State of the Graphics May 2016: Nvidia's Pascal vs. AMD's Polaris

It's drawing nearer.  Nvidia's launch for May 27th of the 1080 GTX Founders edition with 16nm FinFET and GDDR5X RAM. Tale of the tape for AMD: Mid-2016 for a 950GTX equivalent board with much less power draw with the Polaris 11.  AMD is still going with the smaller co-processor and multiple processor configuration will win the day.  Neither have HBM2 integrated stack memory yet.  GDDR5X is a trickle from Micron so this is a manufacturing win for Nvidia.  Everyone is waiting for AMD's successor to FuryX, Vega or Polaris 10, which is after Polaris 11 (confused yet?) and larger, and highlighted in a proof of concept cube known as the Project Quantum (espoused to push VR).  Will it introduce HBM2? The world still has to wait.
We also have to wait for real benchies.  Do we take Hsuang's word that the 1070GTX is as fast as the 980GTX for 379$US.  AMD has design wins with Sony PS4 and XBoxOne, and the potential of VR coming to home PCs, as well as the PS4 "Neo" (4.5).  Will the benchies show 1440p (QHD - 2560x1440) or 2160p (4K UHD - 3840x2160) at 60 fps? Or do we have to contend to VR specs with dual 1080p (1920x2160) and special feature support (like Nvidia's touted multi-display projection to speed up a scene over multiple display windows)? With the embargo lifted, this is still not the card for 4K at 60 fps.  And with Nvidia gouging a premium price for milking the early market at $699USD, caveat emptor.

There is a new rage for HDR effects.  What should consumers hold out for? Taking 2013's Tomb Raider 4K benchmark, the Titan and 980Ti are neck and neck at 45 fps, with the 980 at 30 fps.  If 4K at 60 fps is achieved, then VR specs are surpassed and they were met already with the 980Ti. Then there are displayport and HDMI versions to worry about.  AMD botched up with the FuryX limited support for HDMI 1.3, while Nvidia went to HDMI 2.0. If the 1080GTX is 25% faster than the 980Ti, then 4K will hit 60 fps for an engine built in 2013.  The 4K UHD Unity engine demos will probably only reach 35 fps, far short of nirvana.  With 1070, it is expected to match a 980Ti, which means two more years for enthusiast 4K gaming. But if we consider those who go SLI, how well will that work and will that nearly double the power for those with money to burn (or frugally smart when buying used)?

950 - entry
960 - mainstream
970 - enthusiast
980 - hardcore
980Ti - premium
980 Titan - flagship

How to Successfully Upgrade the Asus Me176C to Lollipop 5.0

1. update to latest .201
2. Remove any external SD Card
3. Do the on air update to Lollipop
4. Do a Factory Reset
5. Do not turn on Wi-Fi and skip through the "Getting Started" steps
6. Do Steps 4 & 5 a total of 3 times (or twice more)
7. Re-Install Apps and Data


After step 3, Games depending on Google Play Service would not work.  AGPS would not work.
Clearing Play Services cache did not work.  Trying to uninstall Google Play Games did not work.


After Lollipop update, the UI on the tablet feels a smidge faster.
Antutu Bench 5.7.1 on K013 V3.2.23.201: 36969
On 044030456_201502160111 (12.10.1.24-20150623): 36818

Trending: The Future of Urban Transportation

Urban Travel - let's limit ourselves to discussing 350 mile range at most and mainly Intra-State. Beyond that there are complications due to refueling.

Resiliancy
- Earthquake
-- repairs to rails / rail-like systems before use ; long delays
- Flood / Tsunami
-- shutdown of powered "third-rail" systems; self-contained energy vehicles appear better but require re-fueling
-- repairs might be necessary; "rusting" or washed away track
- Tornado / Hurricane
-
Autonomy
Independence
Cleanliness
Maintenance

Airplanes

Advantages

Disadvantages

Heavy leveraged

Special Fuel needed

Highly scheduled

Requires 3 operators and 2 attendants

Cramped spaces for passengers

Limited entertainment options

No ability to recharge personal devices

Many extra fees; some hidden

Porters sometimes steal personal items or luggage (more so on International to poorer nations, but we're talking intra-national)

Cars

Lyft, Uber will be replaced! How ironically fitting on what they did to the taxi industry by usurping them!

Will the car be there when I need it? How long a wait time?

The car will need to know when to refuel / recharge and go put itself out of service.

What if the car needs to refuel on a long trip? Will it refuse to go? Or re-route you to a second vehicle to continue your journey?

Will I be able to get a car with trunk space when I need to go home with a big load of shopping bags? How about when going to the airport with alot of baggage?

When I get a car, will it be filthy? Smell like smoke or some other nasty odor?

Prevent crime done in vehicle or used for getaway?

