Took AMD seven years of Zen to get 20 - 25 percent of laptop

ARM's CEO, Rene Haas, is extremely optimistic, claiming that ARM will capture 50 percent of the PC market share within five years. It has been five years since ARM introduced the Cortex X1, which, apart from the Qualcomm 8CX Gen 3, has not made a significant impact on the market.

ARM’s journey towards competing with PCs started in late 2017 with the Snapdragon 835, a CPU made for phones that was able to run Windows in a fanless, always-connected PC.

In 2018, ARM compared its performance increase to the Hercules Cortex X1, which was supposed to outperform the Core i5 Cascade Lake 10th generation core, but it didn't. The only Cortex X1-based PC ever shipped available in Q1 2022 was the Snapdragon 8CX Gen 3. There is a loud rumor about exclusivity that might be preventing others from entering the Windows on PC battle, at least for the next few quarters.

The Snapdragon X Elite is expected to increase ARM's market share, and excitement is certainly high as it brings a new dynamic to the market. It has always been up to Microsoft to create a decent ARM-based OS and up to hardware manufacturers to produce high-performance parts. Still, ARM and Qualcomm are not exactly in harmony these days as ARM believes it can do well with its own Cortex roadmap while Qualcomm believes that Nuvia based core inside Snapdragon Elite is the way forward. 

History lesson

It took AMD seven years to achieve a market share of over 30 percent in the data center market, despite their initial hope of achieving this within two years. AMD's market share in the notebook market peaked at 24 percent in Q2 2022 and then dropped to 19.3 percent in Q1 2024, due to data center wafer prioritization.

AMD’s last few mobile generations are quite competitive and good, and the AMD 8040 Hawk Point is a highly competitive product, but it was just hard to find. Bringing a product to market and winning new and significant design slots is challenging.

AMD's success is largely due to the fact that Intel was stuck at 14nm and unable to move to 10nm and below. The reality in the market today is different. Intel shipped 8 million Intel 4 chips and promises to deliver 40 million more AIPCs before the end of the year. Lunar Lake, based on 3nm N3B, is announced to be shipping in Q3 2024, and it is the first PC manufacturer to move to 3nm after Apple.

Furthermore, it appears that Intel is on track with its Intel 20A and 18A, and Lunar Lake looks like the greatest revamp in the history of mobile PC processors.

Let’s come back in 2029 and see how this aged.

It is called Apple Intelligence

The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple is trying to hide its long-standing lagging in the AI race by pretending to have invented it.

The Tame Apple Press has been getting moist about Jobs’ Mob finally getting around to offering AI updates during its worldwide developers' conference.  But amusingly it seems Apple has come up with a solution as to why it is so late to the game.

Apparently, Apple is not going to use the sort of AI promoted by the rest of the world. It has been working on something so advanced, super, cool, and high-tech that it will be called Apple Intelligence or AI for short.  So when Apple talks about AI it is not talking about the same AI that the rest of you riffraff. It is talking about its own patent pending Apple intelligence which could be good, bad, or as thick as pig shit.

This idea was brought to you by the same marketing people who thought it would be a good idea to crush all of humanities, culture, and art into a flat, soulless package in an iPad advert.  

Apparently, Apple Intelligence will be available in new versions of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems. The good thing about Apple Intelligence is that you do not have to provide a new product or even true AI.  All you have to do is use the term to apply to Apple's in-house tools such as message writing, photo editing, and summarising texts. If anyone kicks up a stink, then you can backtrack and say these are not AI products but Apple intelligence products.

Meanwhile, the Tame Apple Press can say: “It's entirely unsurprising that Apple is choosing a unique brand to call its artificial intelligence systems.”

Has 88 per cent of the market

GPU maker Nvidia is continuing to grow its market share according to the latest figures by number crunchers at Jon Peddie Research.

The figures indicate that Nvidia has had a remarkable beginning to 2024. In just one quarter, the GPU leader has increased its market share by eight per cent, reaching a total of 88 per cent.

