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Tobias Mann

@tobiasmann.bsky.social
867 followers 374 following 260 posts

Systems Editor at TheRegister / SitPub — hiker, animal lover, photographer, blogger, and tech journo.

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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
When it comes to inference, compute is key, but memory bandwidth is king. With 128 accelerators OpenAI's (& Broadcom) Jalapeño offers ~2 PB/s of HMB4 B/W — more than either Nvidia's Vera Rubin or AMD's Helios My 1,000+ word analysis only @TheRegister www.theregister.com/systems/2026...
theregister.com
OpenAI's upcoming Jalapeño chip looks like it'll be an inference beast
128 chips, 1.7 exaFLOPS, and 27 TB of HBM give Altman and crew a leg up over Blackwell, and maybe even Rubin
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
How potent are Nvidia's Groq-3 LPX racks? Very, but Gemma 4 31B tells an idealized story. The real trick will be how efficiency it scales to MoE. My full 1,200 word analysis only @theregister.com www.theregister.com/systems/2026...
theregister.com
What Nvidia's first Groq 3 LPU benchmarks tell us about its $20B gamble
Gemma 4 31B performance tests offer a best-case scenario for next-gen dataflow accelerators
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The hardware is neither fast nor cheap, but with up to 128 GB of memory, there aren't many AI+ML workloads AMD's AI Halo can't run. The question is: is it worth $4K: www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/20...
theregister.com
AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo makes local AI look easy, but at $4K, easy doesn't come cheap
128 GB of memory! In this economy?
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
This vulture is now circling over Taiwan. Stay tuned for a flood of Computex and GTC Taipei news this week.
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Matt Rosoff @mattrosoff.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Where else are you going to find this much detail on rolling your own local agents? Only at @theregister.com courtesy of @tobiasmann.bsky.social with an assist from @lot49.com www.theregister.com/2026/05/02/l...
theregister.com
How to roll your own local AI coding agents
: Take those token limits and shove them by vibe coding with a local LLM
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
ICYMI: AMD's 9950X3D2 isn't for gamers. It's also not for content creators. So who is it for? We get to the bottom of this weird little beast of a chip in our review over on @TheRegister www.theregister.com/2026/04/21/a... #AMD #CPU #PC #Workstation
theregister.com
AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition tested
Review: An $899 CPU? In this economy?
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
An $899 CPU in this economy? AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 with its 208 MB of system cache hits store shelves tomorrow. But is it worth the $200 premium over the 9950X3D? I cover all of that in my latest review for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2026/04/21/a... #PC #CPU #AMD #Tech
theregister.com
AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition tested
Review: An $899 CPU? In this economy?
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Reposted by Tobias Mann
Matt Rosoff @mattrosoff.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Big first for Arm: It's making its own chips - @tobiasmann.bsky.social has all the details here. tip @Techmeme
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
In case you missed it, @theregister.com does CPU reviews now! Our review of Intel's Core Ultra 270K and 250K Plus processors dropped this morning. www.theregister.com/2026/03/23/i...
theregister.com
Intel Core Ultra 270K, 250K Plus aim for budget PC builders
Review: More cores, higher clocks, and lower prices? What's not to like?
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Here's a closer look at Nvidia's new Vera CPU rack blade. 8x 88-core Vera CPUs with 1.5 TB of LPDDR5x memory a piece. #GTC
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Here we go again #GTC 2026
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Matt Rosoff @mattrosoff.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Welcome back to the Kettle, The Register's weekly podcast, hosted anew by @bvig.bsky.social. This week, he's joined by @tobiasmann.bsky.social and @jessicalyons.bsky.social to discuss the role of tech in the war in Iran: www.theregister.com/2026/03/09/k...
theregister.com
Iran is the first out-loud cyberwar the US has fought
Kettle: Cyber is no longer the hush-hush thing it used to be, as team Trump invades Iran with hackers taking the lead
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
#ICYMI I tested Nvidia's GB10-based DGX Spark against the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395-based HP Z2 Mini G1a. For AI development, the GB10 is hard to beat, but for an multi-purpose PC, AMD's Strix Halo is more flexible. Full story: @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/12/25/a... #AI #PC
theregister.com
Tested: AMD's Strix Halo vs Nvidia's DGX Spark
Hands On: Two tiny boxes, 128 GB apiece – but very different strengths
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
#AMD's Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max+ 395) and #Nvidia's DGX Spark (#GB10) are an interesting class of hardware for local AI #development. Which is right for you depends on whether you want a #PC that runs AI or a PC for #AI. My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/12/25/a...
theregister.com
Tested: AMD's Strix Halo vs Nvidia's DGX Spark
Hands On: Two tiny boxes, 128 GB apiece – but very different strengths
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
If you hadn't noticed, AI infra all pretty much looks like #Nvidia's NVL72 now. #AWS' Trainium3 UltraServers are the latest example For more on the convergent evolution of #AI infra and the future of the #datacenter, find my latest on @theregister.com forums.theregister.com/forum/all/20...