Accident - who is the responsible party and how does insurance work? No Fault? Both parties at fault? Company who made AI at fault? Need to prove AI system was engaged at the time leading up to and during the accident?

What happens if cars become autonomous? What happens to taxis?

To Truck Drivers? To Train Conductors?  Mass layoffs? More unemployment? Or do these vehicles require a licenced operator to take over manual control?  Airplanes already have auto-pilot and a captain and co-captain / navigator / communications officer.  Will that still be necessary to have a human near the "wheel" just in case?

Corsucant - 3d Stack lanes; people driving themselves

Minority Report - ground based lanes

Jetsons - only one level flying lanes?

What about drone interference?  

GPS usage for waypoints? What if GPS goes out or is inaccurate? Need fall back for computer assisted travel.

Complexity when discussing InterState Travel

For example, take the proposed Mag Lev (Musk) -
Advantages
Faster than plane?
No security checks?
Faster than Amtrak?
Faster than Greyhound?
Price?
Power Usage?
Power distribution?
Disadvantages
- Fixed and Closed circuit; Hub, need second leg journey to real destination

- Natural Disasters

The Submit Button

With all the social justice warriors and politically correct people out there, forcing these new multi colored and ethnic(?) emojis on the world (wide web of Apple iOS), for the last time, when your web page button says "Submit", I wholeheartly refuse to do so!

Stagnation of the high end CPU? (August 2015)

Used to be the day that every 3 years I would be ready to take the plunge and upgrade my main desktop rig (mo' powa! Arr Arr Arr).  This August, with the coming of Skylake, I do not feel any urge. It appears the i7-3770 has been ageing well.  The i7-4770 is not much improvement (maybe 5%) and Skylake is for the ULV crowd.  Looking at benchmarks for the i7-6700K, it's best improvement is around 8% over the 3770K and sometimes loses.  And games run better on Haswell, the last generation. Skylake's TDP is 91 W vs 3770 Ivy Bridge's 77 W.  Color me unimpressed. What does this mean?  Moore's Law slowing down? Yes.
Intel had a bear of a time wrestling with the 14 nm node according to reports. With 10 nm two years out and 7nm maybe four years out, miniaturization is all about power conservation than more super power.  Sure if you want to go Xeon and pay thousands, there is raw crunching potential to be had.  But sadly, last years (state of the art 2013) computers are "fast enough" and even our mobile devices feel "fast enough".  My iPhone 6 feels blazingly fast and that's fine.  So how do you get consumers to upgrade?
  More flash and mirrors.

So what's in it for consumers with Haswell for 2015? For starters there's the enthusiast crowd where entering is only just under $400 with the i7-5820K. Then the middle, but not that middling,  processor is the i7-5930K is nearly double at $600 but the bump is not that much in speed but in using multiple graphics cards win tandem (your pick of Nvidias SLI or AMD's Crossfire implementations).  This is for the workhorses of driving Virtual Reality at 4KUHD. Last up is the ultimate extreme 5960X (X is bigger and badder than K! It's exXxtra better!) at the cornerstone $1000 which is for the people with too much money to spend and don't care saying they are future proofing or the small home server cruncher. This Haswell platform brings a new socket type and so this means a new motherboard. Adding insult to injury is that your RAM sticks for DDR3 are not usable, thus consumers must purchase new DDR4 memory sticks. Also, to get the biggest bang for your buck for memory bandwidth, it's four channel so get those four RAM sticks. What's even cooler is you can say you have a hexacore, and evoke your inner Wicca. The top end can say octocore (can you say Octocore? I thought you could!) and bring your inner Chuck Norris kung fu grip (sorry Bruce Lee fans).  Trade blows with your friends who have the Xeon processors (the point of the Xeon is to have multiple processors on your motherboard and wan too own a rack server in your computer room at home!).


The next phase of computing is wearables.  Oculus Rift 3D vision, Microsoft's HoloLens, Google's pounced on googly-eyed Glass (and the horde of glassholes) are coming in 2016. Will it be like the Wii storm?  Everyone laughing at the name and then it takes off like a rocket ship or a repeat of the Glass?  I think the majority does not want to be the Borg or Cyberdyne or implanted like Cyberpunk or ShadowRun.  Mr. Data is cool and all that, but is the world ready for a computerized companion / assistant (Her), a super Roomba (the Maid from the Jetsons), or Augmented (enhanced) Reality (HoloLens / Glass / Terminator HUD)? Well, the military does I'm sure - look at the Air Force training for pilots with the assisted reality and nomenclature symbology they use.  It's going to be special cases for wearables.  Possibly for consumers it will be medical advances for the Fit Bots.  Then as it becomes more germaine, the masses will want their turn for implants or their "Predator" holographic bracer with a built-in touch screen as the next iWatch 2025. Wearables right now bave terrible battery life, so how are they going to power implants? Can't use solar power where the sum don't shine.  Have nanobots metatasize sugar and fate in your blood stream? Body thermal heat like in the Matrix? Thermal transfer and conversion is abysmal. Just look at efficiencies of internal combustion engines. How many geothermal energy plant do you know of?  Less than .3% of total power production is generated by thermals in the USA. How about a tiny nuclear battery inside you like the Six Million Dollar Man? What, no takers?

