"Earlier this week Apple announced their new, ARM-based 'Apple Silicon' machines to the world in a slick marketing event that had many of us reaching for our credit cards," writes Mike Croucher, technical evangelist at The Numerical Algorithms Group.

"Simultaneously, The Numerical Algorithms Group announced that they had ported their Fortran Compiler to the new platform. At the time of writing this is the only Fortran compiler publicly available for Apple Silicon although that will likely change soon as open source Fortran compilers get updated."

An anonymous Slashdot reader offers this analysis: Apple Silicon currently has no open source Fortran compiler and Apple themselves are one of the few silicon manufacturers who don't have their own Fortran compiler. You could be forgiven for thinking that this doesn't matter to most users... if it wasn't for the fact that sizeable percentages of foundational data science platforms such as R and SciPy are written in Fortran.
Croucher argues that "More modern systems, such as R, make direct use of a lot of this code because it is highly performant and, perhaps more importantly, has been battle tested in production for decades. Numerical computing is hard (even when all of your instincts suggest otherwise) and when someone demonstrably does it right, it makes good sense to reuse rather than reinvent..."

"The community needs and will demand open source (or at least free) Fortran compilers if data scientists are ever going to realise the full potential of Apple's new hardware and I have no doubt that these are on the way. Other major silicon providers (e.g. Intel, AMD, NEC and NVIDIA/PGI) have their own Fortran compiler that co-exist with the open ones. Perhaps Apple should join the club..."

The first benchmark of Apple's M1 chip shows that the multi-core performance of the new MacBook Air with 8GB RAM beats out all of the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro models, including the 10th-generation high-end 2.4GHz Intel Core i9 model. "That high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 1096 and a multi-core score of 6870," reports MacRumors. The MacBook Air with M1 chip and 8GB RAM features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. From the report: Though the M1 chip is outperforming the 16-inch MacBook Pro models when it comes to raw CPU benchmarks, the 16-inch MacBook Pro likely offers better performance in other areas such as the GPU as those models have high-power discrete GPUs. It's worth noting that there are likely to be some performance differences between the MacBook Pro and the "MacBook Air" even though they're using the same M1 chip because the "MacBook Air" has a fanless design and the MacBook Pro has an new Apple-designed cooling system. There's also a benchmark for the Mac mini, though, and it has about the same scores. The "Mac mini" with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067.

There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the "MacBook Air," it has a 3.2GHz base frequency. A few other "MacBook Air" benchmarks have surfaced too with similar scores, and the full list is available on Geekbench. [...] When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the "MacBook Air" outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.

Apple on Thursday released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0), which is available to download now -- assuming you have a compatible Mac. From a report: Big Sur is one of the biggest updates to Apple's laptop and desktop software in years, featuring a top-to-bottom redesign of the interface, icons, and menu bar, a new control center UI borrowed from iOS, widgets (also borrowed from iOS), and a variety of other improvements (see here for the full list). It's such a big change that Apple is actually moving on from the OS X / OS 10 branding that it's been using for Macs for almost 20 years. Apple's also adding some new privacy-focused features, including better tracking information in Safari and new privacy data in the Mac App Store for any apps you download. ArsTechnica has published a comprehensive review of the new operating system. An excerpt from their conclusion: The Good
The bright, fresh visual style mostly looks pretty good.
The Control Center (and other changes to the upper-right section of the Menu Bar) are genuinely useful additions.
The Messages app finally catches up to its iOS/iPadOS counterpart, thanks to Catalyst.
The APFS version of Time Machine seems like an improvement, though we'll need to wait to see what its long-term reliability is like.
Aside from the old AFP file-sharing protocol and the Network Utility, Big Sur doesn't remove too many things or add many new security settings that will break apps. There may be some visual issues, but my experience has actually been that Apple breaks a lot fewer apps moving from Catalina to Big Sur than it did moving from Mojave to Catalina.

The Bad
A general reduction in contrast makes it harder to discern the difference between many buttons and controls at a glance.
If you want to fix any of these contrast issues in the Accessibility settings, it should be possible to increase contrast or reduce transparency in certain places without making it an all-or-nothing setting. Some of the new buttons and icons are nice. Some of them are less nice.
Big Sur on Apple Silicon Macs will give up the ability to run Windows in a virtual machine or on a separate partition, though Intel Macs can still do both things.

