quickstart
12 MAXIMUMPC SEP 2019 maximumpc.com
FA CE BOOK PAY S
$5 BILLION
New packaging tech
TRIUMPHS TRAGEDIES
AMAZON SPACE PROGRAM
The company plans to launch
3,236 satellites and build a
global high-speed Internet
network, code-named Kuiper.TAKE ON DEEPMIND
The AI machine’s AlphaStar will
star as an opponent on some
StarCraft II servers.NEW APOLLO MISSION
A computer restorer has
managed to get an Apollo
Guidance computer to mine
bitcoin—very, very slowly.UNPACK AT YOUR PERIL
A researcher has built a new
zip bomb that doesn’t use
recursive data, and packs
4.5PB in a 46MB file.6,000 EXABYTES LOST
A power failure at five of
Toshiba’s memory foundries
cost six weeks’ production;
prices are expect to rise.COMPULSORY MALWARE
In parts of China, border guards
install malware on visitors’
phones to extract personal data.A monthly snapshot of what’s good and bad in techTech Triumphs and Tragedies
MACBOOK KEYBOARDS have a tendency to break.
The problem first appeared on 2015’s MacBook,
but it took Apple until June 2018 to admit there
was a problem and start paying for repairs. The
butterfly switch mechanism used means even a relatively small piece of
dirt or debris that works its way under a key can cause it to stop working. It
seems Apple is finally going to change the mechanism to the scissor design
it used before 2015. Apple hasn’t officially announced this yet, but it has
applied for patents for a new scissor switched keyboard. Why no official
announcement? Because the new design isn’t ready yet, and Apple has just
refreshed its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, which have the butterfly
keyboards. Thankfully, they’re eligible for free repairs if things go wrong. –CLButterfly design could go
APPLE TO FINALLY
FIX KEYBOARDS?AS IT THREATENED, the Federal Trade Commission has
hit Facebook with a $5 billion fine for its infringements
of privacy (handing out the personal data of 50 million
people to a third party). As part of the ruling, Facebook
has to review and document the way it handles data.
Bad news for Facebook? Not really. It’s a large sum, the largest ever imposed by
the FTC on a technology company, but Facebook had been expecting it, and budgeted
accordingly. The company had set aside over $3 billion, and has cash reserves of
over $40 billion. Investors weren’t worried either; the stock price rose by 1.8 percent
immediately after the announcement. If anything, the ruling has shown that Facebook
is too powerful to be affected by such actions. However, there are signs that Congress
and the Senate are running out of patience. Facebook is being quizzed by the Senate’s
Banking Committee over its forthcoming digital currency, Libra, and it has not been
friendly. Libra is a big deal for Facebook, and legal disruption here could hurt. –CLFINE DOES LITTLE DAMAGE
THE PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION of chips is
becoming increasingly important. You can
only shrink a chip so far before the basic
laws of physics interfere. AMD’s Ryzen
3000 series has introduced the chiplet
design to the mainstream. Intel has been
working on similar tech for years, has
bought companies working in this field,
and invested billions. At the SemiCon West
trade show, it showed off the results: three
new technologies for packaging chips.
Intel already uses EMIB (Embedded
Multi-die Interconnect Bridge) and
Foveros (chip-stacking technology). EMIB
is a way to put a number of chips together
on one package, using a interposer layer
embedded into the substrate, while
Foveros is a method of stacking chips on
top of each other. EMIB is used on Kaby
Lake G chips, and Foveros is due to appear
soon on early mobile Ice Lake chips.
Intel has developed a way of combining
these two methods into a new process,
putting multiple layers of multiple chips
on a substrate, each chip able to connect
horizontally and vertically. This is co-
EMIB, combined EMIB. It uses two other
techniques: MDIO (a physical interface for
chip stacking) and ODO (Omni-Directional
Interconnect, a new process to build
interconnects in any direction). And, yes,
this is starting to sound like an electrical
engineering class. What’s important is
that it enables Intel to piece together chips
from slices of silicon made using different
processes, arranging each element to
best advantage, and the entire group can
exchange data on-chip at high speed.
You could say that Intel is talking about
this now because it has no new processors.
However, as traditional design methods
reach the buffers, processor packaging
is going to be a very big thing, and Intel
has made impressive strides. There are
problems, specifically the distribution of
power, and the heat it generates, which
is why the designs are appearing on low-
power mobile parts first, but it is the
future, and Intel has some class-leading
technology in the pipeline. –CLINTEL’S CHIP
SANDWICH
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