Undoubtedly. What's interesting about this thread (to me, anyway) is how that little box can be enhanced, adapted or repurposed with third-party accessories.
Its tiny size and nearly complete lack of a user interface opens up all kinds of possibilities.
Something I haven't seen discussed yet (or perhaps I did, but I was too dumb to recognize it):
I'm a long-time Bryce User. For high-end 3D rendering they have an addition called "Bryce Lightning." Bryce Lightning lets you distrubte rendering task to multiple computers, cutting up the image into "grids" and passing each cell out to Slave computers to work on a particular section.
So, you start rendering your art, Bryce moves portions of the pictures to multiple computers which focus on a part of the total picture. Then, when that section is complete, it sends the part back to the Master Computer, which reassembles the image from it's distributed parts.
As you can imagine, this speeds rendering.
Bryce (and hopefully other software) can take advantage of low-price shared OS X machines, bringing affordable render farms within reach of just about anyone.
And not just for 3D. But audio and video uses as well. Maybe even Photoshop.
Have Mac 1 convert an image from RGB to CMYK through Remote Desktop, while Mac 2 does something else to another image in Photoshop. Or, Mac 2 batch processes, while Mac 1 is doing assembly of the batched processed images.
I know that OS X is a multi-thread, multi-use environment, but offloading some tasks to one machine while doing more complex things with your tower or PowerBook... why not? Now you can. Affordably. And distributing tasks... wow.
Xgrid for the home, office, or home-office.
So, Mini Me's could be a server, a render farm, a jukebox, etc., etc., etc.
The only thing that's better than 1 Mac is a bunch of them.
Something I haven't seen discussed yet (or perhaps I did, but I was too dumb to recognize it):
I'm a long-time Bryce User. For high-end 3D rendering they have an addition called "Bryce Lightning." Bryce Lightning lets you distrubte rendering task to multiple computers, cutting up the image into "grids" and passing each cell out to Slave computers to work on a particular section.
So, you start rendering your art, Bryce moves portions of the pictures to multiple computers which focus on a part of the total picture. Then, when that section is complete, it sends the part back to the Master Computer, which reassembles the image from it's distributed parts.
As you can imagine, this speeds rendering.
Bryce (and hopefully other software) can take advantage of low-price shared OS X machines, bringing affordable render farms within reach of just about anyone.
And not just for 3D. But audio and video uses as well. Maybe even Photoshop.
Have Mac 1 convert an image from RGB to CMYK through Remote Desktop, while Mac 2 does something else to another image in Photoshop. Or, Mac 2 batch processes, while Mac 1 is doing assembly of the batched processed images.
I know that OS X is a multi-thread, multi-use environment, but offloading some tasks to one machine while doing more complex things with your tower or PowerBook... why not? Now you can. Affordably. And distributing tasks... wow.
Xgrid for the home, office, or home-office.
So, Mini Me's could be a server, a render farm, a jukebox, etc., etc., etc.
The only thing that's better than 1 Mac is a bunch of them.
But that's just me.
yes you are the first person to have posted a practical sensible, XGrid for the Consumer example. there are some other computer scientists who have said "no mac mini is not designed for xgrid and high powercomputation because you gotta split the algorithm to processor a, b, c, etc..." blah blah blah
but your example of XGrid for Low-End (no offense to your Bryce skillz ) is a different methodology, in that you are breaking up major chunks of processing and then farming it out to your Mini cluster... it's not that this heavy Gaussian blur is split out into all the processors, that would be dumb, but on a major render, Gaussian blur done like you said on Mac A, then some other batch processing could be going on on Mac B, eg, resizing, then composited back in once A and B are done on Mac C the MASTER CONTROL... (Tron anyone?)
I AM THE MCP. YOU WILL OBEY ME. I HAVE A BRITISH ACCENT.
Clearly you have identified a area where there is lot of scope for consumer "low to mid-end" cluster computing where it's not so much about the computer science but the software side of being able to intelligently distribute chunks of processing at a higher level.