The Ugly
As usual, Apple is just a year or two more aggressive about dropping support for old Macs than I think they really need to be.

Gordon Mah Ung, writing at PC World: Let me just say it outloud, OK? Apple is full of it. I'm referring to Apple's claim that its fanless, Arm-based MacBook Air is "faster than 98 percent of PC laptops." Yes, you read that correctly: Apple officials literally claimed that the new MacBook Air using Apple's custom M1 chip is faster than 98 percent of all PC laptops sold this year. Typically, when a company makes such a claim, it publishes a benchmark, a performance test or actual details on what it's basing that marketing claim on. This to prevent lawyers from launching out of missile silos across the world. Apple's website restates the claim by stating: "M1 is faster than the chips in 98 percent of PC laptops sold in the past year." The site also includes a detail note that states: "Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM. Performance measured using select industry-standard benchmarks. PC configurations from publicly available sales data over the last 12 months. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect approximate performance of MacBook Pro."

So, not only does Apple not say what tests it's basing its claims on, it doesn't even say where it sources the comparable laptops. Does that mean the new fanless MacBook Air is faster than, say, Asus' stupidly fast Ryzen 4000 based, GeForce RTX 2060-based Zephyrus G14? Does it mean the MacBook Air is faster than Alienware's updated Area 51M? The answer, I'm going to guess is "no." Not at all. Is it faster than the miniLED-based MSI Creator 17? Probably not, either. And what is that "performance" claim hinged on? CPU performance? GPU performance? Performance running Windows? Is it using the same application running on both platforms? Is it experiential? Is this running Red Dead Redemption II or Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War? Is it running CyberLink's PowerDirector? Is it running Fortnite? While I have absolutely no idea what Apple is basing its claims on, I can tell you that I am 98 percent sure that any of the above laptops listed will wreck the MacBook Air doing any of the tasks I just named.

When Apple makes its claims, my guess is they are comparing the new M1 to Intel-based processors ranging from Atom to Celeron N to Core i3 and up, all with integrated graphics. But by not defining the word "performance," all this becomes just pure marketing spin. And is it really fair to compare a $999 MacBook to one that costs $150? Because $150 PCs are included in the 98 percent of laptops sold. Maybe Apple should compare its own $150 MacBook Air against a $150 Chromebook or Windows-based laptop. Of course, that would mean Apple would have to sell a product that most people can afford. I have no doubt the M1 will be impressive, but do I think it's going to compare to 8-cores of Ryzen 4000 performance or a GeForce RTX 2060? No.

Today, Apple showed off the first Macs powered by its new M1 CPU, delivering impressive performance and excellent battery life, however they won't come without any compromises. According to Engadget, citing Paul Gerhardt's tweet, "tech spec pages for the new machines reveal that none of them are compatible with external GPUs that connect via Thunderbolt." From the report: Only some people would require add-on oomph in any case, but Apple's support for external graphics cards gave it some extra gaming cachet and informed creative professionals their needs would continue to be met. Now, they'll have to wait and see if things change for higher-end models as Apple Silicon spreads throughout the company's PC lineup.

There's also been some focus on the fact that the 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 models only include two USB-C ports onboard instead of four, but whether or not you think that's enough ports, it's consistent with the cheaper Intel models it replaces. A more striking limitation is the one we've already noted, that the MBP is limited to 16GB of RAM -- if you think you'll need 32GB then you'll have to opt for an Intel-powered model.

At the end of Apple's big event today, where it launched three new Macs powered by the company's new M1 chip, the company had a surprise guest star: actor John Hodgman reprising his role as the PC guy from Apple's "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" commercials that ran in the mid-2000s. The Verge reports: In the short video, Hodgman's put-upon PC reacts to the announcement of Apple's new M1-powered Macs, complaining about the improved performance and battery life that the new chip purportedly offers on the updated Macs, compared to what PCs can do. (Absent is Justin Long's Mac character, who made up the other half of the ad spots.)

