Month: September 2022

Enlarge / A second-generation Epyc server chip from AMD, one that may have been running 2002-era Linux code slowing it down. (credit: Getty Images)

AMD has come a long way since 2002, but the Linux kernel still treats modern Threadrippers like Athlon-era systems—at least in one potentially lag-inducing respect.

AMD engineer Prateek Nayak recently submitted a patch to Linux's processor idle drivers that would "skip dummy wait for processors based on the Zen microarchitecture." When ACPI support was added to the Linux kernel in 2002—written by Andy Grover, committed by Linus Torvalds—it included a "dummy wait op." The system essentially read data with no purpose other than delaying the next instruction until the CPU could fully stop with the STPCLK# command. This allowed for some power saving and compatibility during the early days of ACPI implementation when some chipsets wouldn't move to an idle state when one would expect it.

But today's Zen-based AMD chips don't need this workaround, and, as Nayak writes, it's hurting them, at least in specific workloads on Linux. Testing with instruction-based sampling (IBS) workloads shows that "a significant amount of time is spent in the dummy op, which incorrectly gets accounted as C-State residency." The CPU, seeing all this low-effort dummy work, can push into deeper, slower C-State, which then makes the CPU take longer to "wake up," especially on jobs that require lots of switching between busy and idle states.

Enlarge / Google's Matt Brittin, president of EMEA Business and Operations, speaks at the Web Summit on November 9, 2017, in Lisbon, Portugal. (credit: Getty Images | Horacio Villalobos )

Big Tech companies shouldn't have to pay for Internet service providers' network-upgrade costs, a Google executive said today amid a push in Europe to have tech companies pay for broadband expansions and improvements.

"Introducing a sender-pays principle is not a new idea, and would upend many of the principles of the open Internet. These arguments are similar to those we heard ten or more years ago and we have not seen new data that changes the situation," said Matt Brittin, president of Google's EMEA business and operations.

Brittin spoke today in a keynote panel at the Tech and Politics Forum presented by Financial Times and telecom lobby group ETNO. Google provided Ars with a copy of his prepared remarks.

Enlarge / It's baaaaaaack! (credit: ESA / ReedPOP)

The annual gaming expo once known as E3 is finally crawling toward a rebirth as a physical event. While information about the next iteration of E3 remains scarce, this week's big news suggests a crucial change in how the decades-old event will work: a split between audience types.

The expo's new showrunners at ReedPOP, an agency responsible for regional gaming and comic expos like PAX, EGX, and Star Wars Celebration, confirmed on Monday that E3 2023 has locked down its location and date range. Both should sound familiar to E3 fans: a week-long span in mid-June (specifically, June 13–16) at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

This time around, E3 will better resemble overseas game-industry showcases like Gamescom and Tokyo Games Show. The event's first two days, dubbed "E3 Business Days," will exclusively host "registered industry personnel," which ReedPOP says will include game makers, distributors, licensors, and members of the press. E3 2023's third day will function as a hybrid industry/public day, and the fourth will be exclusively open to public ticket purchases. During this two-day span of "E3 Gamer Days," the event will host a theater full of "deep-dive looks at highly anticipated titles."

Enlarge (credit: gwengoat | Getty Images)

The Ukrainian government on Monday warned that the Kremlin is planning to carry out “massive cyberattacks” targeting power grids and other critical infrastructure in Ukraine and in the territories of its allies.

“By the cyberattacks, the enemy will try to increase the effect of missile strikes on electricity supply facilities, primarily in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine,” an advisory warned. “The occupying command is convinced that this will slow down the offensive operations of the Ukrainian Defence Forces.”

Monday’s advisory alluded to two cyberattacks the Russian government carried out—first in 2015 and then almost exactly one year later—that deliberately left Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest months of the year. The attacks were seen as a proof-of-concept and test ground of sorts for disrupting Ukraine’s power supply.

Enlarge (credit: Javier Zayas Photography)

In the world of renewables, lithium-ion batteries are storage kings, making up around 70 percent of electric vehicle (EV) and 90 percent of grid batteries around the globe. As such, they’re becoming increasingly important in a world that’s trying to reduce its carbon emissions by electrifying homes, cars, and more. (Not that mining for lithium or the various rare earth metals in battery production is carbon-free.)

However, there are some problems with lithium-ion batteries, according to a recent Atlantic Council report. For one, existing supply chains for the minerals used for batteries are likely to be pushed to their limits as the world transitions to renewable energy.

But there are also geopolitical factors that could disrupt these supply chains. For instance, many of the minerals tied to the production of these batteries are either obtained or processed in Russia and China. For the United States, this might mean that the security of the supply chains for these batteries is put at risk by geopolitical conflicts. For instance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw the price of nickel—a core component in EV batteries—skyrocket.