271
Standard cells: Looking at individual gates in the Pentium processor
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, a chip to "separate the really power-hungry folks from ordinary mortals." The origin...
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 569 posts.
272
273
Properly testing concurrent data structures
There's a fascinating Rust library, loom, which can be used to thoroughly test lock-free data structures. I always wanted to learn how it works. I still do! But recently I accidentally implemented a small toy which, I think, contains some of the loom's ideas, and it seems worthwhile to write about that. The goal here…
274
Moving to a RTOS on the RP2040
As projects get more complicated the tooling has to improve. Outgrowing the arduino-ide is easy on the Pi Pico with the excelent pico-sdk but what if things get even more complicated...
275
Beating NumPy matrix multiplication in 150 lines of C
A detailed blog post on optimizing multi-threaded matrix multiplication for x86 processors to achieve OpenBLAS/MKL-like performance. Tags: High-performance GEMM on CPU, Fast GEMM on CPU, High-performance matrix multiplication on CPU, Fast Matrix Multiplication on CPU, Matrix multiplication in C, GEMM in C, Matrix…
276
Optimizing Large-Scale OpenStreetMap Data with SQLite
The personal website of JT Archie. Includes a blog, work ethic, and projects they have worked on.
277
Writing GUI applications on the Raspberry Pi without a desktop environment (2019)
In a previous article, I explained how I set up a TFT LCD screen on my Raspberry Pi. Because I had been previously using my Pi as a headless server, I hadn’t installed a desktop environment. I wanted to add a lightweight heads-up display to the server, and I wanted a graphical application that could operate without X…
278
Booting Linux off of Google Drive
Competitiveness is a vice of mine. When I heard that a friend got Linux to boot off of NFS, I had to one-up her. I had to prove that I could create...
279
280
281
282
Integrated assembler improvements in LLVM 19
Within the LLVM project, MC is a library responsible for handling assembly, disassembly, and object file formats. Intro to the LLVM MC Project, which was written back in 2010, remains a good source to understand the high-level structures. In the latest release cycle, substantial effort has been dedicated to refining…
283
The weirdest QNX bug I've encountered (2021)
I am responsible for the reliability of the firmware updates on our devices and this work never gets boring. The thing about firmware updates is that by definition, every bug is caused by the updater because before installing the affected version, the bug was not present. You could say that updates are the cause and…
284
Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from JavaScript to WasmGC
Calculations in Google Sheets were initially done on the server, then on the client in JavaScript, and now on the client in WebAssembly Garbage Collection. This case study explains how and why.
285
Researchers run high-performing LLM on the energy needed to power a lightbulb
UC Santa Cruz researchers show that it is possible to eliminate the most computationally expensive element of running large language models, called matrix multiplication, while maintaining performance.
286
Review of Linux on Minisforum V3 AMD Ryzen Tablet
Update: I have created an awesome-minisforum-v3 GitHub repository to list information for Minisforum V3 users, including some workarounds for the issues mentioned in this review. Quest for the Ideal
287
I found an 8 years old bug in Xorg
Let me set the right expectations first. This bug I found is actually not that complicated, it's very straightforward once you see what's going on. But I still think the process it took me to uncover this bug could be interesting. It's also kind of interesting that a simple bug stayed undiscovered for so long. I will…
288
Timeliness without datagrams using QUIC
Media over QUIC: Rethink your approach. *Unless you're doing something dope.
289
SSH as a Sudo Replacement
A major caveat in tools like sudo and doas for that matter is that they rely on setuid binaries and privilege escalation in order to run commands as root.
290
Formal methods: Just good engineering practice?
Earlier this week, I did the keynote at TLA+ conf 2024 ( watch the video or check out the slides ). My message in the keynote was something I have believed to be true for a long time: formal methods are an important part of good software engineering practice. If you’re a software engineer, especially one working on…
291
Exploring How Cache Memory Works
Even though we often hear terms like L1, L2, cache block size, etc., most programmers have a limited understanding of what cache really is. This is a beginner-friendly primer on how cache works.
292
A buffer overflow in the XNU kernel
XNU kernel buffer overflow, introduced in macOS 14.0 and fixed in macOS 14.5.
293
Lessons Learned from Scaling to Multi-Terabyte Datasets
This post is meant to guide you through some of the lessons I’ve learned while working with multi-terabyte datasets. The lessons shared are focused on what someone may face as the size of the…
294
Agilent 2000a / 3000a Oscilloscope NAND Recovery
As a resident member of the EEVblog Test Equipment Anonymous support group, I have picked up my fair share of old test equipment boat anchors, but my knees buckle at broken recently manufactured oscilloscopes in the sub $200 range. In this case, the Agilent / Keysight Infiniivision X-series oscilloscopes have been an…
295
IPC in Rust – A Ping Pong Comparison
I wanted to explore different ways of communicating between different processes executing on the same machine, and doing so as fast as possible. We're focussing on high speed inter-process communication (IPC), but some of these approaches can be extended across a network. We'll do this exploration in Rust.
296
When are SSDs slow?
CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools and tomorrow’s challenges.
297
298
FPGA-Based Disk Controller for the Apple II (2017)
Apple II disk controller cards are weird, there are a crazy number of different types , and many are rare and expensive. Can an FPGA-based solution save the day for retro collectors? You bet! Nearly all the existing disk controllers connect the same 8-bit bus to the same 19-pin disk interface, so a universal clone is…
299
OpenBSD, the computer appliance maker's secret weapon
Between our ESP32 prokaryotic organisms and our 24/7 Internet-enabled megafauna servers, there exists a vast and loosely-defined ecosystem of things the B2B world likes to call computer appliances. Picture a bespoke Pi 4 packaged up neatly with some Python scripts, a little fancy plastic embossing, and maybe a…
300
Making my first embedded Linux system
End-to-end documentation of a journey from no PCB experience to fabricating my own Linux-ready system that can boot the latest mainline kernel. This article is the recommended reading for someone building their first embedded Linux board. F1C100s SoC is used for this sample board.