This increase has reduced AMD's share by seven per cent, bringing it down to 19 per cent overall.

Intel's share has diminished to such an extent that Jon Peddie Research could not quantify it.

Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, commented that the GPU market has not appeared "normal" since the 2007 recession. Subsequent events, including the cryptocurrency surge and the COVID pandemic, have disrupted traditional market trends.

Typically, GPU sales dip in the first quarter of the year, but the rise of AI seems to have altered this pattern permanently.

Consequently, one might anticipate a downturn in the second quarter of 2024, which is usually a slower period. However, all manufacturers are forecasting growth, primarily due to the demand for AI training systems by large-scale data centres.

While AI training requires GPUs, this need could divert resources from the gaming sector. Therefore, for the second quarter, a steady or slightly reduced result is expected for gaming graphics cards, alongside a continued rise in shipments of GPUs for AI training. The new standard appears to be a lack of predictability.

With Nvidia's firm hold on the AI market, it may continue to enjoy an increased market share for the foreseeable future, unless competitors like AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm can collaborate to challenge its dominance.

Maybe that ink was too expensive

The maker of printer ink, which is more expensive than gold, HP, has noted that the  number of pages being printed at home and in the office is decreasing.

Speaking at Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference recently, HP's leader Enrique Lores recognised the difficulties faced by the printing sector, noting that the volume of printed pages has fallen by a fifth since the Covid outbreak.

Lores told the gathered throngs: "In the office environment, it's clear that the quantity of printed pages is less than before the pandemic. This is largely due to what we refer to as hybrid work. With fewer people in the office each day, the number of pages printed has decreased.

"I refer to pages as an indicator because what happens with page volumes ultimately affects device sales. Before the pandemic, we predicted a 20 per cent decrease in printing. Looking at the current numbers, that's roughly the situation we find ourselves in."

Lores said that during the pandemic the number of printed pages went up, but since then, the number has been on the decline." However, he stated that these levels were anticipated.

The industrial customer segment has been "affected over the past two or three years by a decrease in capital investments." Still, there are signs of recovery, with these customers printing more labels and packaging.

HP’s comments mirrored similar research by IDC which indicated that approximately 450 billion fewer pages were printed globally in homes and offices in 2020 compared to the year before the pandemic, representing a 19 per cent drop. This trend has only accelerated a long-standing pattern.

HP has endeavoured to maximise revenue from supplies and profits by encouraging more customers to subscribe and selling printers with pre-loaded ink.

Lores mentioned that HP predicts printer hardware sales will continue falling by the low to middle single digits. This trend is exacerbated by customers using their printers for more extended periods.

"We're beginning to notice that as hardware sales drop, the lifespan of printers is being extended. We're attempting to determine precisely how significant this extension is," he said to the attendees.

Life support about to be switched off

A survey of company networks has revealed that here are a lot of Linux boxes out there which should be put out to pasture.

Lansweeper's scans of its customers' networks have revealed many Linux machines nearing the end of their lifecycle, with no straightforward upgrade path.

Lansweeper, a Belgian corporate network scanner provider, regularly gathers and shares user statistics. This year's report indicates that while one-third of its users' Linux machines are running Ubuntu, CentOS Linux takes second place with 26.05 per cent.

In 2020, Red Hat announced the early end of life for CentOS Linux 8, moving it from 2029 to the end of 2021. CentOS Linux 9 was cancelled, and CentOS Linux 8 has been discontinued, leaving only CentOS Linux 7, which is approaching its end of life at the end of June. After this month, there will be no further updates. It's crucial to act swiftly to ensure the security and stability of your network.

Red Hat offers assistance migrating to RHEL, including a free tool to change the package source for boxes. However, RHEL 7 will enter what Red Hat calls "the end of its maintenance support 2 phase" on the same day. RHEL 7 isn't at the end of life yet, but additional fees for "Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS)" will be required to continue receiving security updates.

Lansweeper is optimistic, stating: "Assuming most of the CentOS devices will migrate to RHEL, we can comfortably expect RHEL to take over first place from Ubuntu soon."