The original ads -- launched in 2006, just after Apple began its last major architecture transition to Intel chips -- echoed a similar style, with Long's character extolling the virtues of the Mac while the hapless PC character would argue that the Windows side of things was just as good. It's not clear whether Apple will be resurrecting the ad campaign for the new line of M1 Macs, but it was a cute way to end the announcement as the company sets off on its next era of laptops and desktops. You can watch the clip featuring PC guy here.

The chip expected to be at the core of the first Apple Silicon Mac -- the "A14X" -- may have been benchmarked just days before the next Apple event. From a report: The alleged CPU benchmarks for the "A14X" show a 1.80GHz processor capable of turbo-boosting to 3.10GHz marking this the first custom Apple Silicon to ever clock above 3GHz. It is an 8-core processor with big-little arrangement. The GPU results show 8GB of RAM will be included with the processor. The single-core benchmark for the "A14X" scored 1634 vs the A12Z at 1118. The A14 scored 1,583 points for single-core tests, which is expected as single-core results shouldn't change much between the regular and "X" models. The multi-core benchmark for the "A14X" scored 7220 vs the A12Z at 4657. The A14 scored 4198 for multi-core, which means the "A14X" delivers a marked increase in performance in the sorts of environments that the GeekBench test suite focuses on. The additional RAM and graphics capabilities boost this result much higher than the standard iPhone processor. For comparison, a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the Intel Core-i9 processor scores 1096 for single and 6869 for multi-core tests. This means the alleged "A14X" outperforms the existing MacBook Pro lineup by a notable margin.

MojoKid writes: AMD made bold claims when the company unveiled its new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series processors early last month. Statements like "historic IPC uplift" and "fastest for gamers" were waved about like flags of victory. However, as with most things in the computing world, independent testing is always the best way to validate claims. Today AMD lifted the embargo on 3rd party reviews and, in testing, AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs set a new performance bar virtually across the board, and one that Intel currently can't touch. There are four processors in the initial Ryzen 5000 series lineup, though it's a safe bet more will be coming later. The current entry point is the Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core / 8-thread processor, followed by the 8-core / 16-thread Ryzen 7 5800X, 12-core / 24 thread Ryzen 9 5900X, and the flagship 16-core / 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. All of these new CPUs are backwards compatible with AMD socket AM4 motherboards. In comparison to Zen 2, Zen 3 has a larger L1 branch target buffer and improved bandwidth through multiple parts of its pipeline with additional load/store flexibility. Where Zen 2 could handle 2 load and 1 store per cycle, Zen 3 can handle 3 load and 2 stores. All told, AMD is claiming an average 19% increase in IPC with Zen 3, which is a huge uplift gen-over-gen. Couple that IPC uplift with stronger multi-core scaling and a new unified L3 cache configuration, and Zen 3's performance looks great across a wide variety of workloads for both content creation and gaming especially. AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X will be priced at $799, $549, $449 and $299, respectively and should be on retail and etail shelves starting today.

Gaming hardware makers have been diversifying their laptops recently, and Razer is the latest to join that trend. From a report: The company is announcing the Razer Book 13 today, which it's calling a "hyper focused productivity laptop." It's not just a subtler version of a Blade laptop, either. The emphasis on productivity means Razer also strove to include a generous array of ports, as well as interesting lighting features that could help highlight keyboard shortcuts. The Book 13 is also the company's first Intel Evo-certified notebook, meaning it meets certain requirements for performance, battery life and wake time. As its name indicates, the Book 13 has a 13.4-inch IPS display that comes in touch or nontouch configurations. If you opt for the matte nontouch version, you'll only get Full HD+ resolution, while the touch models also come in UHD+ (3,840 x 2,400). The touchscreens are also covered in Gorilla Glass for better durability and you can add an anti-reflective coating to reduce glare. All configurations feature a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is new to Razer's family of laptops and lets you see more on the screen at once than older 16:9 devices.