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Here’s what you need to know about Graviton5 - 192 cores - 2MB L2 per core - 192MB of L3 - DDR5 7200 support - 8800MT/s planned - 25% higher perf than AWS dual G4 M8g instances (192 cores vs 2x96 cores) My latest for @theregister.com #reinvent #reinvent25 www.theregister.com/2025/12/04/a...
theregister.com
Amazon keeps pressure on Intel, AMD with 192-core Graviton5
re:invent: The homegrown chips now account for half of all new CPUs added to AWS over the past three years
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
And that’s a wrap on Re:Invent #reinvent #reinvent25
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Funny how Amazon's Trn3 UltraServer looks a lot like Nvidia's NVL72... #reinvent #reInvent25
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
To compete with Nvidia, Amazon is embracing Nvidia, fusing the GPU giant's NVLink interconnects into its next-gen Trainium4 UltraServers. My latest for @theregister.com theregister.com/2025/12/02/a... #reinvent #reInvent25 #aws #ai #cloud
theregister.com
Amazon to fuse Nvidia's NVLink into Trainium4 accelerators
Re:Invent: Meanwhile, Trainium3 makes its debut promising million-chip training clusters
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
The Tenstorrent's Blackhole QuietBox is an impressive bit of #AI kit. - 128GB of GDDR6 - 2TB/s of MEM BW - 3 petaFLOPS of FP8 - 12.8 Tbps of interconnect BW - and an ambitious software strategy that... needs some polish Find my full review on @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/11/27/t...
theregister.com
Blackhole QuietBox, Tenstorrent's AI workstation reviewed
hands on: $12K machine promises performance that can scale to 32 chip servers and beyond but immature stack makes harnessing compute challenging
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Europe has joined the US as an exascale super power. EuroHPC's biggest iron has crested 1 EF on the Top500's HPL benchmark. Is HPL still the bench to watch when Blackwell offers more than 200x the FP8 perf as FP64? #sc25 My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/11/17/e...
theregister.com
Europe joins the US as an exascale superpower
SC25: EuroHPC's biggest iron still has more to give with Universal Cluster expansion expected to come online next year
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
I'll be at SC25 next week repping @theregister.com for the fourth year running. Give me a shout if you're going to be in St Louis for the event.
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Nvidia's biggest scale up domain is 72 GPUs. Google's is 9,216 TPUs. Historically TPUs have trailed on FLOPS, memory, & bandwidth. That's no longer the case with Ironwood. Google has a Blackwell-class TPU with absurd scale. More on @theregister.com ⬇️ www.theregister.com/2025/11/06/g...
theregister.com
TPU v7, Google's answer to Nvidia's Blackwell is nearly here
: Chocolate Factory's homegrown silicon boasts Blackwell-level perf at massive scale
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
I might be crucified for saying this, but OEM GPU servers are boring now. Everything is just a rebadged HGX box or NVL rack now. The only point of differentiation becomes whose lights out management interface does it have.
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Say what you will about the hardware or the software, @tenstorrent.bsky.social's Blackhole QuietBox is a gorgeous bit of kit. Full review is already in the works #AI #Workstation #watercooling #Tech
Side view of a Tenstorrent QuietBox (Blackhole) with the side panel removed.
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
This was a fun review. I don't think folks realize how big a deal the DGX Spark is. A year ago an #Nvidia #workstation with 128GB+ of VRAM cost tens of thousands of dollars. Is it better than AMD's Strix Halo? Now that's the real question. #DGXSpark #AI www.theregister.com/2025/10/14/d...
theregister.com
DGX Spark Nvidia's desktop supercomputer: first look
hands on: This relatively-affordable AI workstation isn’t about going fast; it’s about doing everything well enough
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
On the road again.
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Iain Thomson @iainthomson.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff.
theregister.com
If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff
ai-pocalypse: Consultancy says machine learning advice is making bank
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never held a QSFP DD cable before. It’s enormous compared to the SFP+ DACs I’m used to.
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
I love my dog. He's usually a very good boy. But having adopted him as a 10 week-old puppy less than a year before COVID hit, his anxiety can be overwhelming at times. He had a vet visit today. He got his shots, but wouldn't let the Dr. do a proper exam. We get to come back in 4 weeks and try again
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Look what just landed in the lab
TT-QuietBox (Blackhole)
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Something curious I’ve noticed is I’m using virtualization less in my homelab preferring instead to run bare metal with containers. I still keep a PVE box for VMs when they’re warranted but a lot of the stuff I’m doing can be achieved using containers. #Linux #VM #Homelab #tech
Terminal output showing Neofetch:

tobiasmann@uranus 
----------------- 
OS: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS x86_64 
Host: TRX50 AERO D -CF 
Kernel: 6.14.0-29-generic 
Uptime: 1 hour, 50 mins 
Packages: 795 (dpkg) 
Shell: bash 5.2.21 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
Terminal: /dev/pts/0 
CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7960X s (48) @ 5.364GHz 
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 
Memory: 1068MiB / 128295MiB
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Ever since Nvidia started talking about disaggregated inference architectures at GTC this spring, I had a feeling a HBM-less prefill accelerator was only a matter of time. My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/09/10/n... #Nvidia #AI #Datacenter #Servers #HPC
theregister.com
Nvidia's context-optimized Rubin CPX GPUs were inevitable
Analysis: Why strap pricey, power-hungry HBM to a job that doesn't benefit from the bandwidth?
