Monthly Archives: May 2017

One of the more intriguing (and if were being honest, slightly weird) rumors from last year was that AMD and Intel might cooperate on a GPU patent-sharing deal, or possibly a direct design agreement in which AMD would build GPUs for its largest competitor in the CPU space. The only reason we gave the idea any consideration at all was because AMD had reorganized its graphics unit into the Radeon Technology Group (RTG) specifically so that it could have more freedom to pursue ideas and potential revenue sources. A custom agreement with Intel would definitely qualify.

One issue that we hadnt grappled with (and shouldve), however, was the nature of Intels agreement with Nvidia. While its true that this agreement ended earlier this year, with the final revenue payment from Chipzilla to Team Green, Mark Hibben of SeekingAlpha has correctly pointed out that the actual patent license that Intel struck with Nvidia is perpetual. Intel hasnt lost access to any NV patents as a result of completing its license payments, and therefore doesnt need to sign an agreement with AMD to replace them. We regret not catching that properly the first time around, and possibly giving more life to a rumor in the process. The idea that Intel needed a deal with AMD or Nvidia is false (or, at the least, its false until such time as one or more parties start flinging around lawsuit threats).

The idea of Intel building a GPU with AMD had legs, because it also seemed as if it might address the only real weakness Intel CPUs possess. AMDs Ryzen may be better positioned as far as performance per watt, but Intel continues to build an extremely capable CPU core, and could easily trim its pricing to bring its cores more in-line with AMDs Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 families. But as far as GPU performance is concerned, outside its models with EDRAM, AMD is still considered to have an overall edge. Certainly it has an edge in terms of overall IP and expertise, and that could have been enough to spark a deal with Intelat least in theory. Of course, it didnt hurt that AMDs GPU market share had fallen to an all-time low around the same time, which could have left the smaller manufacturer more interested in any agreement it might make to expand its own market access.

AMDs graphics sales have begun to rebound, but the company has fallen hard the past five years. Figures like these made a deal with Intel easier to imagine.

Intel, however, has reached out to put the kibosh on such rumors. In a statement sent to Barrons, Intel stated, The recent rumors that Intel has licensed AMDs graphics technology are untrue. The company has said that further information will not be provided.

AMD has said that its upcoming APUs based on Ryzen will also use the companys Vega graphics architecture (we had expected Polaris to be tapped for this), and will appear in-market in the back half of this year. Overall GPU performance is expected to increase by 40 percent compared with Carrizo, with significant reductions in power consumption and a 50 percent gain in CPU performance. If the company succeeds in hitting these goals it should be quite competitive with Intel in its lower-watt power envelopes, and more able to compete against the company in both desktops and laptops.

It wouldve been cool to see an Intel CPU with an AMD GPU alongside it on the same piece of silicon. But AMD GPU fans shouldnt have to feel like theyre picking between decent graphics and acceptable CPU performance once Ryzen APUs debut later this year. At least, thats the goal but were a lot more optimistic about AMDs chances of hitting its targets, now that weve seen what Ryzen can do.

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Intel Puts the Kibosh on Reports It Will License AMD GPU Technology - ExtremeTech

With the current pace of renewable energy deploymentand emissions reductions efforts, the world is unlikely to achieve the Paris Climate Agreements goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. This trend puts in doubt efforts to keep climate change damages from sea level rise, heat waves, drought and flooding in check. A potential solution being widely discussed is removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, also known as negative emissions.

Stanford researchers say carbon removal techniques such as ecosystem restoration are well understood, but others involve immature technologies and may not scale up as fast as policymakers hope. (Image credit: iStock)

However, in a new perspective published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford explain the risks of assuming carbon removal technologies can be deployed at a massive scale relatively quickly with low costs and limited side effects with the future of the planet at stake.

For any temperature limit, weve got a finite budget of how much heat-trapping gases we can put into the atmosphere. Relying on big future deployments of carbon removal technologies is like eating lots of dessert today, with great hopes for liposuction tomorrow, said Chris Field, a professor of biology and of Earth system science and director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Some strategies for carbon dioxide removal are well understood, such as planting trees that will store carbon from the atmosphere. Others involve immature, little tested technologies, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. In that strategy, carbon dioxide produced from biomass energy is stored deep underground. In another technology called direct air capture, chemical processes extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The models generating possible trajectories of climate change mitigation bet on planetary-scale carbon removal in the second half of the century, said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanfords School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. For policymakers trying to limit the worst damages from climate change, that bet is reckless.

The researchers dont reject carbon capture, instead arguing that there are important near-term opportunities for carbon removal at modest scale, often with other benefits for nature and people, and critical needs now for developing the technologies of the future. But heavy reliance on biomass energy with carbon capture and storage could require tremendous land areas. For example, relying on the technology to achieve a temperature increase of 2 C or less could require an amount of productive land equivalent to about 25 to 80 percent of total global cropland, up to about 8 percent of all of the land on Earth.

