To add a little bit: the reason for that (or at least one of them) is strict aliasing rules:
If the compiler had to assume that a write to an int* might change the value of a double&, that’ll cause it to avoid some optimization and maybe even perform expensive reads.
This is the reason that you are not allowed to alias a variable with another type (can be disabled using -fno-strict-aliasing) [1].
However, one of exceptions is char and std::byte. The compiler is not allowed to assume that a write to char& won’t affect the value of a double& for example [2].
No idea why the downvotes, these are valid points. I still don’t fully agree with it:
1. There are alternatives to nvidia: these 3 companies are probably developing their own alternative to NVIDIA, at some point they will switch to their solution or to competitors (for example: google used TPUs to train Gemini 3 [1], with no nvidia GPUs, despite being a pretty large Nvidia customer).
2. The market seems to be consolidating: for example Apple has decided to use Google Gemini for their new Siri [2]. I’m not an export (or future teller), but I think it increases the chance that other companies might follow and get off the AI race.
3. I am sure that OpenAI and related companies would want to sustain these kind of orders, but I am not sure it is possible without more and more funding, and I don’t know if even Sam himself know to estimate how many GPUs they will be able to buy from Nvidia in 2026.
According to nvidia’s 2025 annual report [1], 34% of their sales for 2025 comes from just 3 customers.
Additionally, they mentioned that customers can cancel purchases with little to no penalty and notice [2].
This is not unique for hardware companies, but to think that all it takes is just one company to get their sales down by 12% (14b$).
To cut to the point, my guess is that nvidia is not sustainable, and at some point one or more of these big customers won’t be able to keep up with the big orders, which will cause them to miss their earnings and then it will burst. But maybe i’m wrong here.
[2] same, page 116:
> Because most of our sales are made on a purchase order basis, our customers can generally cancel, change, or delay product purchase commitments with little notice to us and without penalty.
Edit:
Kinkora implies that it has something to do with kinks, at least that was my first impression.
My guess is that it means something in another language, but maybe this is not a good first association that you would want for a AI image generation product that can be used in a professional setting.
I think that reading all of the information from the SSD should “recharge” it in most cases. The SSD controller should detect any bit flips and be able to correct them.
However, this is implementation detail in the SSD FW. For Linux UBI devices, this will suffice.
It will trigger reads in random areas in flash, and try ti correct any errors found.
Without it, the same issue as in the original article will happen (even if the device is powered on): areas in the NAND were not read for long time will have more and more errors, causing them to be non recoverable.
Hopefully it will make Qualcomm behave more like Arduino and not the opposite.
Qualcomm is one of the worse companies I have had the pleasure to work with.
Their support model is hellish and they provide very little information and documentation, so usually you’ll end up doing a lot of guessing and reverse engineering. They will tell you to sign a contract with one of their “design partners”, but even they can’t get answers for basic questions.
Seriously, if they want more small cap companies working with them they have to treat them better, I worked with them as a small company and as a larger company and in both cases their support was basically non existent even if we were buying chips from them for more than 10m$ a year.
This is the reason that you are not allowed to alias a variable with another type (can be disabled using -fno-strict-aliasing) [1].
However, one of exceptions is char and std::byte. The compiler is not allowed to assume that a write to char& won’t affect the value of a double& for example [2].
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/c-intro-and-ref/manual/html_nod...
[2]: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/reinterpret_cast....