Month: July 2018

Enlarge / A chip almost identical to AMD's EPYC processor has begun to appear in China. It's the result of an AMD joint venture with a Chinese government-owned investment group. (credit: AMD)

Thanks to a licensing deal with AMD and a complex joint-venture arrangement, the Chinese chip producer Chengdu Haiguang IC Design Co. (Hygon) is now producing x86-based server processors that are largely indistinguishable from AMD's EPYC processors—so close in design that Linux kernel developers had to do little in the way of patching to support the new processor family, called "Dhyana." The server chips are being manufactured for domestic use only—part of an effort to break China's dependence on foreign technology companies.

Since the Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency efforts to use implants in technology products to conduct foreign intelligence collection, China has been applying increasing pressure on US technology providers. The country hopes to bolster its own domestic technology industry through strict new information security regulations and investment in domestic suppliers.

The need for a domestic producer of high-performance server processors has also been driven by US export restrictions to China—in 2015, the administration of President Barack Obama blocked a sale of Intel Xeon processors for China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer over concerns that the sale would aid China's nuclear weapons program. Export of high-performance processors to China have been restricted ever since, and the US government has also moved to prevent China from acquiring technology companies in the past over national security concerns.

Enlarge / A chip almost identical to AMD's EPYC processor has begun to appear in China. It's the result of an AMD joint venture with a Chinese government-owned investment group. (credit: AMD)

Thanks to a licensing deal with AMD and a complex joint-venture arrangement, the Chinese chip producer Chengdu Haiguang IC Design Co. (Hygon) is now producing x86-based server processors that are largely indistinguishable from AMD's EPYC processors—so close in design that Linux kernel developers had to do little in the way of patching to support the new processor family, called "Dhyana." The server chips are being manufactured for domestic use only—part of an effort to break China's dependence on foreign technology companies.

Since the Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency efforts to use implants in technology products to conduct foreign intelligence collection, China has been applying increasing pressure on US technology providers. The country hopes to bolster its own domestic technology industry through strict new information security regulations and investment in domestic suppliers.

The need for a domestic producer of high-performance server processors has also been driven by US export restrictions to China—in 2015, the administration of President Barack Obama blocked a sale of Intel Xeon processors for China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer over concerns that the sale would aid China's nuclear weapons program. Export of high-performance processors to China have been restricted ever since, and the US government has also moved to prevent China from acquiring technology companies in the past over national security concerns.

Enlarge / Xiaomi execs open the HK stock exchange. (credit: Xiaomi)

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi kicked off its initial public offering (IPO) today. The company debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the symbol "1810-HK," and with the Hong Kong market closed after a day of trading, the stock settled in at 16.80HKD ($2.14). This was down from Xiaomi's initial price of 17HKD, but it still values the company at around $50 billion, making Xiaomi the biggest tech IPO in around four years.

The $50 billion valuation means Xiaomi is now the third most-valuable publicly traded smartphone maker, behind Apple and Samsung, but it's still a far cry from the $100 billion target the company had earlier this year.

Xiaomi is a favorite for making value-focused phones that are cheap but good. Flagships from Xiaomi are often several hundred dollars cheaper than the competition, despite the similar specs. Xiaomi is also great at making cheap phones and iPhone clones, but it occasionally flexes its design muscles and delivers a unique-looking smartphone. The company has a huge product lineup outside of smartphones, including everything from robot vacuums to smart TVs to rice cookers.

Enlarge / They did what? (credit: Getty | Tim Clayton)

In May, a US delegation to the World Health Organization issued stunning trade and military threats in its opposition to a well-established and otherwise uncontroversial resolution encouraging breastfeeding, according to new reporting by The New York Times.

The hundreds of delegates in attendance expected an effortless approval of the resolution by the World Health Assembly, which is the decision-making body of WHO. The resolution simply put forth that mother’s milk is the healthiest option for infants and that countries should work to limit any misleading or inaccurate advertising by makers of breast-milk substitutes. It affirms a long-held position by the WHO and is backed by decades of research.

But more than a dozen participants from several countries—most requesting anonymity out of fear of US retaliation—told the Times that the American officials surprised health experts and fellow delegates alike by fiercely opposing the resolution. At first, the US delegates attempted to simply dilute the pro-breastmilk message, voiding language that called for governments to “protect, promote, and support breastfeeding” and limit promotion of competing baby food products that experts warn can be harmful. But when that failed, the US reportedly put the squeeze on countries backing the resolution by making aggressive trade and military threats—a move that further stunned the assembly.

Enlarge / Dolores can't abide a drop in HBO's quality. (credit: HBO)

AT&T has been the proud owner of HBO for less than a month, and it is already considering an overhaul that would see HBO produce more video that can compete for the attention of smartphone users. AT&T wants to boost revenue both in advertising and subscriptions, even if that means upending HBO's longtime strategy of producing a relatively small number of high-quality shows.

John Stankey, an AT&T executive who is now CEO of the company's WarnerMedia division, formed after last month's acquisition of Time Warner Inc., described his vision in an hourlong "town hall meeting" with 150 employees. Audio of the meeting was obtained by The New York Times.

"It's going to be a tough year," Stankey said, according to the Times article. "It's going to be a lot of work to alter and change direction a little bit."

Enlarge / The Y-shaped Navy Precision Optical Interferometer in northern Arizona can function like a telescope with a mirror 400 meters wide. (credit: Google Maps)

If Lowell Observatory’s Gerard van Belle gets his way, someday soon you’ll be watching an exoplanet cross the face of its star, hundreds of light-years from the Earth. He can’t show you that right now, but he should be able to when the new mirrors are installed at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer in northern Arizona. They're arriving now, and should soon start collecting starlight—and making it the highest-resolution optical telescope in the world.

Van Belle recently showed Ars around the gigantic instrument, which bears almost no resemblance to what a non-astronomer pictures when they hear the word “telescope." There are a couple of more traditional telescopes in dome-topped silos on site, including one built in 1920s in Ohio, where it spent the first few decades of its life.

Going big

The best way to improve imagery on these traditional scopes is to increase the diameter of the mirror catching light. But this has its limits—perfect mirrors can only be built so large.

Enlarge / Russia's President Vladimir Putin and former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin shake hands during a meeting at the Konstantin Palace. (credit: Mikhail MetzelTASS via Getty Images)

These are not the best of times for the Russian space industry. Due to budgetary reasons, Roscosmos has reduced the number of cosmonauts on the International Space Station from three to two. Because of technical problems with its rockets and cost pressure from SpaceX, the country's once-lucrative commercial launch industry is fading. And soon, conditions may worsen.

As soon as next year, the United States plans to stop paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Russia for Soyuz seats, because it is developing its own transport to the space station. And the European Space Agency has signaled that it will stop launching Russian Soyuz rockets from its French Guiana-based spaceport in the early 2020s.

Russian space editor Andrei Borisov has captured the fading zeitgeist of the Russian space program in a lengthy article on the new leader of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and the changes he has proposed. "The 'Russian Space' Rogozin is trying to create reminds one of the Dark Ages in Europe," Borisov writes on Lenta.Ru, where he serves as editor of science and technology. "In it, there is no place for modernization, there is only the mission of survival."