June 21, 2017 – Peter's Quasi-Daily Blah-g

June 21, 2017

Classic Sega Games From Genesis To Dreamcast Are Going Free (With Ads) On Mobile

Sega is bringing a catalog of its classic games to mobile devices via a new service called Sega Forever. The service will encompass titles from every era of Sega consoles, including Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Sega Saturn, and Dreamcast.

Each game available through Sega Forever will be free to download and features in-game ads. Like the recent mobile release of Crazy Taxi, however, players have the option to remove the ads via a $2 in-app purchase per game. Every title will also support new features such as leaderboards, cloud saves, offline play, and controller support.

The first batch of Sega Forever titles goes live worldwide tomorrow, June 22, and consists of the following five Genesis classics:

The service will be updated with additional titles every two weeks, according to a press release. Each Sega Forever game will be available to download individually on Android and iOS devices from the Google Play and App stores.

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June 21, 2017

Workhorse SureFly is the next step toward a flying car

The flying car that was promised to us so many years ago has yet to arrive. Until it does, we’ll have to make do with stopgaps like the recently revealed

Workhorse SureFly

. Workhorse, the company behind the

new W-15 PHEV pickup truck

, revealed the SureFly at this year’s Paris Air Show. The compact, lightweight, and relatively affordable helicopter could just be the next toy for taxi drivers or bored members of the 1 percent.

At first glance, the SureFly looks like a people-sized drone, with four arms and eight rotors rather than the traditional single-rotor helicopters that are common today. The end of each arm is sandwiched by two rotors. The SureFly uses a gasoline engine to power eight electric motors, one for each of the rotors.

A pair of 7.5 kWh lithium-ion battery packs are used as a backup in case the gasoline engine fails. Together, they’re good for about five minutes of power, enough time to land the SureFly. If that fails, too, there is a parachute mounted in the center. This works because the rotors are at the corners, not the center.

Curb weight for the two-seat SureFly is 1,100 pounds. The maximum takeoff weight is 1,500 pounds. With only about 400 pounds of carrying capacity, Workhorse pictures the SureFly being used for local taxi service. Total range is about 70 miles or about one hour of flight time, but since it’s powered by a gasoline engine, filling up the tank provides another 70 miles of range. There’s no waiting to recharge a battery pack. The flight ceiling is 4,000 feet.

$DCIM\100MEDIA\DJI_0325.JPG$

The fuselage and props are made from carbon fiber, partially exposed in places like the interior. One neat feature is the foldable propeller arms, allowing the SureFly to be stored in a standard sized garage. While not quite a flying car, the fact that it can be landed and stored at home is another step in the right direction.

According to Flying magazine

, the controls are relatively simple for an aircraft. There’s a single joystick to control SureFly’s forward, sideways, and yaw movements. Buttons handle altitude while the speed is automatically controlled by the computer. Since it requires a human hand at the controls, the operator still needs a pilot’s license. That said, because it’s classified as a light-sport craft, there’s only 20 hours of training. A traditional helicopter license needs 1,500 hours of training. We’re not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

Those interested can contact Workhorse to reserve one. Yes, it will set you back about $200,000, but for a personal helicopter, that doesn’t seem too bad. That’s

Audi R8

, Porsche 911

Turbo

S, and

McLaren 570GT

money, but nothing beats traffic like a personal aircraft.

Related Video:

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June 21, 2017

Why Phoenix’s Flights Can’t Take Off in Extreme Heat

Phoenix just provided another reason to hate flying: the heat. With temperatures there expected to hit 119 degrees Fahrenheit, airlines canceled more than 40 flights today.

Wait. What? Airplanes can’t fly because it’s too hot? That’s crazy.

No, not really. According to news reports, the heat poses a particular problem for the Bombardier CRJ airliners, which have a maximum operating temperature of 118 degrees. Bigger planes from Airbus and Boeing can handle 126 degrees or so.

OK. But why?

How Does an Airplane Fly?

Before you can understand how it can be too hot to fly, you have to understand how airplanes fly. Everyone likes to give a simple answer, like "It’s all about lift." Yes, that is true, but itâ€™s not terribly convincing. To really get at the physics involved here, you need to look at the momentum principle. The momentum principle says that the total force on an object is equal to the rate of change of momentum, where momentum is mass times velocity.

At this point, you may be thinking about the change in momentum of the plane. Don’t. Instead, consider the change in momentum of the air colliding with the plane. Imagine that each molecule of air is a tiny ball being hit by the airplane. This diagram I made for another post about flying might help:

The moving wing collides with the air balls (no, I won’t call them air molecules). The air balls change momentum, which requires a force. Since forces always come in pairs, the force that the wing exerts on the balls is the same magnitude as the force the balls exert on the wing. This does two things. First, it provides an upward force that some people call lift. Second, it provides a backward force called drag. You can’t achieve lift without drag.

