#hardware

The article provides comprehensive technical information about floppy disks, covering their history, formats, storage capacities, and physical characteristics. It details various disk sizes from 8-inch to 3.5-inch formats and explains technical specifications like sector layouts and data encoding methods.

An FPGA-based accelerator for tiled matrix multiplication has been developed for self-attention mechanisms. The architecture improves computational efficiency for transformer models through specialized processing elements and memory hierarchies.

The article documents the efforts to port OpenBSD to Motorola 88000 processors (m88k), covering the hardware used, the development challenges faced, and the status of the port at the time of writing.

The Framework Laptop 13 Pro is a modular, repairable laptop featuring a 13.5-inch display, Intel Core Ultra processors, and user-upgradable components. It emphasizes sustainability through easy repair and upgrade options while maintaining professional performance capabilities.

Framework announces the new Laptop 13 Pro, responding to customer feedback with improved features and performance. The company highlights enhancements to the modular, repairable laptop design based on user input.

Framework has announced the Framework 13 Pro laptop, featuring Intel Ultra 3 processors and a DIY configuration option. The new model continues the company's modular, repairable design philosophy for professional users.

Framework announced its Next Gen product line during a 2026 launch event, showcasing new modular computing devices. The company detailed upcoming hardware innovations and expansion plans for its sustainable technology ecosystem.

Schematik has developed a hardware design tool described as 'Cursor for hardware.' Anthropic is now interested in the technology and wants to be involved in its development and application.

A GPU price tracker website now features individual product pages for sharing links. The site updates prices every 5 minutes and organizes them by cost, with plans to add a comments system and 24-hour price history graphs.

Google is developing new chips to accelerate AI processing, aiming to compete with Nvidia's dominance in the AI hardware market. The company's custom silicon efforts seek to improve performance and efficiency for its AI services.

AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor has been tested, offering extremely high performance that is described as both impressive and excessive for most computing needs.

A pull request introduces NFC functionality for an open security key on the nRF52480 platform. The implementation enables contactless authentication capabilities for the Solo2 security key project.

Intel is refreshing its non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time this year, marking a departure from previous practices where these processors used older silicon designs. The update brings architectural improvements to mainstream desktop and laptop processors that previously relied on recycled chip designs.

The article discusses the significant power consumption difference between high-performance GPUs (10,000 watts) and human brains (40 watts). It highlights the efficiency contrast between artificial and biological computing systems.

The document investigates methods to control the secondary fan on the Minisforum AI Pro HX 370 system. It explores potential software and hardware approaches for managing the auxiliary cooling fan's operation.

The article argues that in AI systems, context (like prompts and retrieved data) functions as software—dynamic, editable, and transient—while model weights act as hardware—static, costly to update, and persistent. This distinction suggests that improving AI performance through better context management is more flexible and efficient than retraining or fine-tuning model weights.

AI 'GPUs' are graphical processing units that cannot actually process graphics. The term refers to specialized hardware designed for artificial intelligence tasks rather than traditional graphics rendering.

Due to high RAM prices, building a new desktop system often requires reusing DDR4 memory, forcing the use of older CPU and motherboard platforms. This creates 'new old systems' with outdated features and slower adoption of new technologies like AVX-512. Such systems may only provide limited improvements over existing hardware.

The article examines whether firmware should be free software, distinguishing between initialization firmware and runtime firmware. It argues that free firmware provides practical benefits like security updates and hardware functionality control, while discussing the Free Software Foundation's approaches to firmware freedom.

The Pentium processor uses microcode stored in a ROM to execute machine instructions. The microcode ROM consists of two banks that output 90-bit micro-instructions, containing 4608 instructions total. The ROM's output lines travel across the chip to control various circuitry.

The Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor uses 49 different conditional tests in its microcode to control jumps and subroutine calls. These conditions range from simple checks like whether a number is zero to specialized tests for rounding direction or instruction opcode bits. The selection circuitry uses a distributed tree of multiplexers across the chip to efficiently route condition signals.

The author details their 2025 high-end Linux PC build with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, 64GB DDR5 RAM, 4TB SSD, and RTX 3060 Ti GPU, totaling 2350 CHF. After replacing a faulty CPU, the system is now stable and fast, designed for low idle power and driving an 8K monitor.

Critics are evaluating AI models trained on outdated hardware, but a 6x increase in computing power has already been allocated and is just beginning to yield results.

The article describes a weekend project called the Chicken Squisher 3000, which appears to be a humorous or experimental device related to poultry. The author references the saying "If it clucks like a duck..." suggesting a playful approach to identifying or interacting with chickens.

The article explores various practical applications of diodes, highlighting their versatility beyond basic rectification. It covers uses in signal mixing, voltage regulation, and circuit protection, demonstrating how this fundamental component enables numerous electronic functions.

The article discusses the technical challenges involved in building a functional oscillator circuit. It explains why creating a reliable oscillator is more difficult than it might initially appear.

Microsoft informed the author that their Surface Book 1 was obsolete and should be discarded. Despite the device's age and limited specifications, the author expressed frustration at being told what to do with their hardware.

This USB cheat sheet provides a comprehensive reference for USB specifications, connector types, power delivery standards, and data transfer protocols. It covers technical details including USB versions, cable specifications, and power requirements for various devices.

Diablo 2 Resurrected is a remaster that runs the original game's logic while adding modern graphics. The system uses two separate engines running in parallel: the classic game for gameplay and a new 3D engine for visuals. This architecture preserves the original game's mechanics while providing updated graphics.

The Book of CP-System is a technical reference work documenting the Capcom CP System arcade hardware architecture. It provides detailed information about the system's components, games, and technical specifications for preservation and study purposes.