Month: August 2022

Well, it looks like Micron has officially commenced the mass production of its next-gen GDDR6X memory chips offering speeds of up to 24 Gbps.

Micron’s 24 Gbps GDDR6X Memory Enter Mass Production, Coming To NVIDIA’s Next-Gen GPUs Later This Year

Micron announced earlier this year that they were readying their brand new 24 Gbps GDDR6X memory modules for future graphics cards. The announcement came at a time when NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 Ti had just entered the market for which Micron had produced 16 Gb DRAM modules rated at up to 21 Gbps speeds.

Now, Micron is going to offer even faster pin speeds of 24 Gbps in a 16 Gb density which means that once again, we will be looking at 2 GB VRAM capacities and up to 24 GB capacities across a 384-bit bus interface. Just like the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti which featured all of its memory modules on the front of the PCB, the next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 would feature its 12 GDDR6X modules on the front, allowing for more cooling compared to solutions that feature memory modules on the back of the PCB such as the RTX 3090 (Non-Ti).

Although the full 24 Gbps speeds aren’t expected to be utilized by the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (rumored to offer up to 21 Gbps die speeds), the 24 Gbps GDDR6X memory modules can offer up to 1,152 TB/s of bandwidth which is an increase of 14% versus the 1,008 TB/s offered on current 21 Gbps GDDR6 memory modules.

Following are the bandwidth numbers you can expect with a 24 Gbps DRAM solution:

• 512-bit solution – 1.5TB/s
• 384-bit solution – 1.1TB/s
• 320-bit solutions – 960GB/s
• 256-bit solution – 768GB/s
• 192-bit solution – 576GB/s
• 128-bit solutions – 384GB/s
• 92-bit solutions – 276GB/s
• 64-bit solutions – 192GB/s

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is going to be amongst the first next-gen graphics card to utilize the latest GDDR6X memory modules when it launches later this year. Given that these chips are likely going to be downclocked to hit the power targets, there will be a huge overclocking potential for enthusiasts to take advantage of.

AMD on the other hand is likely to depend on its partner, Samsung, for its next-gen RDNA 3 lineup. Samsung is also working on a 24 Gbps GDDR6 memory module which is expected to hit mass production soon.

NewsSource: Harukaze5719

Two Fridays ago, just before I left for a week-long vacation to Florida, I went through my pretrip digital routine. I set my Slack status to “Vacationing” with a palm tree emoji and paused notifications until further notice. I turned on Gmail’s auto-responder. I deleted a bunch of apps from my phone that would only serve to distract me from poolside bliss.

The last thing I did was pick up my iPhone and create a new Focus mode. Focus, in case you didn’t know, is a new-ish iOS feature designed to let you quickly switch your phone from one context to another. You can set it to shut up your work apps on the weekends, turn off notifications while you’re reading or sleeping, or only alert you to new emails from 9AM to 5PM and not a moment after. It’s really just an extension of Do Not Disturb, but it gives you more specific control and lets you have different setups for different situations.

My new Focus mode was called “Vacation Mode.” The goal was simple: I wanted to make sure people who needed me could reach me and that I’d be alerted if someone stole my credit card or my house burned down. Short of that, I wanted my phone to shut up and leave me alone. And, ideally, I also wanted it to actively prevent me from using it whenever possible.

Unfortunately, the reality of Focus falls well short of this idea. The only thing it really controls is your notifications: you can choose specific people whose calls and messages get through and the specific apps that are allowed to light up your phone. This is a good idea; it’s just too much work. You have to manually scroll through all of your contacts and then all of your apps, in alphabetical order, to pick which ones to exclude from the Focus blockade. (The app does offer some AI-powered suggestions in the app picker, but I found them basically useless. No, phone, Vacation Mode does not require calendar notifications.)

Here’s where I eventually landed: I allowed phone calls from “All Contacts” and added Messages, Reminders, WhatsApp, Home, and my banking apps to the list of allowed apps. I also turned off the toggle for “Time Sensitive” notifications because, at least in my experience, there’s nothing remotely time-sensitive about the “Time Sensitive” notifications I get. I turned off all notification badges, too. It wasn’t a perfect setup, but it meant I’d get all my texts and calls from people I know and be alerted to crucial stuff.

Turning on Vacation Mode drastically reduced my phone’s buzzing and lighting up over the course of a week. It was wonderful, and I didn’t miss anything I actually cared about. But all those notifications Focus mode blocks? They weren’t gone. They were just grouped on my lock screen, one tiny swipe away. And so, every time I picked up my phone, I found myself bombarded by them anyway. When I picked up my phone to check the weather, it was like being transported back to the office, with all the news alerts and Slack updates and unimportant email alerts reappearing — and then, oh fine, I’ll just look at TikTok for a second.

