• just_another_person@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    They’ve been pulling this shit since the early days. Similar tricks were employed in the 486 days to swap out chips, and again in the Celeron days. I think they switched to the slot style intentionally to keep selling chips to a point lol

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        7 months ago

        https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498114.pdf

        Soviet Computer Technology: Little Prospect for Catching Up

        We believe that there are many reasons why the Soviets trail the United States in computer technology:

        • The Soviets’ centrally-planned economy does not permit adequate flexibility to design or manufacturing changes frequently encountered in computer production; this situation has often resulted in a shortage of critical components — especially for new products.
        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          If you’re only response to criticism of capitalism is ((communism)), you may just be a cog in the corporate propaganda machine.

            • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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              7 months ago

              Marginally. The paper analyzes the capabilities as they existed in the 1980s, but doesn’t draw strong conclusions as to why that may be. It does demonstrate how reliance on central planning results in inadequaciea when said central planning is not operating well, though.

              The paper doesn’t really mention it but the central planning of the USSR was actively reeling from Brezhnev dying, Andropov dying, and Chernenko either dying or about to die at the time the CIA thing was written. So yeah, correct is an accurate if imprecise way to put it.

        • bruhduh@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          We have open source designs (RISCV also have GPU designs) but we don’t have manufacture power open sourced yet

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            i dream of a world where the process will cheapen out enough like pcb design, where you can just submit the design you want and they will fab it out for you.

            with more players coming into the game because of sanctions, i hope we are now on the path.

            • bruhduh@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Yes, i hope so too, as for now, semiconductor lithography at home is impossible due how big and complex these machines are, so i have same opinion as you are

    • turmacar@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s been at least since the “big iron” days.

      Technician comes out to upgrade your mainframe and it consists of installing a jumper to enable the extra features. For only a few million dollars.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      IIRC, the slot CPU thing was because they wanted to get the cache closer to the processor, but hadn’t integrated it on-die yet. AMD did the same thing with the original Athlon.

      On a related note, Intel’s anticompetitive and anti- consumer tactics are why I’ve been buying AMD since the K6-2.

      • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        They had integrated the L2 on-die before that already with the Pentium Pro on Socket 8. IIRC the problem was the yields were exceptionally low on those Pentium Pros and it was specifically the cache failing. So every chip that had bad cache they had to discard or bin it as a lower spec part. The slot and SECC form factor allowed them to use separate silicon on a larger node by having the cache still be on-package (the SECC board) instead of on-die.