So, if Photoshop went fully non-destructive node-based, with more of a Shake-like interface, then various tasks and prepping of files could be intelligently distributed across the cluster
2006 is the year of "XGrid Mini... High Performance Cluster Computing For The Rest Of Us."
Holy moly are you guys in left field with this Mac Mini xGrid stuff... we're months away from quad PowerMacs (two dual core chips) and Power5 based units are likley within a year and you are excited about hooking up two or more single unit 1.25 GHz G4's?
I do believe that Apple will will address the set-top box but the Mac Mini is not the answer. Why would Apple want to create a great platform for third-party hardware developers? They would want the business for themselves.
The answer would likely be unveiled when the software is unveiled. This will require Tiger and could come as soon as WWDC 2005. I hope.
you people make me sick. you're all too mac crazy, have too much time, too much skillz, and i don't know how the bloody hell you all make any money at all since you're constantly f8cking around with all this shite.
you people make me sick. you're all too mac crazy, have too much time, too much skillz, and i don't know how the bloody hell you all make any money at all since you're constantly f8cking around with all this shite.
As a mock-up it's better than the "iHome", but I'd like to see more ports on the back, like coax in/out for the TV tuners inside. Looks like there's room inside for a big fat hard drive too.
The first slices I see coming out are going to be firewire and usb hubs.
The thing about not stacking stuff on top of the mini is to prevent the airport and bluetooth signals from being blocked. Anything getting stacked on top would need to let the signal through - I think a passive pair of antennas top and bottom of the device would facilitate that. Or you could just put slices on the bottom - like this:
Every thing is powered from the firewire bus.
There are three external firewire ports, and one used internally for a 3.5" HD.
There are 4 additional external USB ports, and two internally. One for the LCD display on the front, and one for an optional internal device ( the black rectangle is the expansion cut out ). TV tuner, wireless, bluetooth, audio in/out could all be added to that space ( as USB devices ).
The red zone indicates where a vary solid little cable runs between the Mini and the hub.
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
Sure ~ just add a Slice with the appropriate hardware Mpeg encoders to deliver your HD signal via firewire to the Mac mini.
ATI Technologies has a whole range of Digital TV products to choose from, if you'd like to develop a Slice to add to the Mac mini.
These add on products are already designed and in many cases built. All they need to do now is put them in a chassis that conforms to the Mac mini design parameters.
Look how quick kick ass mock-ups have shown up in just this thread. Do you think it will take long for the current players to jump on this platform with real products?
Power Slice - A conventional power supply with a built in battery (even one from a Powerbook!) that provides a conditioned, uninterruptible power source for the mini and a second output port for your Apple cinema display, thus eliminating two wall warts.
With a cool glowing power switch on the front to power you whole system up with a touch. Maybe with a couple of powered USB2 and Firewire ports running along the side (the front would be to tacky and not follow Mac mini design parameters).
Power Slice - A conventional power supply with a built in battery (even one from a Powerbook!) that provides a conditioned, uninterruptible power source for the mini and a second output port for your Apple cinema display, thus eliminating two wall warts.
With a cool glowing power switch on the front to power you whole system up with a touch. Maybe with a couple of powered USB2 and Firewire ports running along the side (the front would be to tacky and not follow Mac mini design parameters).
Graphically challenged, or otherwise limited entrants, are allowed to be descriptively entered with full spec's noted. (Extra points for fully rendered ideas).
Ok, I'm a little late to the party, but I was doing a little late-night homework on the viability of hooking up a Mac mini to my HDTV. Piecing together a bunch of blogs and forum posts tonight, a few things dawned on me,
1. This idea of "slices" really has legs for third parties and Apple.
2. The rumored Asteroid project may in fact be such a forthcoming slice.
3. If I make a leap of faith, I might be tempted to buy a Mac mini now and would (hopefully) later be able to add to my home theater network (as opposed to "media center" I suppose) as I like: digital audio, recording, video/TV recording, etc.
