Turbo Pascal was my first real programming experience more than 30 years ago at university. I mostly taught myself from the included examples and help documentation, because the university only taught the basic syntax and philosophy of Pascal, without going deeply into Turbo Pascal’s advanced features. I still remember when I discovered that I could embed assembly language directly into Pascal code, call BIOS functions, manipulate screen memory, use mouse interrupts, and control peripherals from my programs. That opened huge doors for me. Programming back then felt really fun, direct, and close to the machine. What I loved about Pascal was its readability and the almost instant compile time. Turbo Pascal was an amazing environment, but unfortunately Turbo Pascal for Windows 3 did not feel like it fully carried that legacy forward. Later, Delphi got things back on the right track after the messy transition to TP for Windows. Sadly, Delphi suffered from years of uncertainty as it moved from Borland to CodeGear and then to Embarcadero. That instability made many developers lose confidence in it, even though Delphi itself remained a powerful and productive tool. I still work with Delphi from time to time, but I definitely miss the old days of Turbo Pascal.

I hope this encodes in to AV1 or AV2 as currently tiktok uses h265 and h264.

Qualcomm reportedly in talks to build custom video chips for TikTok parent ByteDance by Karthik Mudaliar Qualcomm is reportedly in advanced discussions to provide custom chip-design services to Chinese tech giant ByteDance, the same company behind TikTok. According to a report from Reuters, Qualcomm could be involved in designing custom silicon tailored for ByteDance's massive data-center workloads. If it goes through, the deal would make ByteDance one of Qualcomm's early anchor customers for its fastly growing custom chip-design division, For years, Qualcomm was the king of making smartphone processors and modems. The company has also been moving into the PC ecosystem and other formats such as on-device AI for Android XR headsets. However, this particular deal is about Qualcomm's custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). For a platform like TikTok, ByteDance needs hardware that can help it ingest, process, and serve billions of short-form videos daily. Generalised hardware is no longer the most cost-effective and efficient route, which is why ByteDance is trying to develop custom Video Processing Units (VPUs). VPUs designed specifically for ByteDance’s algorithmic needs could drastically reduce data-center power consumption and improve encoding speeds at an unprecedented scale. The underlying tech behind these processors is actually from Qualcomm's recent acquisition of AlphaWave Semi, a high-speed connectivity specialist company. By combining AlphaWave’s high-bandwidth IP with Qualcomm’s architectural expertise, the company could begin mass production by the end of 2026, if the talks go through. All this also comes at a time when U.S.-China tech relations have dwindled. Escalating trade frictions between Washington and Beijing have severely impacted the export of high-end AI chips from U.S. firms like Nvidia, AMD, and Lam Research. Yet, the Qualcomm-ByteDance discussions show that U.S. tech companies are still actively seeking growth avenues and are open to doing business with China, where regulators still permit. Reuters notes that the outcome of this deal could be uncertain, and ByteDance might also seek partners other than Qualcomm. via Reuters | Image via DepositPhotos.com

Same.