This group is known for clickbait, slanted 'exposes' that intentionally misframe content, and selective omissions if they don't support their narrative.
This comment's absolutely and completely misguided and nakedly partisan/tribal viewpoint almost perfectly describes the issue with the media: A complete and utter lack of understanding that perhaps some opposing viewpoints are also valid and worthy of discussion, which then leads to completely biased and untrustworthy activist reporting.
You aren't arguing with Tom's use of the term here - you are arguing with a semiconductor teardown specialist who pointed this out. They are extra chunks of silicon with no logic or transistors that are glued on. Hence, by every single definition of the term, they are dummy silicon.
Yes, they are bonded (glued-on) chunks of silicon with no logic. That is the definition of Dummy Silicon. The person who wrote the report is a professional chip analyst who does die deconstruction.
Your statement is incorrect. The analysis was made by a professional firm - dummy silicon shims are used because the dies are thinned, as per AMD's own disclosures. Those silicon shims are bonded to the compute and SRAM dies.
This is why they provided a normalized comparison versus market cap. They should have probably done it with revenue, but this does provide a means of analysis of the relative efficacy of value creation via R&D dollars.
The author suggests that comparing Arm vs. x86 is easy due to a Geekbench test comparison. That's one of very few cross-platform benchmarks and highlights the fact that the author isn't very well-versed (if versed at all) in competitive performance analysis or PC benchmarks.
Geekbench is a terrible proxy for ANY workload, those subtests all run within the space of a few seconds -- they aren't meant to actually represent performance in sustained workloads.
Additionally, the smashing together of results from a wide range of incomparable applications, including unfair weighting that skews for memory, makes the cumulative scores largely worthless.
Finding other relevant benchmarks for comparison is difficult, especially given the locked down nature of MacOS.
It makes absolutely zero sense for Crucial to implement such a warranty restriction - This is already covered under the endurance portion of the warranty. Making a clause that ANY use of the SSD for mining automatically voids the warranty is like saying your car warranty is void if you use your car to get groceries.
Crucial quoted its own warranty falsely and then attempted to implement that change retroactively. That's certainly grounds for a class-action lawsuit. They were smart to back down from this.
Except he didn't re-hire him. As noted in the article itself, the architect was already in negotiations since November. Also, new CEO doesn't step in until next month. Clickbait title.
"AMD's computing and graphics segment, responsible for both the EPYC server and console chips, generated $1.44 billion, a 21% year-over-year decline. AMD chalked this up to lower sales into the console market, while increased EPYC Rome sales reduced the impact.
In either case, the market's bullish prospects for AMD's EPYC Rome processors might be blunted by the lower revenue generation in this key segment. The unit posted a $26 million operating loss, compared to operating income of $45 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. AMD cited lower ASPs due to heightened cloud spending, and we know that Intel has been increasingly competitive as it slashed pricing on its competing Cascade Lake Refresh processors. Intel's server unit (DCG) also recently posted a 42.7% year-over-year sales increase due to coronavirus-spurred demand."
The fact that the Super 7 don't want to rely upon one vendor actually gives AMD a better shot - all other serious contenders use different instruction sets, so AMD's x86 procs are compatible with existing software ecosystems, thus reducing qualification and validation results. A viable x86 alternative to Intel has been sorely needed, and AMD fills that role quite nicely.