[HN Gopher] AMD Athlon K7 Easter egg has a revolver and map of T...
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AMD Athlon K7 Easter egg has a revolver and map of Texas etched
onto the chip
Author : FirmwareBurner
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-02-08 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| batch12 wrote:
| > The gun and speeding bullet? Well, that's anyone's guess.
|
| Seems like a Superman reference to me.
| qclibre22 wrote:
| Fastest gun in the west?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| As an europoor my American geography is rusty but afaik Texas
| isn't really in the west, but more in the middle-south, no?
| serf wrote:
| Texas at one point in history represented the frontier-
| border for 19th century US expansion.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| "The West" refers to everything west of the Appalachian
| Mountains or the Mississippi River. It comes from the early
| eras of the USA when those portions of the country were
| unexplored and perceived to be "wild". This is related to
| why the "Midwest" starts at Ohio.
| quantumfissure wrote:
| It's arbitrary. We generally refer to "West" as 'West of
| the Mississippi River'. Mid-West as Ohio-ish to around the
| Mississippi River (i.e. Midwest (Ohio, Indiana); Upper
| Midwest (Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois)).
|
| A lot of us still refer to Texas; Iowa; Nebraska; Missouri;
| etc... as just 'mid-west'. California, Oregon as 'West
| Coast'; Washington as 'Upper/Northwest Coast'; Arizona/New
| Mexico as Southwest; and Wyoming/Nevada as West.
|
| Goes back to the days of expansionism in the early to
| mid-1800's, Texas and the Mississippi River were the
| "East/West" dividing line. Texas, Wyoming, New Mexico,
| Arizona, and Oklahoma also have the standard 'west' cartoon
| and movie stereotype (cowboys; saloons; tumbleweed; desert;
| etc...). In the mid-west it's more field or forest. And
| freezing cold wind. Lots of freezing cold wind.
| mulmen wrote:
| I was born and raised in Idaho and have lived in Seattle
| for over 10 years and I have never heard anyone say
| "Upper coast". Washington is part of the "west coast" or
| "northwest".
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I live in Houston. Let me try to frame this for you.
|
| Texas as an idea is considered part of the American west,
| but as with most things it's more complicated than that.
|
| Texas is absurdly large -- there's 800+ miles between the
| Louisiana border and El Paso, at the western edge.
|
| Eastern Texas starts out looking like the rest of the
| southeast -- lush, green, piney. The coastal part, or at
| least the part closer to Louisiana, is very like Louisiana
| with plenty of wetlands and live oaks and whatnot.
|
| But that thins out quickly, and within a couple hundred
| miles Texas starts to look more like "movie Texas" and
| becomes more stereotypically West.
|
| (A fun flip side to all this is that a simple majority of
| Texans -- which is to say, just slightly more than 50% --
| live in the metro area of Houston or the combined metro
| area of Dallas-Ft Worth. The bulk of the rest live in and
| around Austin or San Antonio. Almost NO ONE lives in Texas
| between San Antonio and the western side of the state,
| comparatively speaking.)
| gottorf wrote:
| > Texas is absurdly large -- there's 800+ miles between
| the Louisiana border and El Paso
|
| In fact, Austin, the state capital, is farther away from
| El Paso than it is to any of the states (or country) that
| Texas borders. Or put another way: El Paso, which is in
| the middle of a desert, is closer to the Pacific Ocean
| (via the Gulf of California) than its own state capital.
|
| While we're on the subject of the vastness of Texas, Big
| Bend National Park is a true wonder and definitely worth
| a visit.
| emptybits wrote:
| > Texas is absurdly large
|
| I _love_ your state and hope to be there for the 2024
| Total Eclipse in April. (RV parking for a night, anyone,
| lol?)
