current network node accommodating P2MP 5G access networks must use multiple traditional point-to-point (P2P) optical transceivers in parallel, each supporting a dedicated transmission link. Such network implementation and operation approaches are spectrally inefficient, energy-hungry, expensive and non-scalable in terms of meeting the stringent requirements of future access networks, including 5G-Advance and beyond.

[weatheriscool]

SK Hynix Becomes First Company to Take NAND Flash Beyond 300 Layers
The achievement marks an important milestone in developing high-density flash storage, although it will take a couple of years to reach mass production.
By Josh Norem August 9, 2023

Memory manufacturer SK Hynix has become the first company in the world to surpass 300 layers of NAND flash, marking an important milestone in developing high-density flash storage. The company demonstrated its newest technology at the Flash Memory Summit this week in Santa Clara, Calif. by showing off a 321-layer 1Tb TLC 4D module. Don't get too excited, though; it's not coming to the market until 2025.

SK Hynix noted that transitioning to a 1Tb 321-layer die will be a massive leap from its earlier 512Gb 238-layer design. It said the advancement in density would afford an increase in "productivity" of 59%, allowing it to secure more NAND capacity from a single wafer. And since this is happening in 2023, there has to be a tie-in to ChatGPT and generative AI, with the company noting AI has caused a surge in demand for faster memory products.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/s ... 300-layers

[weatheriscool]

Samsung Touts Future 256TB SSD, Petabyte-Scale 'PBSSDs' at Flash Summit
All the big flash companies are rolling out their latest tech at the summit, with Samsung discussing a capacious SSD that will arrive at some undetermined point in the future.
By Josh Norem August 11, 2023

These days we all look back at our first SSD and marvel at how tiny it was in capacity. Your author remembers reviewing super-tall 32GB drives that, despite their capacity, were shaped like Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) cartridges when they first came out so many years ago. We have all moved on to 512GB and 1TB/2TB SSDs by now, but someday we will look back at those and laugh at how we could ever stomach such lowly capacity. That is, assuming Samsung comes through on a 256TB SSD it showed off this week at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/s ... ash-summit

[weatheriscool]

Metamaterials Trap Light in a Magnet Could Lead to Optically Controlled Computer Memory
August 18, 2023 by Brian Wang
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/08/m ... emory.html

Vinod M. Menon and his research group at The City College of New York shows that trapping light inside magnetic materials may dramatically enhance their intrinsic properties. Strong optical responses of magnets are important for the development of magnetic lasers and magneto-optical memory devices, as well as for emerging quantum transduction applications.

The properties of a layered magnet that hosts strongly bound excitons — quasiparticles with particularly strong optical interactions. Because of that, the material is capable of trapping light — all by itself. As their experiments show, the optical responses of this material to magnetic phenomena are orders of magnitude stronger than those in typical magnets. “Since the light bounces back and forth inside the magnet, interactions are genuinely enhanced,” said Dr. Florian Dirnberger, the lead-author of the study. “To give an example, when we apply an external magnetic field the near-infrared reflection of light is altered so much, the material basically changes its color. That’s a pretty strong magneto-optic response.”

[weatheriscool]

IBM reports analog AI chip patterned after human brain
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-ibm ... erned.html
by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Deep neural networks are generating much of the exciting progress stemming from generative AI. But their architecture relies on a configuration that is a virtual speedbump, ensuring the maximal efficiency can not be obtained.

Constructed with separate units for memory and processing, neural networks face heavy demands on system resources for communications between the two components that results in slower speeds and reduced efficiency.

IBM Research came up with a better idea by turning to the perfect model for its inspiration for a more efficient digital brain: the human brain.

In a paper, "A 64-core mixed-signal in-memory compute chip based on phase-change memory for deep neural network inference," published in Nature Electronics Aug. 10, IBM researchers said they applied a new approach for a state-of-the-art mixed-signal AI chip that promises to improve efficiency and incur less battery drain in AI projects.

