mikethemartian
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iMac Pro arrives at Apple's retail stores
Is looks what’s important? Is the purpose of a hpc machine to do work or to take out on a date?alandail said:
Are you really trying to compare this:VRing said:
The DIY route is more for the prosumer, or at home computers. For that matter, a professional probably won't buy a prosumer all-in-one computer like the iMac Pro. They'll likely buy an ISV certified workstation with a 3 year on-site warranty, potentially purchased through an IT department from HP, Lenovo or Dell.lkrupp said:
Oh, and a “professional” is going build a DYI with off the self parts? How productive and cost effective would that be? As for your claim that you can ‘easily’ build a better one for less, that tripe has been debunked many times by people who have tried and failed to do it. There is no Apple ‘tax’ on this machine at this level.VRing said:
You can't price out the exact same specs. The CPU and GPU are down clocked versions of their off the shelf counterparts.lkrupp said:
Why do we keep with the narrative that this machine might be purchased by common users? Why do we keep mentioning the price? The real professional who makes a living with a machine like this one will pay the price. And it’s not too expensive when you consider what’s inside the beast. I’m surprised AI or someone else hasn’t priced out a PC with the exact same specs and 5K monitor, if such an animal even exists.AppleInsider said:Customers who can afford its $4,999 pricetag may now be able to find the 8-core base model of the iMac Pro in some U.S. Apple stores, ready for pickup.
For example, the Vega 64 iMac Pro is outputting about the same TFLOPS as the off the shelf Vega 56. So it's not going to be a tit-for-tat comparison.
If you want to price out a DIY desktop, you can easily build a better one for less than the iMac Pro.
Pre-built computers become a bit more complicated, again, because of the availability of parts and the fact the iMac Pro is using weaker components.
As for easily building a better computer, well, here's a prebuilt to compare:
iMac Pro - $7999
Intel Xeon W-2150B (10 core) <-- Downclocked from regular W-2155
AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 16 GB HBM2 (up to 4 displays) <-- Downclocked from regular Vega 64
64 GB DDR4-2666 ECC
2 TB PCIe M.2 SSD
10 Gb Ethernet
macOS
1 year warranty
GMT-W7/300 (source) - $5,639
Intel Xeon W-2155 (10 core)
AMD Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition 16 GB HBM2 (up to 6 displays)
64 GB DDR4-2666 ECC
2 TB PCIe M.2 SSD
2x 10 Gb Ethernet
Windows 10 Pro
1 year warranty
That leaves $2,360 for a monitor, keyboard and mouse. As for the display, something like the new 2018 5K LG Nano IPS display would be better than the iMac Pro's display (same as the LG UltraFine 5K). Or you can drop the resolution and go for a Dell UP2718K with local dimming (not edge-lit).
The end result is a desktop that's more powerful and won't suffer from throttling like the iMac Pro. It also has a better display (or options for different display configurations depending on the work required).
The DIY route would go with something like Threadripper which is even more powerful than the Xeon W-2155 and offers 64 PCIe lanes.
I also want to note, if ECC RAM is not needed, an i9-7900X is identical to the W-2155. So the cost savings and options grow considerably.
to this
seriously?
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iMac Pro arrives at Apple's retail stores
You assume everyone with hpc requirements is a high paid “professional”. There is a large number of graduate students in engineering and scientific computing that conduct important research in their fields that don’t make a lot of money or have big work budgets. This research requires far more computing power than is required by many high paid “professionals” in other fields. I was under the impression that at one time Apple had a strong interest in supporting and being involved in university research but maybe I was wrong.lkrupp said:
Oh, and a “professional” is going build a DYI with off the self parts? How productive and cost effective would that be? As for your claim that you can ‘easily’ build a better one for less, that tripe has been debunked many times by people who have tried and failed to do it. There is no Apple ‘tax’ on this machine at this level.VRing said:
You can't price out the exact same specs. The CPU and GPU are down clocked versions of their off the shelf counterparts.lkrupp said:
Why do we keep with the narrative that this machine might be purchased by common users? Why do we keep mentioning the price? The real professional who makes a living with a machine like this one will pay the price. And it’s not too expensive when you consider what’s inside the beast. I’m surprised AI or someone else hasn’t priced out a PC with the exact same specs and 5K monitor, if such an animal even exists.AppleInsider said:Customers who can afford its $4,999 pricetag may now be able to find the 8-core base model of the iMac Pro in some U.S. Apple stores, ready for pickup.
For example, the Vega 64 iMac Pro is outputting about the same TFLOPS as the off the shelf Vega 56. So it's not going to be a tit-for-tat comparison.
If you want to price out a DIY desktop, you can easily build a better one for less than the iMac Pro.
Pre-built computers become a bit more complicated, again, because of the availability of parts and the fact the iMac Pro is using weaker components. -
Energous WattUp mid-range power transmitter granted approval by FCC
I would think one of the main issues with a product like this is that it would just waste quite a bit of energy. It seems like it sends the EM radiation in a omnidirectional manner as a typical light bulb does. Only the EM flux that passes through the cross section of the collector (which I assume is a coil) provides useful power. The rest will just scatter and be absorbed by the surroundings.
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Energous WattUp mid-range power transmitter granted approval by FCC
The visible light off a candle is probably more dangerous. To ionize an atom a photon (light quanta) has to have enough energy to knock an electron out of its orbit. The energy of a photon scales with frequency (E=h*f where h is Planck’s constant). The frequency of a visible photon is on the order of 10^14 Hz. I don’t know what the frequency of the RF this product uses but if it is about the same as a WiFi signal that would be about 10^9 Hz range. That means a visible light photon has about 100,000 times the energy of a GHz RF photon. I personally have never heard of a visible light photon having enough energy to ionize an atom. That occurs when you get in the x-ray regime of 10^16 Hz.macseeker said:Wonder if it will be safe to be near. Too much RF radiation is bad for the body.
Also you can’t ionize an electron that requires a 10^16 Hz photon with 10,000,000 RF frequency photons even though added all together they would have the same energy as the one x-ray photon by itself. That is prohibited by Einstein’s photoelectric effect for which he won the Nobel prize in physics for.
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Apple's Face ID with attention detection fooled by $200 mask
How many cameras read back the image data? If it is only one then even though the dot projector interrogates the face with a 3D scan the image the camera sees is just a 2D projection of the 3D subject on a 2D plane.