|
| But yeah, driving the great state of Texas takes some
| time, doesn't it? o_O
|
| I was surprised when I started to scroll maps and trip
| plan .. and I'm saying this as a Canadian -- most of our
| 10 provinces and all of our 3 territories are bigger in
| area than Texas but a whole lot less populated. Looking
| forward to Texas splendour...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I don't think it happens much with North Americans, but
| it's pretty common for folks from farther away (Europe,
| Asia) to think they could "day trip" between Texas
| cities, or out to Big Bend or whatever. It's just not
| reasonable. The distances are too far.
|
| I _have_ done a day trip to Austin before, for a business
| meeting booked on short notice, but that 's 170ish miles
| one way. It sucked. And no, rail isn't really a usable
| thing.
|
| In 30 years in Texas, I have FLOWN from Houston to Dallas
| more often than I've driven there.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Texas is absurdly large_
|
| You weren't kidding. I just checked a map and Texas is as
| wide as France and Germany combined. No wonder Americans
| can afford to all have single family homes with so much
| space.
| gottorf wrote:
| > No wonder Americans can afford to all have single
| family homes with so much space
|
| I live in one of the many states both smaller and less
| densely populated than Texas. As someone who immigrated
| to the US from a tightly-packed Asian country, the
| argument against immigration on the basis of "there's no
| room" never made any sense...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| So the US has a system of higher-speed expressways we
| call Interstates. They all have numbers.
|
| The southernmost east-west Interstate is called 10
| ("I-10"), and runs from Jacksonville, FL (which is on the
| Atlantic Ocean) to Los Angeles, CA (which is, obviously,
| on the Pacific).
|
| These highways have frequent, standardized signs on them
| from time to time to tell you how far away upcoming
| cities, towns, or even roads are in miles. Just inside
| the eastern border of Texas, on the westbound side,
| there's a highway sign that I'm pretty sure just exists
| as a flex or brag.
|
| It says something like -- and my numbers may be slightly
| off, but they're roughly correct at least:
|
| Beaumont 18
|
| El Paso 857
|
| The gist is "one place in this state, on this road,
| straight ahead, is 20 minutes away; another place in this
| state, on this road, straight ahead, is MOST OF A
| THOUSAND MILES AWAY."
|
| I _believe_ it 's true that crossing Texas on I-10
| constitutes about 1/3 of the distance across the US --
| like, it's about 1/3 from Jacksonville to the border,
| about 1/3 across Texas, and about 1/3 from El Paso in the
| west to LA. There's a highway sign on Interstate 10 just
| inside the TX/LA border, and I'm pretty sure it just
| exists as a flex.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Texas is absurdly large
|
| The second largest state in the union.
| anamax wrote:
| > Texas is absurdly large -- there's 800+ miles between
| the Louisiana border and El Paso, at the western edge.
|
| California is 1000+ miles north-south, albeit only 560
| miles east-west.
|
| And Alaska is several Texas' in size.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Alaska is several Texas' in size
|
| To the chagrin of Texans, were Alaska to be split in
| half, Texas would be the third-largest state ;-)
| ubermonkey wrote:
| The existence of OTHER very large states doesn't make
| Texas NOT large.
| sam_goody wrote:
| A Texan once boasted to an Israeli about the size of his
| fields: "If I get in my car at dawn and drive all day, I
| still won't have reached the end of my fields!"
|
| The Israeli sighs and replies, "Yeah, I know. I once had
| a car like that."
|
| (For comparison, Israel is a whole country, and in some
| places is less than 6 miles wide total!)
| jprete wrote:
| The other answers are good, but calling Texas part of "the
| West" can be justified even now on the basis of population
| density. The median north-south population line has not
| reached the Mississippi even as of 2020 - it's in
| southwestern Indiana.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_center_of_the_United
| _...
| duskwuff wrote:
| The reference is to Superman, who was often described in
| Golden Age comics as "faster than a speeding bullet".
| BenoitP wrote:
| Fun factoid: Chips need to have patterns, even where there is
| nothing to print! This is because you want the acid etchant to be
| consumed the same way everywhere. So you choose a random
| repeating pattern that has the same density as your other signals
| density; it will serves no purpose other than consuming nitric
| acid. But you have freedom in choosing the exact shape.
