Apple has won a small legal victory. After the 2021 ruling, the company was no longer allowed to prevent US developers from referring to external purchasing options in apps. In order to save the billions in commissions, a revenue share of up to 27 percent was introduced for such transactions instead. This in turn was viewed by a court as intentional disregard of the order – Apple had to stop the practice immediately. The Supreme Court has now granted Apple’s request to review the conviction for disregarding the requirements. What is now being portrayed in some quarters as if the Supreme Court is reopening the general procedure has much less impact. The question is simply whether Apple could be sanctioned for violating the court order (here: payment of legal fees), even though there was initially no explicit ban on fees from the court. It will take a few months for the decision to be made, as this will not take place until the next session.
New world’s fastest supercomputer – from China
The world’s fastest supercomputer is now back in China, after US computing systems topped the list for several years. The system installed in Shenzhen called “LineShine” achieves a computing power of 2,198 exaflops in the standardized Linpack test. The computing power is provided by 45,000 LX2 processors, each with 304 cores at a clock speed of 1.55 GHz. The theoretical maximum value (“rPeak”) is just under 2.74 exaflops.
However, the performance comes at a price, as LineShine requires around 42.2 megawatts, while the second-placed “El Capitan” gets by with around 29.7 megawatts – at a measured 1,742 exaflops. What is interesting is that the Rpeak value is almost identical (2.735 exaflops), but the system from China can utilize the hardware better. LineShine relies largely on domestic processor and network technology, which is quite remarkable – because various US export restrictions make it impossible to import common chips.