If I were Apple or an auspicious third party, I would think bigger than just a hard drive, and would really try to tackle some media area and include a hard drive along with software to give it more, uh, purpose. I mean La Cie might just want to do a "dumb" hard drive, but it's almost a foot race to see who can expand on this slice idea/platform first and best. Apple is hesitant to wade into TV recording, mainly because they're wary of how cable companies control access and content. I don't think Apple will be willing to go in that direction so long as the local monopolies (in the US) have a stranglehold on these things.
As my mind wanders on this topic, I realize that the whole HD TV/DVD/mobile format war thing with H.264, QT, and so forth isn't just about doing an end-run around Microsoft, it's also a first step towards positioning the company advantageously against the cable and satellite companies for if/when the market model changes under their feet.
Ok, I'll shut up now. I'm on board.
PS: something curious that I found while googling:
Here's my vision for dance and electronic music... TranceFire
Slices are TranceFire modules based on very popular analog synths that give you that warm rush on the dance floor as the DJ drops the phat tracks and your pills kick in
The "breakout box" is the 2nd slice from the top, the one with at logo mod - that's right, that's the logo for Apple2 8)
The Apple2 TranceFire hub is the master module that translates all the FireWire inputs from the TranceFire synth modules and the one that sends the FireWire signal.
IMPORTANT: Why have the TranceFire modules?
1. they reduce CPU load, software-based synth chews up CPU
2. hardware synth sounds better, especially analog
3. all analog to digital conversion is done within the module,
so Mini gets nice clean separate digital tracks from all modules
4. this is a much lower cost and convenient alternative to wrangling
separate hardware synths of different form factors
5. reduces cable mess and noise significantly
This would go sweet with bluetooth MIDI controller keyboards (not shown) to enter notes and control the separate TranceFire modules
Comments
Its tiny size and nearly complete lack of a user interface opens up all kinds of possibilities.
I'm a long-time Bryce User. For high-end 3D rendering they have an addition called "Bryce Lightning." Bryce Lightning lets you distrubte rendering task to multiple computers, cutting up the image into "grids" and passing each cell out to Slave computers to work on a particular section.
So, you start rendering your art, Bryce moves portions of the pictures to multiple computers which focus on a part of the total picture. Then, when that section is complete, it sends the part back to the Master Computer, which reassembles the image from it's distributed parts.
As you can imagine, this speeds rendering.
Bryce (and hopefully other software) can take advantage of low-price shared OS X machines, bringing affordable render farms within reach of just about anyone.
And not just for 3D. But audio and video uses as well. Maybe even Photoshop.
Have Mac 1 convert an image from RGB to CMYK through Remote Desktop, while Mac 2 does something else to another image in Photoshop. Or, Mac 2 batch processes, while Mac 1 is doing assembly of the batched processed images.
I know that OS X is a multi-thread, multi-use environment, but offloading some tasks to one machine while doing more complex things with your tower or PowerBook... why not? Now you can. Affordably. And distributing tasks... wow.
Xgrid for the home, office, or home-office.
So, Mini Me's could be a server, a render farm, a jukebox, etc., etc., etc.
The only thing that's better than 1 Mac is a bunch of them.
But that's just me.
Originally posted by jonboy
Something I haven't seen discussed yet (or perhaps I did, but I was too dumb to recognize it):
I'm a long-time Bryce User. For high-end 3D rendering they have an addition called "Bryce Lightning." Bryce Lightning lets you distrubte rendering task to multiple computers, cutting up the image into "grids" and passing each cell out to Slave computers to work on a particular section.
So, you start rendering your art, Bryce moves portions of the pictures to multiple computers which focus on a part of the total picture. Then, when that section is complete, it sends the part back to the Master Computer, which reassembles the image from it's distributed parts.
As you can imagine, this speeds rendering.