This puts climate change mitigation, global food security and biodiversity protection on a collision course with no easy off-ramps, says Field.

Many of the climate policy discussions supporting reliance on atmospheric carbon removal focus on the idea of peak and decline, which involves global temperatures peaking and then dropping as carbon removal technologies surpass emissions. However, the scientists argue that peak and decline may ignore climate impacts that wont disappear even if the planet starts to cool. For example, if warming triggers collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet, the resulting sea level rise would continue for hundreds of years.

Further, Field and Mach warn that hoping carbon removal technologies will kick in may delay concrete actions that could be taken now.

At the right scale, carbon dioxide removal approaches are a key tool in the climate solutions kit, Mach said. Avoiding can-kicking ethics, however, means putting aside assumptions that massive deployments will easily materialize decades into the future. Instead, we need to embrace whole-hearted mitigation today.

Ultimately, the scientists support a balanced approach that includes research and development of carbon removal technologies but also makes use of available means to limit and reduce carbon emissions, such as investing in renewable energy sources.

In managing the risks of a changing climate, we need a diversified game plan. An appealing long shot is not a plan and it is not a good way to protect the planet on which we depend, said Field.

Chris Field is also the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. Katharine Mach is also an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, visiting investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science and director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Read more from the original source:

Is carbon removal technology a high-stakes gamble? - Stanford University News

Salesforce is testing a version of its Einstein artificial intelligence service internally to help project sales and give guidance. CEO Marc Benioff said an internal spin of this Einstein Guidance feature has made the artificial intelligence technology another member of the management team.

It's not clear when this Einstein Guidance feature will roll out broadly, but it was one of the big takeaways on Salesforce's first quarter earnings conference call. Here's a look at the three takeaways:

How to Implement AI and Machine Learning

The next wave of IT innovation will be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. We look at the ways companies can take advantage of it and how to get started.

Benioff said artificial intelligence is being adopted in the enterprise as part of digital transformation. Benioff also portrayed its Einstein AI platform as a person. We'll just give you the passage from the earnings conference call in full:

We then have a piece of Einstein now that we've not yet rolled out to our customers called Einstein [Guidance]. So this is a capability that I use with my staff meeting, when I do my forecast and when I do my analysis of the quarter, which happens every Monday at my staff meeting like a lot of CEOs do, it's a very typical process, of course, we have our top 20 or 30 executives around the table. We talk about different regions, different products, different opportunities.

And then I ask one other executive their opinion and that executive is Einstein. And I will literally turn to Einstein in the meeting and say, "Okay, Einstein, you've heard all of this. Now what do you think?" And Einstein will give me the over and under on the quarter and show me where we're strong and where we're weak and sometimes will even point out a specific executive, which it's done in the last 3 quarters and said that this executive is somebody who needs specific attention during the quarter. And I can tell you that I do believe that Salesforce's enhanced performance has been greatly attributable to our ability to have Einstein on board and as part of our team. Because that ability to consult with Einstein has made me a better CEO. I have the ability to talk to Einstein and ask Einstein everything from product areas that I should be focusing on, geographies that I should be focusing on, the linearity of bookings during the quarter.

Every question that I possibly could have, I'm able to ask Einstein. And I think for a CEO, typically the way it works is, of course, you have various people, mostly politicians and bureaucrats, in your staff meeting who are telling you what they want to tell you to kind of get you to believe what they want you to believe. Einstein comes without bias. So because it's just based on the data, and it's a very exciting next-generation tool. And to have Einstein guidance has transformed me as a CEO.

Now that take is a bit new age, but I don't have any doubt that AI will be in more boardrooms. Also: Salesforce's Einstein: One smart way to upsell AI

Salesforce and AWS will be marketing together more. Benioff also noted that the AWS partnership is about giving customers what they want, but also hitting Oracle in the chops. Benioff said:

As you probably know, AWS and Oracle are in a dogfight for database workloads and infrastructure as a service.

Following the earnings report, Benioff said on CNBC that Salesforce was crushing Oracle on CRM. Guess the bromance is over with Oracle CTO Larry Ellison and Benioff.

Benioff said that Salesforce is increasingly in high-level discussions about digital transformation. Salesforce also mentioned that retail was a key area for the company since brick-and-mortar players are looking for more 1:1 engagement.

Salesforce has eight of the top 10 US retailers in the fold. It's an interesting vertical, but it's also worth noting that retail is also struggling.

Related stories:

Excerpt from:

Salesforce preps guidance feature for its Einstein AI technology - ZDNet

The Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain-based advancements in the payments industry were among the many themes explored at TRANSACT, a tech-centric, payments industry conference held on May 1012 in Las Vegas.

