Hello, this is Benjamin. I want to explain what steps I took in order to try and learn over summer. I wrote down a list of 4 steps for me to do within the week. Step 1; read a couple of chapters a week about a subject from a textbook or notes like blogs. Step 2; then watch tutorials and practice coding fundamentals on multiple coding websites. Step 3; next I would solve getcracked.io problems and leetcode problems. Step 4 is to make projects for my portfolio. Over the summer I could not do any coding projects due to taking 3 classes so I just did more coding problems on getcracked. 

The reason I am trying to learn coding in this learning method is because it is better to understand why people choose a certain coding method instead of another option. I want to be helpful within a company and still be able to learn independently. So that I can have as many opportunities available. Moving on, I would watch podcasts that would have developers or professors about certain topics so that they can help explain certain concepts better.

I understand that in this field a lot of changes are happening. Which allows more opportunity for so many people and industries. Regardless of what some people say about the current state of computer science, I will still try to learn new concepts and how to implement them. I want to use this year to enjoy a few concepts and coding projects that I am passionate about so that I can enjoy this process.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello, this is Benjamin Santos Patrocinio with this blog I want to reflect upon what I did over this summer vacation. First let me explain what I did over the summer primarily, I took 3 summer classes to finish my general electives in school. During classes over summer I looked at other blogs and podcasts to learn about new topics in programming. For a couple of weeks I started to learn more about algorithm analysis, memory. The reason why I wanted to learn more about these topics is because I want to improve as a programmer. 

With programming even though knowledge is available from blogs, textbooks, videos and courses it is a field where programmers have to continuously learn. Being able to learn about new topics and even be able to use the skills are really important. Furthermore, I want to use this time to make a portfolio that can help standout and use all the skills I have learned. What I did first is find textbooks and documents I want to learn from. In order to build a plan to learn on my off time. In order to not be burned out, I would read textbooks and watch videos on youtube to learn more about certain topics.  Also a few times a week I would try to solve a few getcracked.io questions (just an alternative leetcode platform). So that I can get better at interview questions and find out which topics I did not really know.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-343, CS@Worcester

As we all know, graphic cards have been getting more expensive over the years. This is because of tariffs and product costs. As a result, gpu manufacturers need to increase prices. They do this to break even from the costs of production. We also have to consider that many graphic card chips originate from TSMC. This company is a semiconductor manufacturer. It supplies Nvidia and AMD gpu chips. These gpu chips are being made in Taiwan. They are finished being built in other factories around the world. Consequently, tariffs would apply to these products due to the tariffs on China’s products being exported to the U.S.

The next issue with these products is the increased cost in prices. It just becomes not worth it for average consumers to purchase these products. Currently, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel want to sell their newer products. These products are better than the current graphic cards in the market. They offer a performance increase ranging from 10%-20%. Living expenses are high, so many consumers have not being able to buy the current gpu’s in the market. During the holidays, they aimed to cut prices significantly. Their goal was to sell as many units as possible before launching the new products. 

According to the rumors AMD is going to try to sell the new gpu’s in different quarters in 2025. While Nvidia is trying to sell their new gpu’s separated time between the next low tier product. I believe they will not try to change this. It has worked by lowering stocks in the market. Consumers would either have to wait for the product they want or get the best one initially. 

For AMD new gpu’s are apparently going to have improved FSR by significant margins in comparison to RDNA 3. Let me explain further FSR is called FidelityFX Super Resolution. It is a program that will render games at higher quality frames. Additionally, it boosts the performance of the graphic card. AMD uses software like this to compete with Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). DLSS does the same thing for Nvidia graphic cards but performs way better. In some cases, it achieves around 30% better performance and image quality in frames. There is a gap between them because Nvidia created a gpu with DLSS first. It was able to refine DLSS more and more since the rtx 2000 series cards. 

Currently Nvidia gpu’s are more expensive due to using DLSS as the main feature to sell their gpu’s. Nvidia does not want to sell increased performance. If they did, it would cost too much to produce enough gpu’s to meet market demand. They increase the performance of cards by 10% to save on production costs. They improve DLSS by 20%-30%. This makes consumers not consider the base performance difference between previous generations gpu’s.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-348, CS@Worcester

While researching server companies like data centers. I realized that many companies rent servers to host their applications. They also use them to store large amounts of data. Which is all very important for any business nowadays. I read an article from David Heinemeier Hansson. It was about how his company has moved 7 cloud applications from AWS servers into their own servers. 

