Posted on 04/13/2021 11:07:47 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Nvidia just made some MASSIVE announcements in terms of ARM-based computers, so they're now joining Apple and AMD in the fight against Intel and their x86-based chips.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
I most recently tried a Gigabyte Brix here. Works fine with Linux and plenty of ports including HDMI and a USB-C. And yes, big TV screens are nice.
The problem with NVDA and AMD is that they don’t make their own chips. Even APPL. They farm it out to TSMC and Samsung. If there is a supply disruption they will be stuck. Intel makes its own chips but it’s having difficulty matching the manufacturing prowess of TSMC and Samsung. That has got to change though. We can’t let China control our tech industry. If China invades Taiwan, that will leave only Samsung.
I like the Pi and other similar boards, but wish one of them would provide 2 Ethernet interfaces. Hmmm...haven’t looked at those for a while, though. I’m somewhat of an anti-WiFi Luddite, until we see better security with WiFi. Heh. Use it only with temporary broadcasts for updating cellphones so far.
One thing... A “big TV screen” for me is around 32”. I like to keep things low power after being too far from grid power for six years and having used my own solar power plant.
I remember the day when a 32 inch TV was like something from Star Trek. Heh...
Lots of ports, small footprint, best of both worlds. I share your preference of wired vs wireless.
Yes, I have considered the R Pi.
Lots of ham stuff available. I need to dust of that gear too.
I've been looking at yet another one, a Pi 4B, 8 gb. But really, really don't need to do that. And the rumor is, the Pi 5 will be out in the next year or less.
You are right.
NVDA is soaring again!
Given the launch of the latest generation of Xeon processors, it looks like Intel has 10mm lithography working and large scale production finally in order. They are just focussing their resources on higher margin processors servers, and workstations, as well as trying to keep the mobile market. They are ceding desktops, while their heterogienous 3d chiplet processors role out, in 2 years? Of course, Zen 4 will be out by then. I’m sure Apple will have 8, 12, and 20+ core M2 processors by then.
And Apple still won’t take any market share for their troubles.
re: “ FR loads tolerably fast. No graphics card, though.”
I’ve got news for you: FR loads quickly on this 2004 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 w/o a graphics card too ...
Yes, a 17 YR old Dell OptiPlex Pentium 4. Running Win Xp. And the Mypal browser ... PC is USB tethered to an iPhone 6S and using Visible (Verizon) 4G LTE.
re: “CISC can’t keep up. And RISC is more flexible.”
This isn’t your grandpa’s CPU world anymore; instruction ‘pre-fetch’ and multi-branch decode has changed ALL that ...
re: “This hardware is for VERY large databases (2,000,000 records x 1012 fields), and very large spreadsheet calcs happening simultaneously.”
Ya .. I’ve got a Win 7 box I run a 3D EM ‘solver’ on, using FEM where an object is described via ‘tets’ (tetrahedrons) ... the smaller the tet the better the resolution, so the trick is to _not_ over-run installed memory in a PC/machine by wisely choosing the tet size and orientation. Some antennas are longer than wide, so, one can adjust resolution to ‘fit’ memory!
When Apple jumped from the PPC to Intel, it was long in the making. In-house builds of OS revisions -- including during the Classic MacOS (pre-X) era -- were done on Intel architecture as well, kind of a magic mirror, who's the fairest approach. If Apple had stuck with the next iteration, which resulted (eventually) in the Cell microprocessor (PlayStation 3; Sony, a longtime foot-shooter, removed the option to install other operating system from the PS3 in one of their 'updates'; prior to that, YellowDog Linux was in some use on the PS3), they'd have continued to enjoy a lead, but the delays became interminable, particularly to Jobs, who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it.
Apple's headed for a period of increasing dominance in the mobile phone market, as their power-sipping chips take the lead in battery life but also beat all rivals in processing power. Apple invented the high-end mobile phone for the consumer market ("what about Blackberry, blah blah blah"), and as with the computer market in general, which started to shrink desktop boxes and laptops as the mobile phone tech became ubiquitous, margins have declined for most phone manufacturers. Apple's still raking it in. Their family of laptop (oops, sorry, notebook) and desktop computers have remained profitable (4500 years from now the Apple "Big O" HQ will have the drawing power as does the Great Pyramid is today) and as the cost falls for their butt-booting CPU/GPU technology, the stampede of the industry (other than Intel, for now) into ARM will be breathtaking.
Apple could very well buy Intel (on a dip), but it won't be allowed by our Chinese-owned-and-operated "watchdogs" in DC.
BTW, maybe a hat would help with the dual ethernet thing:
The machine I'm posting this from is my Ryzen 2700x with 8 CPU cores, 32Gb of memory and an SSD Raid Array on an ASUS ROG RX-570 STRIX mobo. It's a damn' impressive machine.
I have been following Apple's M1 chip developments and am really impressed by their performance. Seeing that Linux has been ported to it, I'm seriously considering purchasing one. I'm a Linux fan, have been for many years. Kicked Microsoft fully to the curb a few years ago now with the sole exception being my work laptop which was provided to me by the bank I work for.
As for nVidia/ARM, the more competition in this space the better. Intel got "fat & happy" for far too long and innovation suffered greatly as a result. AMD finally coming up with the Ryzen CPU's shook Intel awake a little bit, Apple's M1 chip's performance rocked Intel, let's see if nVidia/ARM can push Intel closer to the cliff or if Intel finally, fully wakes up and starts innovating again instead of simply adding more cores/boosting speed of existing CPU's.
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