Since the plane must move to generate lift, you need thrust to increase its speed. You also need thrust to balance the drag force once you are flying at the speed you want. Typically, a jet engine or propeller provide the thrust. I guess you could use a rocket engine if it made you happy, but whatever you use, this is how airplanes fly.

What Does This Have to do With Temperature?

If the wing just collides with one air ball, it won’t get much lift. To generate more lift, you need more collisions with air balls. Several things can achieve this. ( If you want to play with an air ball simulator, check out this one.) The pilot can fly faster, increasing the rate at which the air balls come in contact with the wing. Engineers can design wings with greater surface area, because a bigger wing hits more air balls. Another way of increasing surface area is to use a greater angle of attack by tilting the wings. Finally, a plane can have more collisions with air balls if there are more air balls. In other words, increasing the air density increases the lift.

Which brings me to air temperature.

Think about all the air balls around you right now. They are moving in every possible direction and at different speeds. And they collide with stuff. As the temperature increases, the average ball speed increases, too. With a greater (average) speed, the air ball collisions have more of an impact on other air balls. The increase in temperature causes the gas to expand. As the volume increases, the air density decreases.

Remember what I said about higher air density generating more lift? Well, the opposite is true, too: Less air density generates less lift. And that’s the problem in Arizona. The air density is simply too low for some of those planes to take off.

I hear you saying, "Well, why not compensate for the decreased air density by increasing the speed?" How do you do that on the ground? You’d need a longer runway. And so those flights got canceled. At least the airport has air conditioning.

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June 21, 2017

Why You Shouldn’t Run Your Car Low On Gas

Sometimes itâ€™s tempting to try to eke out as many miles from your tank of gas as possible. But you shouldnâ€™t do it. This video showing the innards of a fuel pump will help you understand why.

AMD EPYC 7000 Series Processor Set To Change The Game

Posted by

Nathan Kirsch |

Tue, Jun 20, 2017 – 3:00 PM

When AMD first dreamed up the Zen core architecture they did it to disrupt the datacenter platforms and they new they needed a 64-core to do that. AMD came up with a new architecture from the ground up and that would be AMDâ€™s new EPYC server chip (previously codenamed Naples). AMD EPYC hopes to chisel some market share away from Intel, who currently has 99% of this market. AMD has an uphill battle to overcome Intelâ€™s dominance, but it looks like they have an impressive new X86 server processor that stands to get them back into the game. AMDâ€™s timing to get back into datacenters couldnâ€™t have come at a better time as many corporations are facing big workloads with virtual functions. Older processors have a hard time with artificial intelligence applications and the need to bring some new hardware into the datacenter is growing daily.

AMD EPYC processors have up to 32 cores and 64 threads on a single socket (1P) and on dual-socket (2P) server platforms you are looking at 64 cores and 128 threads. When it comes to Each EPYC processor have an unprecedented 128 PCIe Gen 3 lanes for some amazing I/O configurations. This is more than double the PCIe Gen 3 lanes that Intel can offer, so it is clear that AMD was going big with EPYC. AMD wanted to competitive with Intel when it came to total cores, memory channels and PCIe lanes.

AMD will be releasing nine EPYC 7000 series processors in the weeks ahead and they will have 8, 16, 24 and 32 core configurations with speeds boosting up to 3.2GHz and a TDP of 180 Watts. AMD will be releasing the top half of the product lineup consisting of the 24- and 32-core processors immediately and then will follow that up by releasing the 8- and 16-core processors by the end of July 2017.

AMD EPYC 7000 Series Server Lineup:

CPU Name	CPU Cores	CPU Threads	L3 Cache	Base Clock	Boost Clock	TDP	Pricing Range
EPYC 7601	32	64	64 MB	2.2 GHz	3.2 GHz	180W	>$4,000 USD
EPYC 7551	32	64	64 MB	2.0 GHz	3.0 GHz	180W	>$3,200 USD
EPYC 7501	32	64	64 MB	2.0 GHz	3.0 GHz	155/170W	>$2,700 USD
EPYC 7451	24	48	48 MB	2.3 GHz	3.2 GHz	180W	>$2,400 USD
EPYC 7401	24	48	48 MB	2.0 GHz	3.0 GHz	155/170W	>$1,700 USD
EPYC 7351	16	32	32 MB	2.4 GHz	2.9 GHz	155/170W	>$1,100 USD
EPYC 7301	16	32	32 MB	2.2 GHz	2.7 GHz	155/170W	>$800 USD
EPYC 7281	16	32	32 MB	2.1 GHz	2.7 GHz	155/170W	>$600 USD
EPYC 7251	8	16	16 MB	2.1 GHz	2.9 GHz	120W	>$400 USD

The AMD EPYC 7601 is the flagship processor and it is a 32-core, 64-thread processor rated at 180 Watts with a 2.2GHz base clock and a 3.2GHz boost clock. That processor will cost around $4,200 each, but if you are willing to give upÂ 200MHz you can get the AMD EPYC 7501 for $2,700 or greater.