[weatheriscool]

Study highlights the vulnerabilities of metasurface-based wireless communication systems
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-hig ... ation.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

Metasurfaces, artificially engineered surfaces that can manipulate electromagnetic signals in unique ways, have huge potential for several technological applications, including the implementation of sixth generation (6G) cellular communications. The limitations and vulnerabilities of these smart surfaces, however, are still poorly understood.

Researchers at Peking University, University of Sannio and Southeast University recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the vulnerability of metasurfaces to wireless cyber-attacks. Their paper, published in Nature Electronics, outlines two types of attacks that should be considered and accounted for before metasurfaces can be deployed on a large-scale.

"This work was primarily driven by the need for enhancing security and privacy of wireless communications in the upcoming 6G era, characterized by unprecedented speeds, ultra-low latency, and vast connection nodes," Lianlin Li, Vincenzo Galdi and Tie Jun Cui, three of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore.

"The open nature of wireless communication means that data and signals are essentially out in the open, making the risk of physical level attacks a major concern. Our project focuses on identifying some potential risks associated with programmable metasurfaces—a key enabling technology in the envisioned 6G landscape."

[weatheriscool]

Team develops technique for building DNA-based programmable gate arrays
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-team-tech ... -gate.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A team of chemists and chemical engineers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, working with a colleague from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both in China, has built a DNA-based programmable gate array for use in general-purpose DNA computing. In their study, reported in the journal Nature, the group overcame obstacles that had hindered the development of multipurpose DNA-based circuits and created circuits using their new process.

In 1994, Leonard Adleman won the Turing award for his proposed use of DNA base-pairing to create a biocomputing device. Since that time, many such devices have been created. But until now, any given device could do only one thing. In this new effort, the team in China has overcome problems faced by other researchers working on making such devices more universal by developing a technique for creating a field-programmable gate array using DNA, which they describe as a DNA-based programmable gate array (DPGA).

[weatheriscool]

Get Ready: Microsoft's AI-Powered CoPilot for Windows 11 Arrives Sept. 26
Microsoft is also using AI to bring big changes to File Explorer, Paint, and other apps in this huge update.
By Josh Norem September 22, 2023

The AI revolution is about to arrive in a big way for millions of people on Sept. 26. That's when Microsoft will inject its AI-powered assistant named Copilot directly into Windows 11, placing it on the Taskbar for anyone to use. For many people, it'll be their first experience using an AI assistant, and it has tremendous potential. It'll be arriving as part of the Windows 11 23H2 update, which will be a doozy. It offers many changes across the OS, with a focus on adding AI to Windows' native apps.

Windows Copilot is the most significant change to the core of the Windows operating system that we can remember, going back to Windows 95 at least. It'll hook into everything you're doing on your computer, which may creep some people out. But it will enable many tasks to be performed. Previously, its ChatGPT-powered assistant was limited to using either its Bing search engine or its Edge browser, which is not a huge audience. Adding it to Windows will open it up to a much larger number of users, to put it lightly. As we covered previously, Copilot can summarize documents, help you write them, make changes within Windows, and lots more.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/g ... es-sept-26

[Powers]

Get Ready: Microsoft's AI-Powered CoPilot for Windows 11 Arrives Sept. 26
By Josh Norem September 22, 2023

...which may creep some people out.

It does.

[weatheriscool]

US FCC chair to seek reinstating net neutrality rules rescinded under Trump
Source: Reuters

September 26, 2023 4:46 AM EDT

WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel plans to begin an effort to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules rescinded under then-President Donald Trump, sources briefed on the matter said Monday.

The move comes after Democrats took majority control of the five-member FCC on Monday for the first time since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 when new FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was sworn in. The FCC is set to take an initial vote on the net neutrality proposal in October, the sources added.

In July 2021, Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules adopted under Democratic then-President Barack Obama in 2015. The FCC voted in 2017 to reverse the rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization. Days before the 2020 presidential election, the FCC voted to maintain the reversal.

