Science and Technology links (October 23rd 2021)

1. 1. Apple announced new processors for its computers. Here is a table with the transistor count of some recent Apple processors:
      

      processor	release year	transistors
      Apple A7	2013	1 billions
      Apple A8	2014	2 billions
      Apple A9	2015	2 billions
      Apple A10	2016	3.2 billions
      Apple A11	2017	4.3 billions
      Apple A12	2018	6.9 billions
      Apple A13	2019	8.5 billions
      Apple A14	2020	11.8 billions
      Apple M1	2020	16 billions
      Apple M1 Max	2021	57 billions

      We find that the number of transistors on commodity processors doubles every two years, approximatively. Furthermore, the energy usage of chips is trending downward: the Apple M1 Max reportedly uses less than 100 Watts, which is comparable with processors of the last two decades despite a much greater performance.
      The storage capacity and bandwidth is also trending upward: the Apple M1 Max has 64GB of RAM with a bandwidth of 400GB/s.

      However, our processors are increasingly parallel in nature: the M1 Max has ten generic processing cores and 32 graphical cores. You are unlikely to be able to make use of the 64 GB of RAM and of all of its bandwidth with a single core.

   2. It seems that older people might be more social, more likely to give to charity. It seems to confirm earlier work.
   3. A popular supplement (nicotinamide riboside) seems to partially rejuvenate the immune system of old mice. (I do not take nicotinamide riboside.)
   4. Winter is coming. Maybe you are planning to hide from the cold? It appears that cold exposure reduces neuroinflammation. Since too much inflammation is commonly a problem when you are not otherwise sick, these results suggest that going outside in the cold might do some good.
   5. Weaker students in the US have poorer and poorer scores in reading and mathematics. The best students are still doing well. The net result is that the gap between the weak students and the best students is getting larger. (These results are unrelated to the recent pandemic.)