AMD is confident that the performance of EPYC processors will be up to snuff and shows a pair ofÂ EPYC 7601 processors performing 47% faster than the Intel Xeon ES-2699A v4 (22-core/44-core) processor that run $4,938.00 each. Not to be confused with the Intel Xeon ES-2699 V4 22-core processor that has slightly lower clock speeds that areÂ $2,175 eachÂ (street price). Intelâ€™s flagship model is using 145W TDP though versus the 180W TDP on AMDâ€™s flagship EPYC processors. AMD provided the performance slide based on SPECint_rate_base2006 that we posted above to show just how disruptive in this market segment they think EPYC will be.

Of the OEM servers that are built in the world today 25% have one socket populated. AMD sees that as wasted space and efficiency and they think EPYC is going to be able to dominate the 1S market.Â Â In fact, AMD believes that one of this processors could replace two mainstream Intel Xeon processorsÂ at the lower price points!

With one AMD EPYC socket delivering support for up to 32 cores, 2 TB of DDR4 memory and 128 PCI Express lanes it looks like AMD is trying to change the one socket market landscape!

CPU Name	CPU Cores	CPU Threads	L3 Cache	Base Clock	Boost Clock	TDP	Pricing Range
EPYC 7551P	32	64	64 MB	2.0 GHz	3.0 GHz	180W	>2000 USD
EPYC 7401P	24	48	48 MB	2.0 GHz	3.0 GHz	155/170W	>1000 USD
EPYC 7351P	16	32	32 MB	2.4 GHz	2.9 GHz	155/170W	>700 USD

AMD will be releasing three processors that are only designed for 1-socket use to further capitalize on this segment.

AMD EPYC is a Multi-Chip Module (MCM) processor and that was done to have a smaller die and better yield. The full featured processor has four CPU Complexes (CCX) that are built over AMDâ€™s Infinity Fabric in order to have the lowest latencies possible on this architecture.

AMD Infinity fabric is made of of two things; Scalable Control Fabric (SCF) that handles SoC and System level connectivity and control and then the ScalableÂ Data Fabric (SDF) that handles all the memory requirements for each core.

EPYC processors feature 8-channel DDR4 memory support and each socket supports 16 DIMMS of 2400MHz DDR4 memory. This is a first for the datacenter as Intel Skylake-EP feature 6-channel DDR4 memory support at the same clock speed. That means when it comes to memory bandwidth it looks like AMD is going to be dominant and that is important to organizations that run machine learning applications that love high memory bandwidth and lower latencies. Each CCX has two channels of memory connected to them and at 2667MHz you are looking at 21.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth per channel or 171 GB/sÂ of memory bandwidth per socket! Factor in that each AMD EPYC processor supports of to 2TB of memory (RDIMM, LRDIMM, NVDIMM-N, 3DS DIMM) and you have one heck of a memory system.

So, each EPYC processor can have up to 171 GB/s of memory bandwidth, but what about a 2P board? A pair of AMD EPYC processors have up to 290 GB/s memory bandwidth with 2667MT/s memory at 85% efficiency for a typical read/write scenario. Not bad and that is a ton of memory bandwidth!

AMD EPYC processors might have an MCM style design, but the engineers designed it to be fully connected and they have 42GB/sec of bi-directional bandwidth between each CCX connection and there are six connections thanks to the Infinity Control Fabric.

When it comes to socket-to-socket communication AMD went with 4 links between sockets in 2P configurations and each CPU die is connected to the peer die on the second socket. This means that just 2-hops are needed to communicate between chips. AMD is running 38GB/s bi-dir bandwidth for a total of 152GB/s data bandwidth between the sockets. This is twice the number of links than what Intel is running and AMD did this to help on NUMA applications. AMD has impressive bisection bandwidth between the two sockets and they need to since the data is being distributed between the two socket sub-system.

Each AMD EPYC processor has 64MB of L3 cache that is 16-way associative and can be accessed quickly with a just 35 cycles. The L3 cache is also made up of 3 slices by low-order address interleave. Ever core on the EPYC processor can access the L3 cache.