There’s this underlying tension that makes Focus hard to get right. Apple surely knows that showing you a bunch of stuff you don’t want is less of a problem than failing to show you the one truly important thing you needed to see. As a result, the feature is permanently stuck in a place of careful caution. But if Apple really wants to help users take back control of their phones, it needs to make Focus much more aggressive. Most of the tools to do so even already exist! Focus should integrate with Screen Time so that I could say “while I’m in Vacation Mode, only let me use Twitter five minutes a day” instead of having to change that setting separately. Rather than just hiding notifications, Focus should stop them entirely, as if I’d gone into the Notifications settings page and toggled them off. Focus mode currently lets you hide entire pages of your homescreen, but it should let you hide specific apps or widgets or even just rearrange things as soon as you turn on Focus. I don’t just want distractions slightly hidden on my phone while I’m on vacation — I want them gone. All these things should be part of a whole, not partitioned off from each other. And they shouldn’t feel like the Rube Goldberg machine they currently are.

Image: Apple

The good news is that it looks like this is where Apple is headed. In iOS 16, for instance, you’ll be able to set up different lock screens for different Focus modes, and it’s working on improving both the setup process and the recommendations you get along the way. The new software also allows you to opt out of things rather than opting in, so instead of saying “only these six apps can reach me,” you can say “everything but these six apps can reach me.” That’ll make getting started with Focus modes a lot easier.

The real key to the future of Focus, though, is the new Focus filter API, which gives developers the ability to change their apps in response to settings you’ve enabled or tweaked in Focus modes. Apple’s own apps are a good guide for what that might look like: in iOS 16, I’ll be able to tweak Vacation Mode to hide my work events in the Calendar app or silence my work email in Mail but still get stuff sent to my personal account. Apple has suggested to developers that they might want to use Focus filters to let people hide specific accounts, turn off their in-app alerts, or even completely change the layout of the app depending on what a person is doing. (You can imagine, for instance, a navigation or music app that might want to look different as soon as you turn on the “Driving” Focus mode.) “Fundamentally, if your app can surface different content based on context,” Apple’s Teja Kondapalli told developers during a WWDC session in June, “you may be able to employ Focus filters to enhance user experience.”

Sounds great, right? Maybe in a year, I’ll be able to turn on Vacation Mode and have my Slack status automatically change, my auto-responder automatically engage, and all my notifications go away except the ones that really matter. There are two problems with this strategy, though. One, it assumes developers will willingly build less engaging versions of their app with fewer notifications and badges and incitements to pick up your phone. That’s not going to happen. And two, it still puts all the work in users’ hands: you’ll have to configure the Focus filters for each app individually.

Ultimately, though, I do recommend doing the work to set up a few Focus modes. I have a couple of them now, including one that automatically turns on whenever I open the Kindle app so I don’t get distracted by notifications when I’m reading. The feature is both not powerful enough and too complicated to use, but it’s a step in the right direction toward giving me actual control over my phone. I’m back at work, but I’m still in Vacation Mode, and my phone is still mostly quiet. And I might keep it that way.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funds most of the health and medical research conducted in Australia – and hence pays the salaries of most of our health and medical researchers.

Recently, a decline in the level of NHMRC funding has meant that fewer grant applications are being funded and this, along with an assessment system which allows bias and chance to influence the outcomes of applications, is leading to a de-moralized and depleted medical research workforce, according to Professor Tony Blakely, from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne.

In the article below, originally published in The Conversation, Blakely discusses how the NHMRC could improve the way in which it awards grants in order to support our health and medical research workforce improve the value that their work delivers to the Australian community.

Tony Blakely writes:

Most health research in Australia is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which distributes around $800 million each year through competitive grant schemes. An additional $650 million a year is funded via the Medical Research Future Fund, but this focuses more on big-picture “missions” than researcher-initiated projects.

Ten years ago, around 20% of applications for NHMRC funding were successful. Now, only about 10–15% are approved.

Over the same ten-year period, NHMRC funding has stayed flat while prices and population have increased. In inflation-adjusted and per capita terms, the NHMRC funding available has failed by 30%.

As growing numbers of researchers compete for dwindling real NHMRC funding, research risks becoming “a high-status gig economy”. To fix it, we need to spend more on research – and we need to spend it smarter.

Increased funding needed

To keep pace with other countries, and to keep health research a viable career, Australia first of all needs to increase the total amount of research funding.

Between 2008 and 2010, Australia matched the average among OECD countries of investing 2.2% of GDP in research and development. More recently, Australia’s spending has fallen to 1.8%, while the OECD average has risen to 2.7%.

When as few as one in ten applications is funded, there is a big element of chance in who succeeds.

Think of it like this: applications are ranked in order from best to worst, and then funded in order from the top down. If a successful application’s ranking is within say five percentage points of the funding cut-off, it might well have missed out if the assessment process were run again – because the process is always somewhat subjective and will never produce exactly the same results twice.

So 5% of the applications are “lucky” to get funding. When only 10% of applications get funding, that means half of the successful ones were lucky. But if there is more money to go around and 20% of applicants are funded, the lucky 5% are only a quarter of the successful applicants.

This is a simplistic explanation, but you can see that the lower the percentage of grants funded, the more of a lottery it becomes.

This increasing element of “luck” is demoralizing for the research workforce of Australia, leading to depletion of academics and brain drain.

The ‘application-centric’ model

As well as increasing total funding, we need to look at how the NHMRC allocates these precious funds.