Many people thought it was a ridiculous plan to move from renting a server to owning one. They thought this when David posted his article. Recently, companies have been renting servers to save money. They aim to reduce costs on employees, management, and the legal department. Additionally, they save on costs for parts and the electricity needed to run the server. In David’s article, he explains how there are benefits to both ideas of hosting servers. 

As the move from the cloud into their own servers has its multiple problems. For example, it takes a lot of time to move data from the cloud into another server. Also, the cost of hardware depends on the amount of data it needs to hold. Additionally, the performance the company wants can increase the expense significantly. Another problem is having employees and management to maintain the server. This can cause costs to increase for companies to do this. 

David goes into detail. He explains how his company was able to save a lot of money doing this. They already have the employees and management who maintained some of their other servers. That the company just had that problem solved. Also David explains how his company was able to pay for the hardware needed for 18 petabytes which is crazy. I want you to think about how much is 18 petabytes of data, the entire internet is just 36 petabytes. 

When I was researching this topic, I just hoped that his idea works. I also wish he explains in detail in the next few years how it went. If companies can figure out how to manage their own servers then it creates options to make personal servers cheaper. For example access to more parts and talent that knows how to handle large data and applications. If you want a detailed understanding of how his company is managing this issue, then read his article below. 

Work Cited

David Heinemeier Hansson, Our cloud-exit savings will now top ten million over five years, world.hey.com, https://world.hey.com/dhh/our-cloud-exit-savings-will-now-top-ten-million-over-five-years-c7d9b5bd, Created October 17th, 2024, Accessed on December 1st 2024

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-343, CS@Worcester

In recent news AMD is rumored to be entering the smartphone processor market. Many people assume that Samsung and AMD’s partnership is a sign of entering the smartphone processor market. I read in articles that AMD is attempting to incorporate RDNA 2 into smartphone SoCs. These SoCs are for Samsung phones. 

First let me explain what RDNA 2 is. It is a gpu chip made for the RX 6000 series of gpu. RDNA 2 was mainly used for gaming. It handles more extreme demand from video game frames. It also tries to be as efficient with power. 

Let me give some more details on why these rumors are possible. In recent years AMD has been incorporating RDNA 2 into handheld gaming devices and consoles like the PS5. While making the chip efficient for small devices, they had to make sure the chip was smaller. They also needed to make sure it did not demand as much power from these smaller devices. Normally chip makers would only make their gpu chips for desktops and laptops. Chip manufacturers enabled desktop GPUs to work in a laptop with limited power. They did this by lowering the GPU power draw and reducing the performance by a percent. 

While AMD was capable of figuring out how to make RDNA 2 chips within restrictions of laptops. They faced a few difficulties. Nevertheless, they managed to make their RDNA 2 chips suitable for even small devices. Now here is a problem. Unlike handhelds, you only have a limited amount of space available for fitting components in phones. Also, you need to consider that consumers want their cell phone battery to last more than 24 hours. They also do not want the phone to be bulky when using it. Lastly, consumers want their devices to be high quality. They expect better performance. They want the devices to take good photos and record video at an even higher quality than last year’s models. 

If AMD can figure out these constraints of making smartphone SoC’s, I hope they create more changes in that market. Imagine not just Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm and more are competing in that highly competitive market. If we want the best products, we need a lot of competition in the market. This competition will constantly improve products. It also protects consumers from companies selling inferior products.

Work Cited:

Thitu, Naftary. “AMD Rumored to Make Entry in the Smartphone Market.” Techweez, 22 Nov. 2024, techweez.com/2024/11/22/amd-rumored-to-make-entry-in-the-smartphone-market/.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-348, CS@Worcester

In class we are going over how to use Git and not cause conflicts with upstream. First we learned about how to create a copy of the upstream in the cloud by forking the repository. Then we cloned the repository into our local machine to start using the code. We cloned the code into our local machine. Then, we learned how to make branches of the code. This allowed us to start making changes. 

In my off time I started to learn more about how branches are very important for group projects. For example, if someone makes a change on the main branch and sends it to the upstream, there might be no conflict at first. However, if someone else commits changes to the upstream, then conflicts happen. I was reading in the class textbook and some online articles. They stated that it is better for the group if people send commits to the fork first. In my opinion, this practice helps streamline the process. Let me explain further. What if your coworkers want to see what changes you made before it gets committed to the upstream? They would have to look at the fork copy of the upstream.