Trending: The NUC - shrinking the HTPC and upcoming UHD content

With all the HTPC variants of the AppleTV, ChromeCast, Roku, Amazon FireTV, Fire TV Stick, Nvidia Shield Android TV (their naming department needs some cleaning up; but that's been obvious ever since they name their discrete graphics cards), Intel is starting to throw it's hat in the ring.  They've been building NUCs for a while now, as has Gigabyte (Brix) and Zotac, and tossed in the Intel Compute Stick.  Do you leverage Windows? Or do you try to use Android or some Linux variant? Then we have Raspberry Pi for the ultra cheap DIY crowd, but it appears to be a bit too scaled down for 1080p HD home theater (especially the networking 802.11n without 5 GHz band and triple antennaes). With the cusp of 4KHD (here's where it gets messy with specs) is now becoming UHD because its not really 4096 scan lines - it's actually 2106 lines.  Even the new AMD Fury cards fall short for home theater usage since it lacks HDMI 2.0. And then there are the decoders needed because Google is fighting the hEVC (h.265) consortium for the 4K standard with its codec VP9.  Amazon is going with hEVC as well with the major Smart TV players like Sony and Samsung.  So most major companies are betting on hEVC but we have not heard from the cable companies like Comcast, TWC, Charter, or Verizon.  Will they roll out UHD channels?  Will iTV-UHD steamroll past the old bundled giants and give cord-cutters what they need a'la carte?
  So do we want to constantly replace our televisions in order to play UHD content?  Why should the decoder be built into the TV? That's what the cable box or HTPC is for.  You rent the cable box so when the cable company decides to upgrade the codec you just replace it.  You could buy the DVR outright, but why? Most people buy TiVo for that. And as for the HTPC, the idea here is to bring a lower powered solution with enough power to decode the newest codec.  And if you are doing it wirelessly, the HTPC needs 802.11ac for the bandwidth (minimum of 25Mbps with 3 antennas having throughput of 1.3GB - see Netgear's Nighthawk 7000 router).  So at this point, all the original gadgets I mentioned up front are dead in the UHD waters.

Min-Maxing your game theory; or: How to Stop Worrying and Suck every Last Bit of Fun out a simulation

Take for example one of those factory assembly games; you know the ones like SimCity BuildIt, Hay Day, Clash of Clans or Boom Beach.  You have raw material and factories - you create and then assemble, trying to fill in the pipeline efficiently to keep the machines thrumming along.  Now, how about we take out the guess work? It takes 3 minutes to build this X widget, but I need X and Y widgets, and Y widget is made out of A and B widgets, and so on.  It's an automation directed graph problem, and one that should lend itself to a program that could be coded to solve the problem. 


1. We have a list of raw materials and each has its own time of creation
2. We have a list of each factory and how many of type widget it can create, how long, and how many parallel queue(s)
3. We can state end goals for our problem solver - I want to make a # batch of X, Y and Z widgets and in the shortest amount of time with instructions to maximize output. Aha! The concept of min-max-ing!


This is a bit involved to be an ACM competition question and a bit complex and convoluted to solve in Excel (but I'm sure it's possible).  Most games don't have that many tiers of products and materials, but when you get past that third layer, my brain starts to melt and I'm not having fun - it's a chore.
Imagine Diner Dash with Cooking Mama where you get an order, then have to go prepare dishes and combine ingredients and other intermediary products to finally produce a meal.  It's bad enough the game gets hectic just doing the greet - sit - order - queue up - pick up - clean up - collect $$ interspersed with crying babies and mop up spills and requests for drinks or napkins or desert as extras (which effect the final collection $$ in how important is this distraction compared to what it will cost me if I don't attend to it).  As an aside, maybe someone will create a Diner Dash / Cooking Mama multi-player online (local net or extranet) co-op game experience so people can simulate working at a restaurant in a group! Sounds like fun -- just as much fun as grinding 80 levels in World of Warcraft and pay 15$ a month for the effort (Yes, you know you play WoW (or SWTOR, EQ, etc.), you know it's a hamster wheel and you tell yourself -- yes, I'm having fun dammit!).


So anyway, back to the topic and shooting down tangent man.
Tier 0 : Factories
Type | Queue Depth


Tier 1 : Ingredients, Intermediate and Final Products
Output Type | Ingredient list | Factory Type Required | Time Manufacturing | Cost


For SCB, all costs are 0. Most games have a money sink and this one uses it for erecting factories and buildings.




To be continued...