In the past five years, the NHMRC has moved to a system called “application-centric” funding. Five (or so) reviewers are selected for each grant and asked to independently score applications.

There are usually no panels for discussion and scoring of applications – which is what used to happen.

The advantages of application-centric assessment include (hopefully) getting the best experts on a particular grant to assess it, and a less logistically challenging task for the NHMRC (convening panels is hard work and time-consuming).

Disadvantages of application-centric assessment

However, application-centric assessment has disadvantages.

First, assessor reviews are not subject to any scrutiny. In a panel system, differences of opinion and errors can be managed through discussion.

Second, many assessors will be working in a “grey zone”. If you are an expert in the area of ​​a proposal, and not already working with the applicants, you are likely to be competing with them for funding. This may result in unconscious bias or even deliberate manipulation of scores.

And third, there is simple “noise”. Imagine each score an assessor gives is made up of two components: the “true score” an application would receive on some unobservable gold standard assessment, plus or minus some “noise” or random error. That noise is probably half or more of the current variation between assessor scores.

So how do we reduce the influence of both assessor bias and simple “noise”?

First, assessor scores need to be “standardized” or “normalized”. This means rescaling all assessors’ scores to have the same mean (standardisation) or same mean and standard deviation (normalisation).

This is a no-brainer. You can use a pretty simple Excel model (I have done it) to show this would substantially reduce the noise.

Second, the NHMRC could use other statistical tools to reduce both bias and noise.

One method would be to take the average ranking of applications across five methods:

• with the raw scores (ie as done now)
• with standardized scores
• with normalized scores
• dropping the lowest score for each application
• dropping the highest score for each application.

The last two “drop one score” methods aim to remove the influence of potentially biased assessors.

The applications that make the cutoff rank on all the methods are funded. Those that are always beneath the threshold are not funded.

Applications that make the cut on some tests but fail on others could be sent out for further scrutiny – or the NHMRC could judge them by their average rank across the five methods.

This proposal won’t fix the problem with the total amount of funding available, but it would make the system fairer and less open to game-playing.

A fairer system

Researchers know any funding system contains an element of chance. One study of Australian researchers found they would be happy with a funding system that, if run twice in parallel, would see at least 75% of the funded grants funded in both runs.

I strongly suspect (and have modeled) that the current NHMRC system is achieving well below this 75% repeatability target.

Further improvements to the NHMRC system are possible and needed. Assessors could provide comments, as well as scores, to applicants. Better training for assessors would also help. And the biggest interdisciplinary grants should really be assessed by panels.

No funding system will be perfect. And when funding rates are low, those imperfections stand out more. But, at the moment, we are neither making the system as robust as we can nor sufficiently guarding against wayward scoring that goes under the radar.

See here for Croakey’s archive of stories on medical research

News

Today Square Enix released a series of animated “starter guide” videos dedicated to its super-popular MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV.

Today Square Enix released a series of animated “starter guide” videos dedicated to its super-popular MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV.

The videos focus on a new player named Kaz as he’s guided through his first steps in Eorzea by the scholar Mayra.

The series includes seven videos and it’s available in English, German, and French. Interestingly, Japan has its own completely different series released a few days ago.

You can watch it all below and learn the ropes of Final Fantasy XIV.

If you’re interested, below you can read a full description for each episode directly from the press release.

• Series Introduction – Join veteran adventurer Mayra as she guides new player Kaz to the world of FINAL FANTASY XIV.
• Episode 1: The Adventure Begins – Kaz creates his character and takes his first steps in Eorzea. Mayra introduces Kaz to the map and different quest types so he can enjoy the main story without getting lost.
• Episode 2: Meet Your FATE – Mayra introduces Kaz to class quests and how he can unlock different classes starting at level 10. Kaz encounters his first FATE, an open world encounter where everyone nearby can take part.
• Episode 3: Hall of the Novice – Kaz learns how to organize his cluttered inventory and discovers the Recommended Gear feature. Mayra takes Kaz to the Hall of the Novice where he gets a crash course on party combat and a new set of gear.
• Episode 4: Do Your Duty – Putting his newly acquired skills to the test, Kaz teams up with Mayra to form a light party with the Duty Finder to tackle his first dungeon. Kaz learns how dungeon rewards are distributed via Need, Greed, and Pass.
• Episode 5: Trial by Fire – Kaz forms his own party and takes on his first trial: an epic boss battle. As his renown from him grows, Kaz is recruited by one of three Grand Companies of Eorzea, and unlocks his very own chocobo mount at level 20.
• Episode 6: The End of the Beginning- Mayra regales Kaz with all he has learned so far and all he still has to look forward to in the Free Trial… and beyond!

Final Fantasy XIV is currently available for PlayStation 4, PS5, and PC. The Endwalker expansion has been released a few months ago and you can read our recent review.

You can also read more about the changes planned for the longer term, including a refresh of the graphics, and about the upcoming update 6.2 “Buried Memory,” which will introduce the “Island Sanctuary” feature and more.

Incidentally, the traditional seasonal event Moonfire Faire is about to begin in the next few days.