This lets the team determine if the changes you made are actually good. Otherwise, they will know if it needs to be changed again. This would allow your team to cut time. It would enable them to complete the project or the product. This ensures it will be ready for the public.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-348, CS@Worcester

The reason why companies use scrum as a method to make the business efficient. First we need to consider what companies use scrum. Then we need to consider why those companies use scrum. Lastly, how do they apply scrum onto their business workflow.

A few companies that use scrum are “Amazon, Google, Apple, Adobe and Facebook”. With these companies in mind, why do they use scrum? It is because these few companies constantly try to push out new features and patches onto their products. For example, Adobe releases many different versions of its software. They do this to compete with other companies by constantly adding new features. The issue is that adding new features takes a lot of time. As a result, Adobe uses teams to try to be as efficient as possible. 

Another reason why these companies use scrum is that it lets the company be flexible. The company would need employees to finish one product and move on to another. That is why scrum helps companies that want to constantly try to make products. 

Even though scrum methodology is used in tech companies. It can be applied in any company. The only need is to create a team of 7-10 people. Scrum is a methodology so that companies can use it at any level. So that any can be focused on their task and be able to complete the product in the given time. This helps the company be efficient. They can manage the limited time and funds they are willing to invest in the project. The reason is that many investors need proof to be willing to invest more. This ensures both the company and the investor achieve what they want.

Sources

Professional Development, Why is Scrum so Popular?, https://www.professionaldevelopment.ie/who-uses-scrum#:~:text=You%E2%80%99ll%20find%20that%20a%20high%20percentage%20of%20the,Scrum%20and%20Agile%20practices%3A%20Google%20Apple%20Facebook%20Yahoo, accessed on November 17th, 2024

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-343, CS@Worcester

This November 17th recap in the tech world details Intel’s major crisis this year. It affected the company’s reputation and its consumers. Let me explain further Intel 13th and 14th gen consumer CPUs were degrading rapidly. Even though this issue was not really known for a while since November 2022. First let us break down their response to the issue. Then we will go further on what Intel did to fix this issue.

To clarify Intel’s 13th and 14 gen CPUs were degrading as a result of microcoding issues. At that time, many odms and motherboard manufacturers provided custom bios options. These options would send a lot of volts to the CPUs. The issue is that due to Intel’s microcode issues it can not handle these high volts from the motherboards. That certain CPUs cores would get too much electricity that it would cause those cores to degrade. As a result, this caused the CPUs to become more unstable and lose performance over time. 

Under those circumstances Intel had to respond to these issues horribly. Intel did not want to be blamed for this issue because obviously this would affect the company’s sales and reputation. So they would push the blame onto other companies like motherboard manufacturers. Once the motherboard companies tried to help users with these issues were still happening. Many customers would try to move their responsibilities multiple times that angered consumers and motherboard companies. As a result, consumers went to Intel for their CPU issues. Eventually, Intel ran out of new CPUs for all these repairs. To be honest, Intel did a lot more underhanded ways to get out of their responsibility in this issue.

Lastly Intel’s solution to their 13th and 14th gen issue. To solve this issue, Intel would send out a microcode update. They did this after multiple bios updates to fix users’ instability issues. Intel set microcode for specific bios, which they called ultra, for their 15th gen CPUs. This was intended for motherboard manufacturers to use. They did this so that motherboard manufacturers do not make the CPUs take high volts to compete with each other. On the other hand, ODMs can slightly exceed these restrictions. This is because they are selling Intel CPUs in their laptops or desktops. There are 2 amazing content creators who explore this topic in more depth. Their names are Jayz2cents and Gamers Nexus. They explain everything from the timeline of all these events. They also describe the reasons why Intel took the actions they did in all these events. 

Sources used for this blog

Jayz2cents, Intel’s weapon against motherboard companies… will it work?, published on October 15, 2024, Youtube, accessed on November 17th, 2024

Gamers Nexus, Scumbag Intel: Shady Practices, Terrible Responses,& Failure to Act, published on August 12th, 2024, Youtube, accessed on November 17th, 2024

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

By Ben Santos

Hello, this is Ben Santos, this blog post is for the class CS-343, CS-348 at CS@Worcester

The reason why I am making this blog it is because I want to catalog my coding progress. My goal is to become a video game developer. Currently, I am trying to get my bachelor degree at Worcester State University. I am having fun coding in C and learning coding. This blog will have links to my github and gitlab projects and a detailed explanation on how I made the projects and what do they do.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by Ben Santos and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.