The point about the difficulties with Arm may be fair comment but the positioning and outlook of this post is decidedly weird. It seems to pretend that competitive desktop Arm processors already exist and ignores the existence of Arm ACPI.
On the conclusion - x86 didn't eventually win in smartphones.
And of course having a choice of processor designs from precisely two firms is absolutely something that we should continue to be happy with (and the post ignores RISC-V).
The Z80 itself was "inspired" by the 8080, notably having dual 8080 register sets. It might be regarded as a "clear" (sic) room reimplemention/enhancement of the 8080 given that it was the same 8080 designers who left Intel to found Zilog and create the Z80.
I had a part-time job as cleaner when I was younger. We used Henry hoovers. They were used and sometimes abused 5 days a week... during the almost 3 years I was there, I think I only saw hoses and the floor head breaking.
So after going through a few hoovers at home from different brands, I bought a Henry for £100 3 years ago. The nose/hose detached after a few months. Not ideal, but I've fixed that in minutes with a bit of superglue. No other issues since then, no indications that it's about to fail.
I don't know if quality is still exactly the same as before, and they're certainly a bit heavier and noisier than some alternatives, but if you want something that lasts, get a Henry, not a Dyson.
Never understood the hype with Dyson. I suspect that like many successful hardware businesses, their story is mainly of brand strength, not of actual product quality.
If you pick up a Dyson vacuum you'll notice that it just feels flimsy in the hand. I think they're aggressively cost-engineered- the material you save by designing molded parts to be minimally thick has got to be like tens of cents to a couple dollars over the whole machine...
The brand is built on Dyson being a super genius inventor. He might be ingenious but he's applied to devices where it's not really needed and with unpalatable trade-offs.
In the UK at least his actions (offshoring, Brexit and tax) have probably significantly devalued the brand with a key part of his core demographic.
> Then in maybe one of the best rug pulls of all time, in July they quietly
changed their valuation to $500 million. A 75% cut in four months. I’ve
never seen anything like that since the 2008 financial crisis.
Not sure where the author is getting their information from but there is seemingly little correlation between the investment rounds quoted in this post and other online sources. No mention for example of the Series E that valued Groq at $6.9bn.
It’s good that you have done that but does that section make sense? It says there was a 75% revenue cut, but the prior number is valuation, not revenue. Or was valuation and revenue the same at that time (seems unlikely)?
Edit: some searching about suggests that Groq initially projected $2 billion in revenue for 2025, later cutting that forecast to $500 million. That appears to have be what this article is trying to say.
Cook’s greatest achievement - Apple’s supply chain - has, as set out in the ‘Apple in China’ book [1], turned into Apple’s biggest risk and weakness. The next CEO won’t be worrying about Siri or Vision Pro; they’ll be trying to deal with Apple’s reliance on China.
I sure hope Cook and teams have been actively working on this for a decade already.
The book is interesting in showing both a lack of early awareness of this weakness, AND some people clearly noticing, AND Apple being very powerful and resourceful when it notices a problem.
> In my view, the key features of a microprocessor are that it provides a CPU on a single chip (including ALU, control functions, and registers such as a program counter) and that it is programmable.
Which means that, pioneering as it was, this wasn’t a microprocessor.
Ken’s post is terrific btw for an overview of the candidates for the title of first microprocessor.
On the conclusion - x86 didn't eventually win in smartphones.
And of course having a choice of processor designs from precisely two firms is absolutely something that we should continue to be happy with (and the post ignores RISC-V).
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