The 128 PCIe lanes on AMD EPYC mean that you can have 8 x16 links available for board makers to design around. AMD allows for 8 devices to be connected per each x16 link grouping. With EPYC you have endless I/O solutions as you can have 32 PCIe x4 NVMe drives connected to one processor or 128 x1 slots for the ultimate cryptocurrency mining machine. Youâ€™d just need a massive rack to hold all the cards, ludicrously long x1 to x16 PCIe adapter modules and about a 19,000 Watt power supply if you had 128 cards running at around 150 Watts.

The AMD Integrated Server Controller Hub (SCH) supports four USB 3.0 ports, two SMB ports, 6 l2C ports and more. This allows AMD to have a single chip solution.

So, the final take home message here is that AMD EPYC is a beast! A 2P system running DDR4 2666 MHz memory will give you a strong balanced system with what appears to be enoughÂ bandwidth for data to flow on-die, within the socket and between sockets.

AMD is already working with ASUS, Gigabyte, Tyan, HEC, Inventec, Dell EMC, Microsoft, SuperMicro, HewlettPackard Enterprise and others to bring platforms to market for the AMD EPYC 7000 Series processor. Hopefully this momentum will continue as it looks like the EPYC 7000 Series processors can really bring good changes to the data center!

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June 21, 2017

Sega Forever makes Genesis classics free on mobile

We have no shortage of shiny, life-like HD games these days, but if you’d like to revisit older titles from a bygone era, Sega has got your back. The video game company has just officially launched the first wave of the Sega Forever collection with five titles meant to begin "a retro revolution that will transport players back through two decades of console gaming." Starting today, the 1991 version of Sonic the Hedgehog, fan-favorite RPG Phantasy Star II, classic arcade-style beat ’em up Comix Zone, platformer Kid Chameleon and Greek mythology-themed beat ’em up Altered Beast will be available on Google Play and iTunes as free ad-supported games. If you have an iPhone or an iPad, your games will even come accompanied by iMessage sticker packs.

Sure, Sonic has been out for mobile since 2015, but now you can get its ad-free version for $2. All the other games will also cost you that much, though take note that you can play them offline, save and see your name on the leaderboard even if you play the ad-supported versions. Sega says it plans to add new titles to the collection every two weeks, including official emulations and ported games from all its console eras, so expect to see a lot more than these five in the future.

In fact, the company also recently made Crazy Taxi free-to-play with the option to remove ads for two bucks. It’s unclear why the company didn’t make it one of the launch titles, but we’ll bet it will also be part of the Forever collection. You can access the games on Google Play through the links below — take note that they will go live in Asia first and will start becoming available in Western markets on June 22nd:

Source: Sega Forever (Facebook), (Twitter), (Instagram)

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June 21, 2017

Airbus imagines a faster helicopter with wings

Airbus has showed off a new helicopter concept at the Paris Airshow that could give operators everything they want: speed, versatility and economy. The Racer (rapid and cost-effective rotorcraft) features a main rotor like a regular helicopter, but uses pusher propellers to accelerate it forward and a new "box-wing" system for extra lift. As a result, it’ll power along at up to 400 km/h (250 mph) while being able to take off on a dime like a regular chopper.

The Racer is based on Airbus Helicopters’ X3 prototype helicopter, which set a helicopter speed record at 255 knots in level flight in 2013. Like that model, it uses the main rotor for STOL take-off capabilities, but once the propellers start pushing forward, the main rotor slows down and the box wings take on some of the lifting chores. As such, it works a bit like a hybrid gyrocopter, though such aircraft use unpowered main rotors and powered pusher props.

It will improve on the X3 in a few areas. It uses a single shaft (with a gearbox) and twin-engine Safran RTM322 engines, making it easier to maintain. The concept also moves the propellers behind the wings, isolating passengers from noise and vibration — an idea it patented back in 2014.

To further reduce noise and increase speeds, Airbus replaced the rear tail rotor with a simple tail wing. Anti-torque for the main rotor will instead come from the counter-rotating propellers, or "lateral rotors," as Airbus calls them. The aim is to offer 50 percent more speed than a normal helicopter, with just 25 percent more cost, saving operators over 20 percent per mile, per passenger.

Regular helicopters can normally fly up to around just 160 mph, because at cruising speeds, the advancing main rotor blades have a much higher relative speed than the retreating ones. As a result, the retreating blades can approach a "stalled," non-flying condition if the speed is too high, while the advancing blades can be buffeted by shock waves as they hit near-supersonic speeds.

The Airbus X3 and Racer get around this by decreasing the main rotor RPM by around 15 percent at high cruising speeds. The pusher props over the thrusting chores, while the wings can handle as much as 80 percent of the lift, helping the next-gen copters fly faster and more economically. "It will pave the way for new time-sensitive services for 2030 and beyond, setting new benchmarks for high-speed helicopter transportation," said Airbus Helicopters CEO Guillaume Faury in a statement.

Via: Design Boom

Source: Airbus

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