Bryce (and hopefully other software) can take advantage of low-price shared OS X machines, bringing affordable render farms within reach of just about anyone.
And not just for 3D. But audio and video uses as well. Maybe even Photoshop.
Have Mac 1 convert an image from RGB to CMYK through Remote Desktop, while Mac 2 does something else to another image in Photoshop. Or, Mac 2 batch processes, while Mac 1 is doing assembly of the batched processed images.
I know that OS X is a multi-thread, multi-use environment, but offloading some tasks to one machine while doing more complex things with your tower or PowerBook... why not? Now you can. Affordably. And distributing tasks... wow.
Xgrid for the home, office, or home-office.
So, Mini Me's could be a server, a render farm, a jukebox, etc., etc., etc.
The only thing that's better than 1 Mac is a bunch of them.
But that's just me.
yes you are the first person to have posted a practical sensible, XGrid for the Consumer example. there are some other computer scientists who have said "no mac mini is not designed for xgrid and high powercomputation because you gotta split the algorithm to processor a, b, c, etc..." blah blah blah
but your example of XGrid for Low-End (no offense to your Bryce skillz
I AM THE MCP. YOU WILL OBEY ME. I HAVE A BRITISH ACCENT.
Clearly you have identified a area where there is lot of scope for consumer "low to mid-end" cluster computing where it's not so much about the computer science but the software side of being able to intelligently distribute chunks of processing at a higher level.
So, if Photoshop went fully non-destructive node-based, with more of a Shake-like interface, then various tasks and prepping of files could be intelligently distributed across the cluster
I do believe that Apple will will address the set-top box but the Mac Mini is not the answer. Why would Apple want to create a great platform for third-party hardware developers? They would want the business for themselves.
The answer would likely be unveiled when the software is unveiled. This will require Tiger and could come as soon as WWDC 2005. I hope.
Originally posted by Aphelion
...kickass mockup...
you people make me sick. you're all too mac crazy, have too much time, too much skillz, and i don't know how the bloody hell you all make any money at all since you're constantly f8cking around with all this shite.
Originally posted by sunilraman
you people make me sick. you're all too mac crazy, have too much time, too much skillz, and i don't know how the bloody hell you all make any money at all since you're constantly f8cking around with all this shite.
Uhh, the mac is a ...er... state.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
'Tis a nifty mockup.
As a mock-up it's better than the "iHome", but I'd like to see more ports on the back, like coax in/out for the TV tuners inside. Looks like there's room inside for a big fat hard drive too.
The thing about not stacking stuff on top of the mini is to prevent the airport and bluetooth signals from being blocked. Anything getting stacked on top would need to let the signal through - I think a passive pair of antennas top and bottom of the device would facilitate that. Or you could just put slices on the bottom - like this:
Every thing is powered from the firewire bus.
There are three external firewire ports, and one used internally for a 3.5" HD.
There are 4 additional external USB ports, and two internally. One for the LCD display on the front, and one for an optional internal device ( the black rectangle is the expansion cut out ). TV tuner, wireless, bluetooth, audio in/out could all be added to that space ( as USB devices ).
The red zone indicates where a vary solid little cable runs between the Mini and the hub.
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
Well, maybe home theater for little screens.
http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/h264faq.html
Originally posted by jaslu81
Home theater on a mini?...
Sure ~ just add a Slice with the appropriate hardware Mpeg encoders to deliver your HD signal via firewire to the Mac mini.
ATI Technologies has a whole range of Digital TV products to choose from, if you'd like to develop a Slice to add to the Mac mini.
These add on products are already designed and in many cases built. All they need to do now is put them in a chassis that conforms to the Mac mini design parameters.
Look how quick kick ass mock-ups have shown up in just this thread. Do you think it will take long for the current players to jump on this platform with real products?
Thread challenge: Design your own kick ass slice.
Power Slice - A conventional power supply with a built in battery (even one from a Powerbook!) that provides a conditioned, uninterruptible power source for the mini and a second output port for your Apple cinema display, thus eliminating two wall warts.
