Month: November 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Jaiz Anuar)

The Biden administration is studying 2,786 megahertz of spectrum that could be reallocated for purposes including wireless broadband networks, satellites, and drones, the White House said today. Some of the spectrum bands were already being investigated by federal agencies, though inclusion in the updated national strategy may speed up those processes.

"These spectrum bands are a mix of Federal and shared Federal/non-Federal bands—with an emphasis on mid-band frequencies," the new National Spectrum Strategy says. The bands "will be studied for a variety of uses, including terrestrial wireless broadband, innovative space services, and unmanned aviation and other autonomous vehicle operations."

The plan details "five spectrum bands meriting in-depth study in the near term," saying they could be useful for "expanded governmental and non-governmental use for an array of advanced, next-generation applications and services."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Jaiz Anuar)

The Biden administration is studying 2,786 megahertz of spectrum that could be reallocated for purposes including wireless broadband networks, satellites, and drones, the White House said today. Some of the spectrum bands were already being investigated by federal agencies, though inclusion in the updated national strategy may speed up those processes.

"These spectrum bands are a mix of Federal and shared Federal/non-Federal bands—with an emphasis on mid-band frequencies," the new National Spectrum Strategy says. The bands "will be studied for a variety of uses, including terrestrial wireless broadband, innovative space services, and unmanned aviation and other autonomous vehicle operations."

The plan details "five spectrum bands meriting in-depth study in the near term," saying they could be useful for "expanded governmental and non-governmental use for an array of advanced, next-generation applications and services."

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Google's default search deal with Apple is worth so much to the search giant that Google pays 36 percent of its search advertising revenue from Safari to keep its search engine set as the default in Apple's browser, Bloomberg reported.

Google and Apple objected to making this key detail public from their long-running default search deal. But their closely held secret came out on Monday during testimony from Google's main economics expert, Kevin Murphy, during the Department of Justice's monopoly trial examining Google's search business.

"Probably the biggest slip of the entire trial," Big Tech on Trial, an account dedicated to providing updates from the Google trial, posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Google's default search deal with Apple is worth so much to the search giant that Google pays 36 percent of its search advertising revenue from Safari to keep its search engine set as the default in Apple's browser, Bloomberg reported.

Google and Apple objected to making this key detail public from their long-running default search deal. But their closely held secret came out on Monday during testimony from Google's main economics expert, Kevin Murphy, during the Department of Justice's monopoly trial examining Google's search business.

"Probably the biggest slip of the entire trial," Big Tech on Trial, an account dedicated to providing updates from the Google trial, posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Enlarge / A close-up view of the Mira orbiting vehicle. (credit: Impulse Space)

SpaceX launched its ninth "Transporter" mission on Saturday from California, carrying dozens of small- and medium-sized satellites into low-Earth orbit.

The upside of these launches for customers is that they can rely on regular, low-cost access to space aboard the reliable Falcon 9 rocket. The downside is that the satellites are all released into a basic orbit, and if they want to reach a different altitude or inclination, they have to bring their own propulsion along for the ride.

This has led to the advent of "last mile" services from various companies offering small add-on spacecraft capable of providing in-space propulsion. One of the most intriguing of these is Impulse Space, a company founded two years ago by rocket scientist Tom Mueller, who was a founding employee at SpaceX before leaving in 2020.

Enlarge / The Nvidia H200 GPU covered with a fanciful blue explosion that figuratively represents raw compute power bursting forth in a glowing flurry. (credit: Nvidia | Benj Edwards)

On Monday, Nvidia announced the HGX H200 Tensor Core GPU, which utilizes the Hopper architecture to accelerate AI applications. It's a follow-up of the H100 GPU, released last year and previously Nvidia's most powerful AI GPU chip. If widely deployed, it could lead to far more powerful AI models—and faster response times for existing ones like ChatGPT—in the near future.

According to experts, lack of computing power (often called "compute") has been a major bottleneck of AI progress this past year, hindering deployments of existing AI models and slowing the development of new ones. Shortages of powerful GPUs that accelerate AI models are largely to blame. One way to alleviate the compute bottleneck is to make more chips, but you can also make AI chips more powerful. That second approach may make the H200 an attractive product for cloud providers.

What's the H200 good for? Despite the "G" in the "GPU" name, data center GPUs like this typically aren't for graphics. GPUs are ideal for AI applications because they perform vast numbers of parallel matrix multiplications, which are necessary for neural networks to function. They are essential in the training portion of building an AI model and the "inference" portion, where people feed inputs into an AI model and it returns results.

Enlarge / The Tesla Cybertruck. (credit: Tesla)

With Tesla's first Cybertruck deliveries expected later this month, a now-deleted update to the electric carmaker's terms of service said the firm could sue customers for $50,000 or more if they resell during the first year of ownership without first getting written permission from Tesla. The provision seemed designed to deter scalping for a car expected to be available only in limited quantities after CEO Elon Musk's statement that Tesla "dug our own grave with the Cybertruck."

But the clause was deleted from Tesla's terms just days after people noticed its appearance. It was still in the Tesla Motor Vehicle Order Agreement Terms & Conditions earlier today, but was removed from the document while we worked on this article. The document still has a more general rule against quick resales but without the lawsuit threat.

Tesla may have decided to remove the clause after several news reports spread word of the change over the weekend. It's not clear whether the company will bring the clause back in a modified form. We contacted Tesla and will update this article if we get a response.

Enlarge (credit: AMD)

The Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU series was AMD’s first to include a small integrated GPU by default to make the chips more appealing for budget and business desktops where a dedicated GPU would be overkill. These bare-bones GPUs won't play many games, as we found when we tested them, but they're a reliable way to light up a couple of monitors.

AMD said at the time that it also planned to continue making desktop APUs, the company's longstanding terminology for a Ryzen CPU paired with a more powerful integrated Radeon GPU, but we haven't heard anything about a new Ryzen desktop APU since. That could be changing early next year, according to the release notes for a slew of BIOS updates for Gigabyte motherboards. According to Gigabyte, a new series of APUs for socket AM5 motherboards will be released starting in January 2024, and they'll be compatible with any current socket AM5 motherboard running version 1.1.0.0 or newer of AMD's AGESA firmware.

Tom's Hardware has a breakdown of the Ryzen 8000G series, purportedly gleaned from this new AGESA version. According to this, the chips will be named the Ryzen 8000G series, and they'll use the same "Phoenix" silicon that AMD uses in its Ryzen 7040U laptop processors and the Ryzen Z1 series of chips for gaming handhelds.