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Oof. I can relate. Last night my email was filled with TrueNAS warnings. A drive reported Smart Errors. Logs: extended test failed. short test fails. Yep dead drive. 😟 Backup my core files and drop in the cold spare. 6 hours of resilvering left to go. www.theregister.com/2025/09/03/m...
theregister.com
Matrix.org homeserver grinds to a halt after RAID meltdown
: Engineers wrangle 55 TB restore and traffic replay as millions of messages queue up
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
New bench who this?
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
After three years of 24/7 service in my homelab my R9 3900X met its end on Sunday. During routine thermal paste change the cooler ripped it from the socket bending several pins. Alas even when bent back into position it refused to post. RIP my friend. #AMD #CPU #PC #Homelab #Tech
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
In my latest hands on for @theregister.com I break down everything you need to know to run large language models in the privacy of our home using Llama.cpp. www.theregister.com/2025/08/24/l... #AI #PC #LLM #HomeLab
theregister.com
How to run LLMs on PC at home using Llama.cpp
Hands on: Everything you need to know to build, run, serve, optimize and quantize models on your PC
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Reposted by Tobias Mann
Iain Thomson @iainthomson.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Some stories are just made for puns, not to mention highlighting F-grade security. Yes, I did have fun with this.
theregister.com
McDonald's not lovin' it when hacker exposes rotten security
: Burger slinger gets a McRibbing, reacts by firing staffer who helped
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
So wait. Is Arm really getting into silicon? Seems like a sure fire way to piss off your customers. Maybe chiplets would be okay? Most Arm customers take off-the-shelf cores anyway. My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/08/19/a... #Arm #CPU #Chips #tech
theregister.com
Top AWS chip engineer reportedly defects to Arm
: Rami Sinno led Trainium and Inferentia development at Amazon
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
The way the report describes the B30A it sounds a lot more like a B300 NVL than a H20 replacement... www.theregister.com/2025/08/19/n...
theregister.com
Nvidia reportedly plotting cut-down B300 for Chinese market
: It's that or a replacement for its aging H200 NVL PCIe cards
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
AMD Radeon Inference perf in Llama.cpp is an interesting conundrum. The Vulkan backend offers higher token gen but ROCm is vastly superior in prompt processing. Which do you opt for?
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Reposted by Tobias Mann
Glenn Fleishman @glennf.com · 19/08/2025
Big Dyson Sphere can be sung to Pink Pony Club
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
The funniest bit to me was the comparison of US chip tracking to the machines in The Matrix. Last I checked, Uncle Sam wasn't using human batteries to power major industry or AI development. My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/08/18/c...
theregister.com
China labels US as 'surveillance empire' over chip tracking
Comment: Spy vs spy in the chips
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Cisco, Arista, Broadcom and every other Ethernet equipment vendor is jazzed about AI and its not hard to see why when when ever GPU is an excuse to sell 3-5 of the fastest switch ports money can buy: My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/08/15/e...
theregister.com
Cisco, other Ethernet switch vendors, high on AI networks
: When one GPU translates into three to five of the fastest switch ports money can buy, can you blame them?
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Called it! GPT-5 was a cost cutting measure. "We have better models, and we just can't offer them because we don't have the capacity. We have other kinds of new products and services we'd love to offer," Altman said. ICYMI: www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/g...
theregister.com
OpenAI's GPT-5 is a cost cutting exercise
Analysis: Gotta pay for all those GPUs somehow
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Sneak peek at what I've got cooking:
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
Compiling code on a Raspberry Pi 5 is painfully slow.
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
OpenAI's decision to use MXFP4 datatypes as the standard for gpt-oss is a big deal and sets the tone for the rest of the industry. Is it perfect? No, but it's a huge improvement over FP4 or INT4. Find my deep dive @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/08/10/o...
theregister.com
OpenAI gpt-oss LLMs use MXFP4: smaller, faster, cheaper
Analysis: Decision to use MXFP4 makes models smaller, faster, and more importantly, cheaper for everyone involved
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Main thing confusing me: why give up an optimized training stack built around Nvidia to take a chance on Huawei? Like other than national pride. The 910C doesn't support FP8, so back to BF16. Were they using them for RL? Latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/08/14/d...
theregister.com
Dodgy Huawei chips nearly sunk DeepSeek's next-gen R2 mode
: Chinese AI model dev still plans to use homegrown silicon for inferencing
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Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Gentle reminder that GPUs aren't just for AI. In the right hands they can advance life saving science. Boffins at LLNL used the No. 1 ranked supercomputer, El Capitan, to build a real-time tsunami forecast system. My latest for @theregister.com www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/t...
theregister.com
Tsunami forecasting to get faster thanks to El Capitan
: The world's most powerful known supercomputer stretches its legs with some life-saving science
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