 RHEL is already present on 20 per cent of the machines scanned by Lansweeper, with Rocky Linux at 1.5 per cent.

JavaScript still the most popular

The latest Developer Nation survey by SlashData shows that Rust is the fastest-growing programming language, with its developer community doubling in size over the past two years.

Despite the rapid growth of other languages, JavaScript continues to hold its ground as the most popular language, boasting a staggering 25.2 million active developers, according to the Developer Nation survey.

The latest Developer Nation survey by SlashData reveals that the Rust community has grown from two million users in early 2022 to four million in early 2024, with a 33 per cent increase in the last year alone.

The first quarter report of 2024 reveals that Rust's popularity is not just due to its growing community but also due to its reputation as a memory-safe language that delivers excellent performance. This, coupled with increasing cybersecurity concerns, could potentially lead to an even larger increase in its user base.

JavaScript's leading position seems secure for the foreseeable future. Its developer base has grown by four million in the past year, matching the overall global developer population growth rate.

JavaScript's popularity is sustained by its broad application in all types of development projects. At least a quarter of developers in every project type use it. JavaScript is even widely used in areas not typically associated with it, like on-device coding for IoT projects.

Python has made significant strides, surpassing Java as the second most popular language, thanks to the surge in interest in machine learning and AI. As of the first quarter of 2024, Python boasts 18.2 million developers, slightly ahead of Java's 17.7 million.

Over the past year, Python has gained more than 2.1 million new developers, while Java's growth was limited to 1.2 million. C++ follows Java with a community of 11.4 million developers, with C# and PHP close behind. The smallest communities are seen in languages like Objective-C, Ruby, and Lua. Meanwhile, the Go language has seen a 10% increase in its developer base over the past year, having grown by 5Y% from three million in early 2022 to 4.7 million in early 2024.

TNS analyst Lawrence Hecht said that besides Rust, Go, and JavaScript, other major programming languages have grown slower than the developer population, which has seen a 39 per cent increase in the last two years.

The council warned it would not work

A catastrophic IT failure of an Oracle IT project led Birmingham City Council, Europe's largest local authority, to "declare itself in financial distress."

The costs of an Oracle project soared from $25 million to about $125.5 million, leading to a government inquiry into the mess.

Computer Weekly's investigation suggests that the programme board and its manager were determined to launch the system in April 2022 "regardless of the state of the build, the level of testing undertaken and challenges faced by those working on the programme."

Notes from one manager "reveal concerns that the programme manager and steering committee could not be swayed, which meant the system went live despite having known flaws."

The magazine has viewed notes from a BCC manager pointing out several inconsistencies in the Birmingham City Council report to the cabinet published in June 2023, 14 months after the Oracle system was implemented.

The report acknowledged that some vital components of the Oracle system were not working correctly, affecting daily operations. The manager's remarks indicate that this defect in the Oracle software's deployment was known before the system became operational in April 2022.

An insider at Birmingham City Council, deeply involved in the project, informed Computer Weekly that the system was launched "despite all the warnings telling them it wouldn't work."

Since its implementation, the Oracle system has significantly disrupted the council's financial data, leaving them with a murky understanding of their financial situation.

 By January 2023, Birmingham City Council was unable to provide an accurate statement of its expenditures and budget for the upcoming financial year. The insider's comment paints a grim picture: "There's no way that we could do our year-end accounts because the system didn't work."

A June 2023 cabinet report "stated that due to problems with the council's bank reconciliation system, many transactions had to be manually assigned to accounts instead of being processed automatically by the Oracle system," the article states.

Computer Weekly has accessed a 2019 presentation showing that the council knew Oracle's standard bank reconciliation system "did not handle mixed debtor/non-debtor bank files. The proposed solution was either extensive manual intervention or a platform as a service (PaaS) from Evosys, the Oracle implementation partner hired by BCC to develop the new IT system."

Creating new Zero-days

Security Boffins have hacked into more than half of their test websites using self-coordinating teams of GPT-4 bots that could create new bots as needed.