With a cool glowing power switch on the front to power you whole system up with a touch. Maybe with a couple of powered USB2 and Firewire ports running along the side (the front would be to tacky and not follow Mac mini design parameters).
Sorry mmmpie if this steals some of your idea.
Originally posted by Aphelion
I'll start at the bottom of the stack:
Power Slice - A conventional power supply with a built in battery (even one from a Powerbook!) that provides a conditioned, uninterruptible power source for the mini and a second output port for your Apple cinema display, thus eliminating two wall warts.
With a cool glowing power switch on the front to power you whole system up with a touch. Maybe with a couple of powered USB2 and Firewire ports running along the side (the front would be to tacky and not follow Mac mini design parameters).
Sorry mmmpie if this steals some of your idea.
wheres the mock-up for this? i need
1. instant visual gratification
2. not to have to read your description
Originally posted by sunilraman
wheres the mock-up for this?
Rules for the Thread Slice Challenge:
Graphically challenged, or otherwise limited entrants, are allowed to be descriptively entered with full spec's noted. (Extra points for fully rendered ideas).
I'm so putting a Mac Mini in my Color Classic someday.
1. This idea of "slices" really has legs for third parties and Apple.
2. The rumored Asteroid project may in fact be such a forthcoming slice.
3. If I make a leap of faith, I might be tempted to buy a Mac mini now and would (hopefully) later be able to add to my home theater network (as opposed to "media center" I suppose) as I like: digital audio, recording, video/TV recording, etc.
If I were Apple or an auspicious third party, I would think bigger than just a hard drive, and would really try to tackle some media area and include a hard drive along with software to give it more, uh, purpose. I mean La Cie might just want to do a "dumb" hard drive, but it's almost a foot race to see who can expand on this slice idea/platform first and best. Apple is hesitant to wade into TV recording, mainly because they're wary of how cable companies control access and content. I don't think Apple will be willing to go in that direction so long as the local monopolies (in the US) have a stranglehold on these things.
As my mind wanders on this topic, I realize that the whole HD TV/DVD/mobile format war thing with H.264, QT, and so forth isn't just about doing an end-run around Microsoft, it's also a first step towards positioning the company advantageously against the cable and satellite companies for if/when the market model changes under their feet.
Ok, I'll shut up now. I'm on board.
PS: something curious that I found while googling:
http://www.cyndustries.com/modules_minimac.cfm
Not what we're talking about, but another interesting angle on the subject in a way.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
PS: something curious that I found while googling:
http://www.cyndustries.com/modules_minimac.cfm
Not what we're talking about, but another interesting angle on the subject in a way.
WTF? That's awesome. Even the analog sound-synthesis community is on board now
Originally posted by sunilraman
WTF? That's awesome. Even the analog sound-synthesis community is on board now
I am inspired by this as it relates to dance music production. Okay, gonna hit the ciggies while I work on this shite
I hope to riff off their idea and slipstream it into our thread... to be renamed...
"Slices Of Heaven"
Slices are TranceFire modules based on very popular analog synths that give you that warm rush on the dance floor as the DJ drops the phat tracks and your pills kick in
The "breakout box" is the 2nd slice from the top, the one with at logo mod - that's right, that's the logo for Apple2 8)
The Apple2 TranceFire hub is the master module that translates all the FireWire inputs from the TranceFire synth modules and the one that sends the FireWire signal.
IMPORTANT: Why have the TranceFire modules?
1. they reduce CPU load, software-based synth chews up CPU
2. hardware synth sounds better, especially analog
3. all analog to digital conversion is done within the module,
so Mini gets nice clean separate digital tracks from all modules
4. this is a much lower cost and convenient alternative to wrangling
separate hardware synths of different form factors
5. reduces cable mess and noise significantly
This would go sweet with bluetooth MIDI controller keyboards (not shown) to enter notes and control the separate TranceFire modules