|
| Source: a friend of mine working at a chip company 20 years ago.
| They considered disparaging the competition billions of time in
| tiny 250nm letters. It occurred right after a patent dispute
| where it was highly likely they had reverse-engineered part of
| their design. A disdainful message only their competitor would
| read, to the tune of "we know you're cheating, and fart in your
| general direction". It was mostly a joke though, they did not go
| through with it.
|
| ----
|
| AMD's one is only in one corner of the chip, so I don't think it
| applies here.
|
| ----
|
| EDIT: this was a long time ago. Seems like filling has evolved
| quite a lot [1]. Timing, signal integrity, and probably
| capacitance too are so constrained nowadays you can no longer
| write a personalized message to your competitors.
|
| [1]
| https://semiengineering.com/knowledge_centers/materials/fill...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Then why no anime girls etched in chips yet?
| diggan wrote:
| Seems we're slowly getting there, we've only gotten as far as
| to making the casing/fan covers "anime inspired" so far,
| ignoring individual custom mods of course.
|
| - Radeon RX 7900 Sakura - https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-
| specs/yeston-rx-7900-xtx-sak...
|
| - MAXSUN Geforce RTX 4070 Ti iCraft Limited Edition -
| https://www.amazon.com/Geforce-iCraft-OC-Graphics-
| Computer/d...
| BenoitP wrote:
| Chips was a mistake
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| So someone is selling a GPU with an anime furry with huge
| boobs and thick thighs? What kind of consumers do they have
| in mind?
| Maken wrote:
| People who thinks sticking anime girls on their PC cases
| is not enough, I guess.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| Kemonomimi [?] furry
| LoganDark wrote:
| kemonomimi is essentially sticking animal parts onto a
| human, so it may as well be part-furry.
|
| it's not fully furry, but I'd be inclined to agree with
| the term "anime furry" if "anime" is being used as
| shorthand for "anime girl", I suppose.
| glitchc wrote:
| Copyright? Wouldn't be great to have to pay a license fee per
| CPU.
| hexagonwin wrote:
| If we're being more serious here some has their own mascott
| anime girl for asian markets
| Kirby64 wrote:
| There is a similar requirement for PCB manufacturing known as
| 'Thieving' - If you don't have a certain amount of copper,
| plating will not be uniform.
|
| See: https://resources.altium.com/p/what-thieving-pcbs-and-why-
| it...
| scrlk wrote:
| The Soviets used to reverse engineer and clone DEC VAX computers.
| When the DEC engineers heard about this, they added a message in
| Russian to one of their CVAX CPUs: "VAX - when you care enough to
| steal the very best"
|
| https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
| xattt wrote:
| <<Kogda vy zabotite dovol'no vorovat' nastoiashchii luchshei>>
|
| Doesn't parse grammatically, but close enough.
| Throw73747 wrote:
| Soviets replicated all sort of stuff, 8bit controllers, all the
| way up to i386.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| The message was no doubt a parody of the Hallmark (greeting
| card company) advertising tagline of "When you care enough to
| send the very best".
| accrual wrote:
| This is especially fascinating to me because I have such a K7
| chip right next to me! I never had one in their heyday but built
| a K7 rig last year to test AGP 8x cards. It's a pretty impressive
| chip and my fastest retro CPU. Paired with a fast AGP card, it
| handles HL2 and Doom 3 pretty well.
|
| These were the last 32-bit chips from AMD before they introduced
| AMD64 to the world with the Athlon64. They would eventually gain
| dual-channel DDR memory with KT880 chipset, the last mainstream
| 32-bit AMD consumer chipset in 2004. [0]
|
| [0] https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/mainboard/724-via-
| kt880-chips...
| M95D wrote:
| I also have mine right next to me, but instead of upgrading to
| KT880, I downgraded to KT133 board with an ISA slot for my
| Sound Blaster 16. I really wanted a KT133A with 133MHz FSB, but
| no luck. Those boards are so hard to find.
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