The Book 13 also houses a 720p webcam in its slim bezels, and it's Windows Hello-compatible. There isn't a fingerprint scanner here, though. That's understandable -- Razer's already crammed a lot into the Book 13, which is impressive for a device thatâ(TM)s 0.6 inches thick and weighs 2.95 pounds. Plus, despite that sharp profile, the company managed to offer two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB-A socket (at USB 3.2 speeds), a microSD card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack and an HDMI 2.0 slot. [...] The slim, lightweight package is something Razer fans are already accustomed to, and they'll also appreciate some other familiar features. The most prominent of these is Razer Chroma integration which allows users to customize the colors of individual buttons on the keyboard. Starts at $1,199. Pre-order starts today, with shipping to be followed later this month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This weekend, Intel released preliminary information on its newest laptop part -- the Xe Max discrete GPU, which functions alongside and in tandem with Tiger Lake's integrated Iris Xe GPU. We first heard about Xe Max at Acer's Next 2020 launch event, where it was listed as a part of the upcoming Swift 3x laptop -- which will only be available in China. The new GPU will also be available in the Asus VivoBook Flip TP470 and the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1.

During an extended product briefing, Intel stressed to us that the Xe Max beats Nvidia's entry-level MX 350 chipset in just about every conceivable metric. In another year, this would have been exciting -- but the Xe Max is only slated to appear in systems that feature Tiger Lake processors, whose Iris Xe integrated GPUs already handily outperform the Nvidia MX 350 in both Intel's tests and our own. The confusion here largely springs from mainstream consumer expectations of a GPU versus what Intel's doing with the Xe Max. Our GPU tests largely revolve around gaming, using 3DMark's well-known benchmark suite, which includes gaming, fps-focused tests such as Time Spy and Night Raid. Intel's expectations for the Xe Max instead revolve, almost entirely, around content creation with a side of machine learning and video encoding.

Xe Max is, roughly speaking, the same 96 Execution Unit (EU) GPU to be found in the Tiger Lake i7-1185G7 CPU we've tested already this year -- the major difference, beyond not being on-die with the CPU, is a higher clock rate, dedicated RAM, and separate TDP budget. Tiger Lake's Iris Xe has a peak clock rate of 1.35GHz, and it shares the CPU's TDP constraints. Iris Xe Max has its own 25W TDP and a higher peak clock rate of 1.65GHz. It also has its own 4GiB of dedicated RAM -- though that RAM is the same LPDDR4X-4266 that Tiger Lake itself uses, which is something of a first for discrete graphics and might lead to better power efficiency.

More than 23,000 hacked databases have been made available for download on several hacking forums and Telegram channels in what threat intel analysts are calling the biggest leak of its kind. From a report: The database collection is said to have originated from Cit0Day.in, a private service advertised on hacking forums to other cybercriminals. Cit0day operated by collecting hacked databases and then providing access to usernames, emails, addresses, and even cleartext passwords to other hackers for a daily or monthly fee. Cybercriminals would then use the site to identify possible passwords for targeted users and then attempt to breach their accounts at other, more high-profile sites. The idea behind the site isn't unique, and Cit0Day could be considered a reincarnation of similar "data breach index" services such as LeakedSource and WeLeakInfo, both taken down by authorities in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

According to The Oregonian, Intel is "openly flirting with the notion of moving leading-edge production from Oregon to Asia and hiring one of its top rivals to make Intel's most advanced chips." The decision is likely in January. From the report: It's a momentous choice that follows a string of manufacturing setbacks at the Ronler Acres campus near Hillsboro Stadium, failures that have cost Intel its cherished leadership in semiconductor technology -- perhaps forever. Outsourcing wouldn't shutter Intel's Oregon factories or close down its Hillsboro research labs. The company says it's committed to maintaining its advanced research and retaining internal production capacity. It's continuing a massive expansion of its D1X factory in Hillsboro.

In time, though, Oregon's central role in Intel's technology would almost surely erode if the company cedes manufacturing leadership to rivals overseas. Chip industry analyst Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research believes that transition could render Oregon "irrelevant" if Intel gradually shifts away from integrated research and manufacturing. "Companies say they're making a transition. What they find is they're stepping off a cliff," Hutcheson said. "They're going down a road that you can't easily go back on."