This was achieved using unknown 'zero day' exploits that had not been identified before.

Earlier, researchers Richard Fang, Rohan Bindu, Akul Gupta, Daniel Kang made a startling revelation GPT-4 bots could autonomously discover and exploit known security flaws, also known as one-day or N-day vulnerabilities. This means that even issues that are known but not yet fixed are not safe from its reach. When given the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list, GPT-4 was able to exploit a staggering 87 per cent of the critical-severity CVEs on its own.

More recently, the same researchers have reported that they can now hack unknown vulnerabilities, called zero-day vulnerabilities, using a team of self-replicating Large Language Model (LLM) agents. They used a method called Hierarchical Planning with Task-Specific Agents (HPTSA).

Instead of one LLM agent tackling many complex tasks, HPTSA employs a "planning agent" to oversee the process and initiate multiple "subagents," each with a specific task. Like a manager and their team, the planning agent coordinates the entire operation, assigning tasks to each "expert subagent" to reduce the burden on any single agent.

This approach is akin to the one used by Cognition Labs with its Devin AI software development team. They plan a project, determine the necessary specialists, and then manage the project to completion while creating specialist 'employees' to handle specific tasks as needed.

In tests against 15 real-world web vulnerabilities, HPTSA proved 550 per cent more effective than a single LLM at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities, successfully hacking 8 out of 15 zero-day vulnerabilities. In contrast, a solo LLM agent could only hack 3 out of the 15 vulnerabilities.

Concerns exist that such models could be used for malicious attacks on websites and networks. Daniel Kang, one of the researchers and the author of the white paper, pointed out that GPT-4, in chatbot mode, is "insufficient for understanding LLM capabilities" and cannot hack on its own.

When asked if it could exploit zero-days, ChatGPT responded, "No, I am not capable of exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. My purpose is to provide information and assistance within ethical and legal boundaries," and recommended consulting a cybersecurity professional.

Computex 2024: 7-inch AMOLED FHD 120Hz screen, Ryzen 7 8840U, and more

Zotac came to the Computex 2024 show with a rather big surprise, the new Zotac Zone handheld gaming console, which should be ready to launch in Q3 2024.

While Zotac is still hammering out all the details, it did show the prototype console with all the bells and whistles, and we now have a pretty good idea of what to expect from it. The Zotac Gaming Zone, as it will be called, will be powered by AMD's Hawk Point Ryzen 7 8840U APU, paired up with 16GB or more of LPDDR5X-7500 RAM, and up to 512GB of SSD storage in a standard M.2 2280 slot.

Zotac built the Gaming Zone around a 7-inch AMOLED screen with 1080p resolution, 800 nits of brightness, and 120Hz refresh rate, which is perfect for a handheld gaming device. Zotac aims the device to be under 700g and equip it with a 48.5Wh battery. Zotac will also launch a couple of accessories, including its own docking station, and cases. Although not carved in stone, the Zotac Gaming Zone should launch in Q3 2024, a price targetting $700-800.

Computex 2024: Based on Intel's Meteor Lake

Cooler Master brought plenty of new PC cases and gaming peripherals to the Computex 2024 show, but it also unveiled a small desktop PC based on Intel's Meteor Lake, called the Cooler Master Mini X.

With support for up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 Meteor Lake CPU, the Cooler Master Mini X was spotted by Cowcotland. Pictures show a rather neat mini PC case with proprietary vapor chamber cooling technology. This, according to Cooler Master, allows the Core Ultra 5 125H or the Core Ultra 7 155H to run at up to 45W, rather than 28W. The demo unit even ran the CPU at up to 75W without the fan hitting full speed.

The rest of the specifications included support for up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 memory, an M.2 SSD, and integrated WiFi 6 connectivity. It also gets 2.5Gb ethernet, a couple of HDMI outputs, and plenty of USB ports, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports.

Unfortunately, Cooler Master is still not ready to talk about the release date or the price.