A panel discussion entitled How IoT is Revolutionizing Payments included a brief discussion regarding the emerging intersection between the Internet of Things and blockchain technology in this industry.

On a similar trajectory as the blockchain, much attention has been given to the future of IoT, defined as an ecosystem of physical devices from mobile phones to wearable tracking sensors that gather and share electronic information with one another.

Research firm IHS Markit estimates that 30.7 billion IoT devices will be communicating with one another by 2021. This complements a global blockchain technology market thats expected to grow from $210.2 million in 2016 to $2.3 billion by 2021 according to Market Reports Hub.

The collision between the IoT and blockchain worlds portends some important payments industry developments around the efficient tracking of device payment history, all supported by a ledger of secure data exchanges among devices, web systems and users. Further, this technological convergence also shows promise in terms of the use of smart devices that are programmed to conduct a variety of transactions such as the automatic issuance of invoices and payments.

Dan Loomis, vice president and director of mobile product management at the business and financial software firm Intuit, is firmly entrenched in this evolving IoT/blockchain conversation through his work in creating payment experiences for businesses that operate on a global scale, and brought this expertise to the TRANSACT panel discussion.

In an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Loomis remarked that for the small, emerging business clients he works with, cash is king. For our team at Intuit, it all comes down to how we can help these businesses create immediate operating capital. The ability to quickly onboard clients into a payment service and to get paid quickly is really important. Their mantra is often Pay me, pay me faster, and how can we as a business accept all methods of payment?

Loomis says that at his company and for the payments space in general, the thought of leveraging the blockchains immutable, permanent, auditable features is fascinating on a variety of levels. He notes that specific to Intuit, there is a lot of investigation going on into blockchain technology and how it may be applied to their payment models.

We facilitate a lot of invoice, payable and receivable experiences for our clients. Aspirationally, being able to track these logistics in a manner thats clear and transparent via blockchain [technology] would be very appealing. It has a high level of integrity as a technology and cannot be questioned in terms of its functionality.

Healthcare is one vertical market that Intuit is targeting. Loomis says that in this industry there is always a trail of information thats important to unravel and look at, from medical record information to who the patients service provider is. I think that blockchain [technology] can help wrap this together and be a critical vehicle for a healthcare space thats somewhat arcane and at the same time leading edge.

When asked about the immense possibilities around blockchain technology and IoT in terms of it being fully leveraged at Intuit, Loomis remarked, I have no doubt that a developer in our company ecosystem is at least thinking about this closely.

Loomis believes that IoT and blockchain technology will emerge at Intuit when these technologies have a strong, demonstrated fit that can actually be matched with end user value. I think market deploy in this space is one of those things well see come to fruition when the time is right and it meets our customer benefit.

See the rest here:

IoT and Blockchain Technology Collide in the Payments Industry - Bitcoin Magazine

As hardcorepizza enthusiasts, were no stranger to the recent pizza-related innovations that have been made recently. You can order pizza with your shoes, get pizza in a box made of pizza, and even smoke weed with a pizza box. Though the latter two are fun ways to reimagine the pizza box, has any real progress been made since the standard cardboard box most of us are working with now? Not that were aware of, and while Apple has been making some of the worlds finest phones, computers and whatever other devices will dominate our lives next year, they also took a minute todesign, patent and make a pizza box of their own (via Engadget).

Its actually a pretty impressive pizza vessel. The ribbed and ventilated container was designed so pizza wouldnt get soggy by allowing air and moisture to escape. The boxs creation is largely due toFrancesco Longoni, the maestro of the Apple Park caf (which was profiled byWired, who included this odd bit of trivia in their story). Take a look at the patent image below:

The patent itself, which was filed in 2010 and approved in 2012, is fun to look at because of the detail and length of writing that went into describing a pizza box. For example, heres the first item from the Claims section of the document:

1. A molded fiber container suitable for containing a food item, comprising: a base, the base comprising: a plurality of ridges integrated with an interior surface of the base, wherein when the food item is placed on at least some of the plurality of ridges, a gap is formed between the food item and the interior surface of the base, the gap assisting in thermally isolating the food item and allowing moisture expelled from the food item to be transported away from the food item; and a lid, the lid comprising: a plurality of openings arranged in accordance with at least some of the plurality of ridges, and a moisture channeling feature integrally formed in the lid, the moisture channeling feature cooperating with at least some of the plurality of openings and the gap to provide a path by which at least some of the moisture expelled from the food item is transported out of the container and into an external environment.

Soggy pizza is a significant issue, obviously, but do you think Apples finally cracked the code? Let us know in the comments!

Image:cyclonebill/Wikimedia Commons, United States Patent and Trademark Office

Link:

Apple's Latest Piece of Cutting Edge Technology Is A Pizza Box - Nerdist