CEO Bob Swan told Wall Street analysts on a conference call earlier this month that it may outsource advanced production to its rivals -- he named Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., specifically -- to ensure "a predictable cadence of leadership products." Swan told investors to expect a decision by late January. Intel already outsources as much as a fifth of its production but has kept the leading edge in Oregon. And whatever it decides on outsourcing, Swan said Intel will maintain its advanced research -- science performed in Hillsboro -- which he described as "a powerful force in creating future differentiation for our products." On this month's analyst call, Swan said Intel believes it can have it both ways -- sending advanced production overseas while retaining internal production for components and older products that don't require the most sophisticated technology. And Swan said Intel believes it could restore advanced manufacturing to its own factories sometime in the future, if it chooses to.

SiFive today announced it is creating a platform for Linux-based personal computers based on RISC-V processors. VentureBeat reports: Assuming customers adopt the processors and use them in PCs, the move might be part of a plan to create Linux-based PCs that use royalty-free processors. This could be seen as a challenge to computers based on designs from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple, or Arm, but giants of the industry don't have to cower just yet. The San Mateo, California-based company unveiled HiFive Unmatched, a development design for a Linux-based PC that uses its RISC-V processors. At the moment, these development PCs are early alternatives, most likely targeted at hobbyists and engineers who may snap them up when they become available in the fourth quarter for $665.

The SiFive HiFive Unmatched board will have a SiFive processor, dubbed the SiFive FU740 SoC, a 5-core processor with four SiFive U74 cores and one SiFive S7 core. The U-series cores are Linux-based 64-bit application processor cores based on RISC-V. These cores can be mixed and matched with other SiFive cores, such as the SiFive FU740. These components are all leveraging SiFive's existing intellectual property portfolio. The HiFive Unmatched board comes in the mini-ITX standard form factor to make it easy to build a RISC-V PC. SiFive also added some standard industry connectors -- ATX power supplies, PCI-Express expansion, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB ports are present on a single-board RISC-V development system.

The HiFive Unmatched board includes 8GB of DDR4 memory, 32MB of QSPI flash memory, and a microSD card slot on the motherboard. For debugging and monitoring, developers can access the console output of the board through the built-in microUSB type-B connector. Developers can expand it using PCI-Express slots, including both a PCIe general-purpose slot (PCIe Gen 3 x8) for graphics, FPGAs, or other accelerators and M.2 slots for NVME storage (PCIe Gen 3 x4) and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules (PCIe Gen 3 x1). There are four USB 3.2 Gen 1 type-A ports on the rear, next to the Gigabit Ethernet port, making it easy to connect peripherals. The system will ship with a bootable SD card that includes Linux and popular system developer packages, with updates available for download from SiFive.com. It will be available for preorders soon.
For some more context: Could RISC-V processors compete with Intel, ARM, and AMD?

As expected, Apple has announced a third fall media event, "One More Thing," focused on the first Mac computers with ARM technology-based Apple Silicon processors. The event will take place on November 10, 2020, and will be streamed from the company's Apple Park headquarters starting at 10:00a.m. Pacific Time. From a report: "One More Thing" was originally a phrase used at media events by Apple's late CEO Steve Jobs, who used it to generate audience enthusiasm for a show-closing announcement. [...] Apple flagged the new Mac and macOS releases for a late 2020 release during its all-digital Worldwide Developers Conference in June. macOS 11, also known as Big Sur, is the first Mac operating system to support both Intel CPUs and new "Apple Silicon" processors. These chips have not yet been officially branded, but will rely upon the same ARM instruction sets and comparatively low power consumption designs that have been used in iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs for years.

"As promised, SiFive has unveiled a new computer featuring the company's SiFive FU740 processor based on RISC-V architecture," reports Liliputing: The company, which has been making RISC-V chips for several years, is positioning its new SiFive HiFive Unmatched computer as a professional development board for those interested in working with RISC-V. But unlike the company's other HiFive boards, the new Unmatched model is designed so that it can be easily integrated into a standard PC...