Rosenworcel denounced the repeal in 2017 saying it put the FCC "on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public." She plans a speech to outline her plans on Tuesday, the sources added. A spokesperson for Rosenworcel declined to comment.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-tel ... 023-09-26/

[weatheriscool]

The FCC Restores Its Responsibility to Oversee Corporate Control of Internet
https://fair.org/home/the-fcc-restores- ... -internet/

9-29-2023 by Janine Jackson

Listeners will know that the FCC has been ineffectual for some time, because it’s been short of full staffing. Big media players torpedoed, with the most scurrilous of means, the nomination of public interest advocate Gigi Sohn, but eventually Biden nominee Anna Gomez was sworn in as fifth commissioner.

In the wake of that, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel has now announced that the FCC is to be an active player again.

At the National Press Club this week, Rosenworcel (9/26/23) said that the FCC will vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at its next meeting in mid-October. And they will center the role of Title II, the part of federal communications law that gives the agency the power to even go about overseeing corporate control of the internet: to push against price gouging, anti-privacy moves, access-throttling—the whole range of things that makes people hate their internet service providers, and makes it a less hospitable arena for activism and organizing. That’s before you even get to whether they are allowed to shut off service during crises like Covid.

The FCC, under the sway of corporations and their lobbyists, abandoned that responsibility years ago, under former chair Ajit Pai, appointed by Donald Trump based on his career as a lawyer for Verizon.

With Title II invigorated, the FCC can engage net neutrality rules—which prevent internet service providers from slowing access for those that don’t pony up, and speeding it along for those that do. All of which machinations we as end-users may not be aware of, but that will absolutely affect what we see and know and act on.

SNIP

[wjfox]

Google Maps can now tell exactly where solar panels should be installed

October 3, 2023

Google Maps can now calculate rooftops’ solar potential, track air quality, and forecast pollen counts.

The platform recently launched a range of services like Solar API, which calculates weather patterns and pulls data from aerial imagery to help understand rooftops’ solar potential. The tool aims to help accelerate solar panel deployment by improving accuracy and reducing the number of site visits needed.

As seasonal allergies get worse every year, Pollen API shows updated information on the most common allergens in 65 countries by using a mix of machine learning and wind patterns. Similarly, Air Quality API provides detailed information on local air quality by utilizing data from multiple sources, like government monitoring stations, satellites, live traffic, and more, and can show areas affected by wildfires too.

https://mashable.com/video/google-maps- ... ment-tools

[weatheriscool]

Microsoft Project Silica: Glass Plates That Store Data for 10,000 Years
Project Silica could be the future of long-term data storage.
By Ryan Whitwam October 17, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/m ... 0000-years

As data storage becomes ever cheaper, many of us have accumulated gigabytes (or even terabytes) of it that must be kept safe. Whether you're storing your data locally or in the cloud, the storage medium has a finite lifespan. Microsoft is working on a new kind of storage technology, called Project Silica, that could store data essentially forever without any electricity. Instead of writing data to a magnetic storage medium, it encodes that data in a sheet of glass smaller than a DVD.

Microsoft engineer Ant Rowstron explains that simply keeping data safe over time is a monumental undertaking. Hard drives might last five years (or less) in a data center before they need to be replaced, and a tape drive could last twice as long if you're lucky. Manufacturing, powering, and transferring data between drives requires time, money, and resources that could be spent better elsewhere. If only we had a way to store the data more reliably. That's Project Silica, which you can see in action in a new video from Microsoft research below.

[weatheriscool]

FCC votes in favor of Wi-Fi installations in school buses

Source: WCAX-TV3

Published: Oct. 20, 2023 at 5:36 AM EDT|Updated: 2 hours ago

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - Vermont kids could see Wi-Fi on their school buses soon after a nod from the FCC.

The FCC voted to make Wi-Fi and similar technology on school buses eligible for reimbursement under the E-Rate program. It comes just one week after Senator Peter Welch took FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to Williamstown, Vermont where they’re efforting Wi-Fi installation on buses.

The goal is to close the homework gap for Vermont’s students living in rural areas that may not have access to broadband at home.

Read more: https://www.wcax.com/2023/10/20/fcc-vot ... ool-buses/