The US Commerce Secretary made news a little more than a week ago when he appeared to publicly threaten Nvidia. In order to comply with US restrictions, the GPU producer has started “updating” its existing GPUs, decreasing their performance and making them into “new” models. The Secretary responded to this by declaring that any “workaround” items (our term) would likewise be sanctioned—not later, but right now. The Secretary stated the government is in talks with Nvidia to explore future opportunities for the two companies to collaborate on export regulations, suggesting that position has somewhat changed.

“If you redesign a chip around a particular cut line that enables them to do AI, I’m going to control it the very next day,” said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo at a recent conference. She didn’t specifically say Nvidia, but it was obvious to all that she was talking about the business. The Secretary seems to have grown a lot more understanding this week. Speaking to Reuters, the Secretary stated that Nvidia “can, will, and should sell AI chips to China because most AI chips will be for commercial applications.” She made it clear that the business will still not be permitted to export China its strongest chips, but it appears that the workaround goods will now be accepted without resistance from the authorities.

According to Raimondo, she spoke with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a week ago, following up on her vehement remarks, as reported by Reuters. According to reports, he told her that Nvidia was not trying to evade US sanctions and said, “We don’t want to break the rules.” We’ll cooperate if you tell us the rules.” While Nvidia has reaffirmed that it will abide by US penalties, the business has declined to speak to Reuters. To be clear, there has never been a claim that it has broken them.

For the time being, it appears that the two parties involved in this dispute are cooperatively attempting to create a path forward devoid of confrontation. It is probable that Nvidia will persist in marketing goods that skirt the boundaries of US restrictions. Its 25% revenue comes from China, so as long as it’s not selling its most powerful hardware, it should be able to maintain its business relationship. According to CNBC, AMD is apparently thinking about creating a customized MI300 accelerator that has been neutered especially to comply with US export regulations in order to sell to China.

The greatest technological companies in the world are all fixated on creating computers that can mimic the biological computers found in our brains. However, the sophisticated artificial intelligence systems of today are expensive to construct and power hungry. Researchers think a novel, more effective approach to working with AI may be provided by organic computers. An Indiana University team has shown how that could function. In the lab, Feng Guo and his colleagues developed small brains, which they then used to train an AI system to identify speech.

While silicon-based computers may do mathematical operations more efficiently than the human brain, the latter is still superior to the former in complicated information processing and comprehension. The Indiana University group set out to investigate the viability of integrating electronic and biological processing in a hybrid system.

They came up with a system called Brainoware. A brain organoid is a tiny, spherical glob of lab-grown neurons that is considered the biological component. An organoid has 100 million brain cells, or roughly 1,000 times fewer than a human brain, and can measure up to several millimeters in diameter. The “mini-brains” were positioned atop a microelectrode array, which allowed the nerve cell clusters to transmit and receive electrical impulses. This made it possible for Brainoware’s technological and biological components to communicate.

The organoids respond to electric stimuli by modifying their neural network architecture. To demonstrate the system’s ability to process data, the team created a basic test. They sent 240 electrical signal recordings of eight persons pronouncing Japanese vowels to Brainoware. Initially, the algorithm was only able to recognize a single voice 30–40% of the time. The network improved with time, achieving 70–80% accuracy.

Since no data was pre-labeled, this is an example of unsupervised learning by the researchers. The tiny brains do seem to be learning, too. According to New Scientist, the accuracy did not increase when medications that prevent the development of new synapses were given to the grown cells.

Although it’s a remarkable outcome, Brainoware is only a proof of concept. For the time being at least, this method of calculating is far slower and less precise than traditional computing. The cells could be able to recognize a voice, for instance, but deciphering what it says will be a another story. This study, which was published in Nature Electronics, may lead to the development of organic computers that are more effective in the future.

These days, overclocking on workstation and HEDT chips is permitted by both AMD and Intel; although, as is always the case, doing so can cause damage that nullifies the warranty. It has come to light that AMD uses a previously undisclosed technique—a concealed fuse that blows when the function is enabled—to determine whether a chip has been overclocked. The good news is that, according to AMD, doing this won’t immediately void your warranty; nevertheless, if something goes wrong, it will inform AMD of your activities.

With the November launch of AMD’s Threadripper 7000 series CPUs, consumers are starting to become acquainted with the chips. These CPUs come in Pro and non-Pro versions, and they’re all “unlocked for overclocking.” But according to recent reports, doing so will nullify your guarantee. A screenshot of a BIOS warning stating that the user’s warranty has been voided due to overclocking was shared on Twitter, which is where these reports originated. It’s also odd that the BIOS claims that overclocking is always enabled. It appears that once AMD inserted a fuse within the processor, which blows when this feature is activated, the feature is permanently enabled, and there is no way to turn it off.

“Threadripper 7000 Series processors do contain a fuse that is blown when overclocking is enabled,” AMD revealed to Tom’s Hardware, exposing the tripwire. To be clear, your warranty is not invalidated if you blow this fuse.” In general, AMD supports overclocking, therefore users should exercise caution. However, any damage that results would void your warranty. Overclocking is certainly not very frequent given the expense of these CPUs and their motherboards, especially considering that the flagship CPU costs $9,999.

AMD stated, “Statements that enabling an overclocking/overvolting feature will ‘void’ the processor warranty are not correct” in reference to the BIOS warning. It appears that there is a misunderstanding between AMD and its partners who offer Threadripper workstations, since these original design manufacturers have added their own wording to the warning, stating that doing so will nullify your warranty. Anyone who has already enabled overclocking on their Threadripper CPU can exhale with ease, as AMD claims it is working with these companies to modify this language to be more accurate.

Furthermore, according to Tom, this capability wasn’t new; it was only mentioned recently. It was also included on the Threadripper 5000 series from the prior generation. When overclocking, damage to a chip might occur for a variety of causes, making the situation somewhat unclear. If something went wrong, AMD might figure out that an overclock was the cause, but at least it would know that you had turned on overclocking. Since Intel’s W-series CPUs support overclocking, it’s unclear if they offer a comparable feature.