SiFive says the system can support GNU/Linux distributions including Yocto, Debian, and Fedora.
"SiFive is releasing the HiFive Unleashed in an effort to afford developers the ability to build RISC-V based systems, using readily available, off-the-shelf parts," explains Forbes: SiFive says it built the board to address the market need for easily accessible RISC-V hardware to further advance development of new platforms, products, and software using the royalty-free ISA...

A short video demo shows the HiFive Unmatched installed in a common mid-tower PC chassis, running the included Linux distro, with an AMD Radeon graphics card pushing the pixels. In the video, the HiFive Unmatched is compiling an application and is shown browsing the web and opening a PDF. SiFive also notes that video playback is accelerated in hardware with the included version of Linux.
"At the moment, these development PCs are early alternatives, most likely targeted at hobbyists and engineers who may snap them up when they become available in the fourth quarter for $665," notes VentureBeat.

But they add that "While it's still early days, it's not inconceivable that RISC-V processors could someday be alternatives to Intel-based PCs and PC processors." The startup has raised $190 million to date, and former Qualcomm executive Patrick Little recently joined SiFive as CEO. His task will be to establish the company's RISC-V processors as an alternative to ARM. This move comes in the wake of Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of the world's leading processor architecture.

If Little is also looking to challenge Intel and AMD in PCs, he'll have his work cut out for him. For starters, SiFive is currently focused on Linux-based PCs, not Microsoft Windows PCs. Secondly, SiFive wouldn't build these processors or computers on its own. Its customers — anyone brave enough to take on the PC giants — would have to do that.

"I wouldn't see this as SiFive moving out of the box. It's more like they're expanding their box," said Linley Group senior analyst Aakash Jani. "They're using their core architecture to enable other chip designers to build PCs, or whatever they plan to build."

"BDY electronics, a Chinese laptop manufacturer, has unveiled an all-new 13.3-inch laptop sporting Longsoon's new Dragon Core 3A4000 quad-core 14nm CPU," reports Tom's Hardware: The biggest feature of this laptop is the CPU, featuring Longsoon's latest 14nm quad-core 3A4000 CPU. Longsoon claims the CPU is 100% faster than the previous generation 3A3000 and is comparable in performance to AMD's "Excavator" cores used in the A8-7680 Godavari architecture.

Of course, this demonstrates how far behind Longsoon is from TSMC and Intel in performance, speed, and efficiency of its latest node. However, the chairman of Loongsoon Technologies, Hu Weiwu, says, "14nm and 28nm (for its GPU node) is enough for 90% of applications.," so it appears the company isn't too worried about catching up to the performance leaders like Intel and AMD.

Due to this laptop being in the Chinese market, Windows is not supported at all. It only runs Chinese "domestic operating systems" that are typically modified versions of Linux. Fortunately, this does mean you can install any Linux flavor you want on the laptop, which can be handy if you don't want to run China-specific apps only.
Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm points out that Loongson's upcoming 3a5000 CPU "will be a 12nm CPU that is 50% faster than the 3A4000."

In preparation for next year's Xe HPG graphics cards, Intel's open-source developers have begun publishing their patches enabling their "ANC" Vulkan Linux driver to support Vulkan ray-tracing. Phoronix reports: Jason Ekstrand as the lead developer originally on the Intel ANV driver has posted today the initial ray-tracing code for ANV in order to support VK_KHR_ray_tracing for their forthcoming hardware. Today is the first time Intel has approved of this open-source code being published and more is on the way. The code today isn't enough for Vulkan ray-tracing but more is on the way and based against the latest internal Khronos ray-tracing specification. At the moment they are not focusing on the former NVIDIA-specific ray-tracing extension but may handle it in the future if game vendors continue targeting it rather than the forthcoming finalized KHR version.

