Stephen Nellis

Try a full reboot. If that doesn’t work, throw your laptop in the nearest body of water and leave it for 24 hours, then send to IT.

It’s all about how it’s managed by IT. A dedicated enough IT department can ruin an Apple computer, though usually not to the same degree. (I also had the Great Reuters Trackpad Freakout of 2024 yesterday..)

But the company is hopeful that it has found an approach that it will work. And that's why Google did not give a headline number of logical qubits, which they said would land between 10-20 with the current chip. But Google said it's more focused on finding an approach that will scale.

The key breakthrough was finding an array arrangement of qubits such that Google can continuously scale up the number of qubits and drive error rates down. Google say sit still has several orders of magnitude reduction to go before its next milestone.

Google says it has cracked a quantum computing challenge with new chip Google on Monday said that it has overcome a key challenge in quantum computing with a new generation of chip, solving a computing problem in five minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.

Today, Google said it has made another breakthrough in quantum computing, solving a problem in a few minutes that would take somewhere between a billion years and longer than the age of the universe on a classical machine - www.reuters.com/technology/g...

I’m at the IEDM conference in San Francisco today and tomorrow - if you want to talk process tech, come find me!

Wow, that sucks! I should probably be more paranoid!

Oh no, that is awful! How did it happen? At a gig?

My biggest ever regret was selling the first really nice guitar I ever owned - an American Standard Strat in Lake Placid Blue - to help fund a Les Paul Classic during a heavy metal phase.

Exclusive: Exxon lobbyist investigated over hack-and-leak of environmentalist emails, sources say The FBI has been investigating a longtime Exxon Mobil consultant over the contractor's alleged role in a hack-and-leak operation that targeted hundreds of the oil company’s biggest critics, according to three people familiar with the matter.

This is a story a lot of reporters have been chasing:

Starting in 2015, a massive cyberespionage campaign targeted some of America's most prominent environmentalists.

Now, we can reveal that the FBI has been probing whether a longtime Exxon lobbyist was involved.

www.reuters.com/business/ene...

We have yet to see the last of the major grants, so we also do not yet know who else will get a haircut to adjust for this DoD contract. TSMC did not. Will Samsung? Will smaller firms get shaved? (end)

So Intel had been in line for $8.5 billion in grants. Instead, it ended up w/ a $7.86 billion grant, and a $3 billion DoD contract. We know very little about that contract (it's classified) so we don't know how comparable it is to the CHIPS Act money, or what Intel's costs will be to fulfill it.

‘I don’t know how this happened’: A $3B secret program undermining Biden’s tech policy The Commerce Department was expecting to hand out new federal money to high-tech research. Congress sent it to a secretive natsec program instead.

@politico.com did a lot of reporting on how nearly 10% of money that was supposed to revitalize the U.S. chip industry got re-routed to a defense project - it was essentially at Intel's behest, according to Politico's reporting -

www.politico.com/news/2024/05...

...so a danger in having specialized "defense only" factories is they'll either go out of date very quickly compared to commercial fabs, and/or be incredibly expensive. I'm not here to settle that debate, but I will point out that it was controversial to see a defense program funded by CHIPS Act.

...or specialized facilities that only do defense work. As most folks in the chip industry will tell you, the demand from the defense sector is just not that large compared to the broader industry, and if you'll recall, the chip industry is all about scale....

This was framed in some quarters as a stumble for Intel, but I've been wondering whether it was instead a masterstroke of political engineering. There's been a long-running debate about whether it's better to build a defense supply chain from commercial fabs...

Intel expects US to shave chip-making grant, sources say Intel expects the U.S. government to reduce a preliminary subsidy of $8.5 billion to build more chip factories, two sources familiar with the matter said on Monday, weeks after the company received a separate $3 billion deal with the Pentagon.

This shave off was expected, and was in part due to Intel winning a large contract with the Defense Department for $3 billion that came out of the same pot of federal money - www.reuters.com/technology/i...

US finalizes $7.86 billion chips manufacturing award for Intel The U.S. Commerce Department said Tuesday it was finalizing a $7.86 billion government subsidy for Intel , down from $8.5 billion announced in March after the California-based chips maker won a separate $3 billion award from the Pentagon.

Earlier today, the US government finalized its cash grant award to Intel, which came it at $7.86 billion, a lower figure than the preliminary announcement of $8.5 billion:

www.reuters.com/technology/u...

YouTube video by NVIDIA Developer Audio AI Fugatto Generates Sound from Text | NVIDIA Research

And here's a demo (with what sounds like an AI generated Jensen Huang voiceover?) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj1S...

Nvidia shows AI model that can modify voices, generate novel sounds Nvidia on Monday showed a new artificial intelligence model for generating music and audio that can modify voices and generate novel sounds - technology aimed at the producers of music, films and video games.

Nvidia has demonstrated a model that can generate new sounds and music from a range of inputs - including existing audio: www.reuters.com/technology/a...

Nvidia fourth-quarter revenue estimate fails to impress Wall Street Nvidia forecast fourth-quarter revenue slightly above estimates on Wednesday, but still failed to meet lofty expectations of some investors who have made it the world's most valuable firm.

Nvidia is still forecasting growth, but it's lower than some had hoped, mostly because of supply issues - story with @chernandburn.bsky.social and Arsheeya Bajwa over at @reuters.com - www.reuters.com/technology/a...

tap tap....this on? Hi, Stephen here, covering semiconductors and technology for Reuters.