TomVDB

The article was about way more than what the headline promised, and I learned a good deal about the different battery options.

If you don’t like those headlines, don’t click on them? It’s that easy (and it’s your loss too.)

PCB routing is generally considered a much harder problem. There are a bunch of reasons that add up, but one of them is almost certainly that a PCB is supposed to look good too. The routing on an IC is total chaos (which actually reduces crosstalk issues), but nobody will ever notice.

My comment is in the context of this topic: large digital ASICs with billions of wires, where the only analog parts are PLLs, DLLs, and digital IOs.

How is that a relevant comment in a discussion about ASIC design?

I hope you don't have the idea that chip routing is done manually.

Designing a modern ASIC requires experts across the whole spectrum, from top level architects who increase performance and reduce power from first principles, to RTL designers who have a feel for what kind of code will result in less area or less toggling wires, to standard cell designers who optimize a cell library for an optimal speed vs power vs area trade-off, to floor planning for the area density and speed while not running into IR drop and congestion issues, to DFT to make sure testing is as fast as possible with a high coverage, to DFM engineers who come up with strategies for optimal yield.

All these aspects are part of the chip design, and being bad at one can significantly compromise the competitiveness of the final piece of silicon.

So this statement is hopelessly naive and ignorant:

> The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with.

Because all the steps that I listed above are done with tools. And in many cases, having better tools is the secret sauce that makes your design better than the competition.

The article mentions a runtime of minutes instead of a day to do IR drop checking: that's the kind of acceleration that allows trying out multiple configurations for an optimal solution instead of settling for good enough. A lower amount of IR drop allows for a more aggressive, less conservative power curve. End result: a chip that can be clocked at a higher speed without needing to increase the voltage. A major competitive advantage.

> are any companies other than Nvidia embarking up AI/ML chipmaking in a closed fashion?

Of course there are. AI can be used for almost anything where large amount of data is already available, and where there's a clear cost function that must be optimized. AI is a natural for many steps in the ASIC design flow. You could have figured this out by yourself: Nvidia is talking about it. If it were such a big novelty, they'd keep it under wraps.

> WD's Swerv RISC-V core for their driver controller ARM R-series replacement [snip snip] everyone but NVidia playing well together, trying for better, standardizing a future for participation & healthy competition & growth.

Let's talk Swerv: a piece of IP that's definitely useful to Western Digital. Useful to general world too. But not something that scores particularly high on the list of the secret sauce ingredients that makes or breaks their products. Does Nvidia have similar open source IP offerings? Yes, they do! Check out NvDLA: Nvidia's open source DL accelerator. Your day must be a whole lot better now, knowing that, just like WD, Nvidia also open sources some non-critical IP.

I'm sure that you're aware that AMD uses a neural network in their CPU branch predictor. Do you think that AMD should release the tool that was used to figure out the optimal weights? After all, the tool itself is not part of the actual CPU design...

I discussed this with our realtor: forfeiting your full 3% earnest deposit is apparently rare. It’s not automatic, and when somebody backs out due to a non-contingent reason, it’s usually for a fraction of the full earnest deposit. (At least, that’s for the SF Bay Area.)

Why this focus on list price?

In a hot market with little supply, a list price is a marketing tool to get people into the door, and for a selling realtor to be able to brag about how good they are.

That’s it. It has been like that for years. It doesn’t make sense to post a list price that is too high or accurate (unless you don’t want the hassle to deal with multiple bidders.)

1500 sqft houses in my formerly middle class SV neighborhood are listed at $2.5M and sell for $3.5M within a week. Everybody knows that this $2.5M is imaginary. If you want to know what a house will really sell for, just look at the sales of the past 2 months. It’s a much better indicator.

The “NAL” statement wasn’t necessary: it was totally obvious the moment you wrote “definitely.”

There’s a 99.999% certainty that this non-issue will NOT result in a lawsuit.

Probably the same way sports teams convince communities to build subsidized stadiums: with unrealistic projections about jobs and trickle down benefits.

Slashdot still exists?

You agree that the US is a hellhole for many people, but you don’t seem to realize that you’re part of the problem.

(Note that I’m part of the problem too, by renting out our previous house so that my kid may eventually be able to live close to us, but at least I’m not a hypocrite, knowingly or not, about it.)

Is there a consensus that flipping is rampant these days?

I follow a couple of markets pretty closely and hardly see any houses that are bought and sold within a short time.

In the keynote, Jensen made a sly remark about how they themselves could benefit a lot from one of their cyberthreat AI solutions.

When you take software support into account, probably very favorable.

I don’t know anything about the state of Dojo, but Tesla was very hand wavy about their software stack during their presentation. And running AI algorithms efficiently on a piece of hardware is one of those things that many HW vendors have a hard time getting right.

Your “every place” doesn’t fall in the same bin as JLCPCB or PCBWay and similar outfits.

I’ve done tons of PCB prototypes at JLCPCB and all you’ll ever receive is blue box, a plastic bag with the PCBs and sometimes a keychain.

There’s never a test report.

That’s why it $2 for 5 PCB, shipped to you within 48 hours after placing the order.

No, they require 7 axes of movement. See the video that somebody else linked to.

I’m surprised you have an issue with arranging visits to open houses?

Open RedFin, check the houses for sale, go to the open house when there is one? That’s at least how it works in the Bay Area. We never had to schedule or book anything, and only after seeing a house we liked, we asked our agent to check it out and submit an offer.

That only matters for those who keep time with a sundial…

Mornings are for work. Evenings are for fun.

DST is just what’s needed.

If companies had to settle on exactly 1 pay rate everywhere around the world, the last thing I’d be willing to bet on is that they choose the salary of their most expensive COL location.

How did Intel leverage the acquisition of Altera? And why would it be different for AMD?

The way you talk, I have the impression that you’re actually taking any of this serious?

Back then, C64 vs Spectrum discussions were like vi vs Emacs. Good old fashioned tribalism is a thing of all ages.

Good to see that those misguided schoolyard buddies have survived to old age as well!

I didn’t do any speccy hacking, but the C64 was IMO amazing in the regard. The way you could reprogram the VIC each horizontal line into different video modes, changing the screen width to make borders disappear, the way you could disable the kernal ROMs to expose more DRAM etc.

But all machines of that era were so low level with plenty of tricks to exploit.

Everyone but ZX Spectrum owners understood that the C64 was superior in every way imaginable.

The Speccy owners tried to prove otherwise during countless arguments in the schoolyard, but deep down they knew.

That’s for principal residence, not investment properties: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-250000500000-hom....

Primarily ease of transfer. Probate is a pretty long winded process that can take month to close. A living trust avoids most of that.

Apparently there are some potential tax optimization options as well, but I don’t know how that really benefits my particular case. (It’s definitely why we did it.)

Here’s more info:

https://www.scscourt.org/self_help/probate/medical/living_tr...

We have our house in trust not because of some prop 13 reason but simply because putting your major assets in a living trust is the right thing to do avoid probate.

It massively reduces headaches for your descendants upon death but AFAIK it makes no difference in terms of taxes.

Anyone who has a little bit of assets (a single house is enough) would be a fool to not have a living trust.

Other than deducting mortgage interested from your taxes, is there currently any government subsidy for investment property mortgages?

13% CA income tax included?