Among other big ticket items still to come in the near-term includes extending the ANV driver to support compiling and dispatching OpenCL kernels, new SPIR-V capabilities, and generic pointer support. Also needed is the actual support for compiling ray-tracing pipelines, managing acceleration structures, dispatching rays, and the platform support. The actual exposing of the support won't come until after The Khronos Group has firmed up their VK_KHR_ray_tracing extension. Some of this Intel-specific Vulkan ray-tracing code may prove useful to Mesa's Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver as well. Intel engineers have been testing their latest ray-tracing support with ANV internally on Xe HPG.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have extracted the secret key that encrypts updates to an assortment of Intel CPUs, a feat that could have wide-ranging consequences for the way the chips are used and, possibly, the way they're secured. The key makes it possible to decrypt the microcode updates Intel provides to fix security vulnerabilities and other types of bugs. Having a decrypted copy of an update may allow hackers to reverse engineer it and learn precisely how to exploit the hole it's patching. The key may also allow parties other than Intel -- say a malicious hacker or a hobbyist -- to update chips with their own microcode, although that customized version wouldn't survive a reboot.

"At the moment, it is quite difficult to assess the security impact," independent researcher Maxim Goryachy said in a direct message. "But in any case, this is the first time in the history of Intel processors when you can execute your microcode inside and analyze the updates." Goryachy and two other researchers -- Dmitry Sklyarov and Mark Ermolov, both with security firm Positive Technologies -- worked jointly on the project. The key can be extracted for any chip -- be it a Celeron, Pentium, or Atom -- that's based on Intel's Goldmont architecture. In a statement, Intel officials wrote: "The issue described does not represent security exposure to customers, and we do not rely on obfuscation of information behind red unlock as a security measure. In addition to the INTEL-SA-00086 mitigation, OEMs following Intel's manufacturing guidance have mitigated the OEM specific unlock capabilities required for this research. The private key used to authenticate microcode does not reside in the silicon, and an attacker cannot load an unauthenticated patch on a remote system."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: The Folding@home project has shared new results of its efforts to simulate proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 virus to better understand how they function and how to stop them. Folding@home is a distributed computing effort that uses small clients to run simulations for biomedical research when users' PCs are idle. The clients operate independently of each other to perform their own unique simulation and send in the results to the F@h servers. In its SARS-CoV-2 simulations, F@h first targeted the spike, the cone-shaped appendages on the surface of the virus consisting of three proteins. The spike must open to attach itself to a human cell to infiltrate and replicate. F@h's mission was to simulate this opening process to gain unique insight into what the open state looks like and find a way to inhibit the connection between the spike and human cells.

And it did so. In a newly published paper, the Folding@home team said it was able to simulate an "unprecedented" 0.1 seconds of the viral proteome. They captured dramatic opening of the spike complex, as well as shape-shifting in other proteins that revealed more than 50 "cryptic" pockets that expand targeting options for the design of antivirals. [...] The model derived from the F@h simulations shows that the spike opens up and exposes buried surfaces. These surfaces are necessary for infecting a human cell and can also be targeted with antibodies or antivirals that bind to the surface to neutralize the virus and prevent it from infecting someone. "And the tech sector played a big role in helping the find," adds the anonymous Slashdot reader. "Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, AWS, Oracle, and Cisco all helped with hardware and cloud services. Pure Storage donated a one petabyte all-flash storage array. Linus Tech Tips, a hobbyist YouTube channel for home system builders with 12 million followers, set up a 100TB server to take the load off."

Phoronix ran a story this morning with this provocative headline: "It's Time To Admit It: The X.Org Server Is Abandonware." The last major release of the X.Org Server was in May 2018 but don't expect the long-awaited X.Org Server 1.21 to actually be released anytime soon. This should hardly be surprising but a prominent Intel open-source developer has conceded that the X.Org Server is pretty much "abandonware" with Wayland being the future. [Or, more specifically, that "The main worry I have is that xserver is abandonware without even regular releases from the main branch."]

This comes as X.Org Server development hits a nearly two decade low, the X.Org Server is well off its six month release regimen in not seeing a major release in over two years, and no one is stepping up to manage the 1.21 release. A year ago was a proposal to see new releases driven via continuous integration testing but even that didn't take flight and as we roll into 2021 there isn't any motivation for releasing new versions of the X.Org Server by those capable of doing so.

Red Hat folks have long stepped up to manage X.Org Server releases but with Fedora Workstation using Wayland by default and RHEL working that way, they haven't been eager to devote resources to new X.Org Server releases. Other major stakeholders also have resisted stepping up to ship 1.21 or commit any major resources to new xorg-server versions.