The Tech Random Crap Thread

Eriol

Eriol

This is near-insanity what's happening with supercomputers:
velocity-g480.jpg

That rig purports to get 70 TFLOPS. That's terrifying because that's only 3 orders of magnitude (1000 times less) than the #1 in the WORLD, the Sunway TaihuLight which pulls 90PFLOPS. And this thing could almost sit on your desk. Oh, and according to the article: $7,495

This is nuts. It's awesome, but nuts.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Eriol said:
This is near-insanity what's happening with supercomputers:
View attachment 25058
That rig purports to get 70 TFLOPS. That's terrifying because that's only 3 orders of magnitude (1000 times less) than the #1 in the WORLD, the Sunway TaihuLight which pulls 90PFLOPS. And this thing could almost sit on your desk. Oh, and according to the article: $7,495

This is nuts. It's awesome, but nuts.
Click to expand...

This is why gpu prices have skyrocketed. Damn you, cryptocurrency
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

That's what Intel's Xeon Phi was supposed to deliver. It was supposed to be many dozens of GPx86 cores on a card, so you could effectively have a cluster on a card, and then put many of them in one box.

Also that box is full of GTX 980's. The current 1070 and 1080 cards outclass them (even the 980ti!), so there's still potentially 50% or so more FLOPS to be had, assuming you could source the cards.

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
I don't know which is more terrifying...the number of GH/s, or the fact that it can pull up to 4kW from the wall. "Yikes," indeed.

--Patrick
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Found a thread where a guy kept dismissing power costs because he "lived in an apartment" that covered utility costs. Dude, you'll have more to worry about than an an electric bill when the landlord finally figures out it's you.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Found a thread where a guy kept dismissing power costs because he "lived in an apartment" that covered utility costs. Dude, you'll have more to worry about than an an electric bill when the landlord finally figures out it's you.
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Yeah, it's guys like that who come to mind when ISPs say things like, "Our data caps only affect a very small percentage of our users," cuz you know he's the guy who's seeding 50GB/day because "...it's included in the rent."

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

So... Apparently the i5-2500K can OC to 5GHz relatively easily on an ASRock motherboard. I was able to get it to run the same Cinebench benchmark as the guy in the tutorial.

But when I went to run the Prime95 blend test, things started to go south. First I got a BSOD crash, and tweaking all the OC settings to auto resulted in a freeze at the motherboard logo screen. So I backed off to the 4.8GHz presets. This time Prime95 pegged the temps during the second round of tests. So I back off again to the 4.6GHz presets I've been running for years. Prime95 blend test again pegged the temps, but it took a couple of minutes longer this time.

I'm running a Corsair H50 liquid cooler with a push-pull fan setup. Granted, however, it's been in place for 6 years and counting. Best I've been able to do is give the fans and radiator a good blast with canned air every few weeks.

Darn it, I want that 5GHz! :p
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

About time.
Technology should never be about wringing settlements.
Technology should be about technology.
Hey just make patents like this non-transferrable, problem solved*.

--Patrick
*...and other problems created but whatever
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

After cracking open the main PC for a cleaning, I start wondering if it's time to upgrade. Turns out not. Experts still love the 2500K. The H50 cooler can hit near ambient at idle and under the 85C optimal stress test load at a 4.6GHz overclock. the motherboard is optimized for the memory speed I already have. The only worthwhile upgrade is a GPU, and thanks to the miners, it's too expensive an option.

Thanks, Tom's Hardware. The advice you gave me in 2011 was *too* good. I can't justify satisfying the build itch on a new main system. I'll just have to find a use for that last spare CPU from the surplus boxes I got from Pitt. :p
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

You have my agreement as well. The best performers since the Sandy/Ivy bridges are the Devil's Canyon chips (4790k/4690k) and the desktop Broadwells (5775C/5675C). Everything else has been disappointing.

--Patrick
 
Wahad

Wahad

So my grandpa's old computer has run into an issue where the screen flickers to a blank, light-grey state after booting up past the windows starting screen. The computer still works (autoplay runs an audio disc fine, for example), but the screen refuses to show anything but the grey. No cursor, no icons, no nothing. The screen also doesn't show any of the onboard menus/settings (contrast etc.), so it's not a faulty setting there.

Checked the vga cable, and there was nothing wrong with that (no bent pins, no cable interruptions, etc.). So my first guess was that it's the video card that's burned out for whatever reason (like I said, the computer is pretty old); but it could also be the monitor simply giving up, I guess. My question; how the heck do I test which one it is before we buy a replacement? I don't really have access to either a video card or a spare screen that I can borrow from anybody, which takes the easy answer to that question out of the equation, and if I buy one and it turns out to be the other, that's a waste of money.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Wahad said:
So my grandpa's old computer has run into an issue where the screen flickers to a blank, light-grey state after booting up past the windows starting screen. The computer still works (autoplay runs an audio disc fine, for example), but the screen refuses to show anything but the grey. No cursor, no icons, no nothing. The screen also doesn't show any of the onboard menus/settings (contrast etc.), so it's not a faulty setting there.

Checked the vga cable, and there was nothing wrong with that (no bent pins, no cable interruptions, etc.). So my first guess was that it's the video card that's burned out for whatever reason (like I said, the computer is pretty old); but it could also be the monitor simply giving up, I guess. My question; how the heck do I test which one it is before we buy a replacement? I don't really have access to either a video card or a spare screen that I can borrow from anybody, which takes the easy answer to that question out of the equation, and if I buy one and it turns out to be the other, that's a waste of money.
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No other computer you can lug the screen to, either? Connect it to your laptop or something? The only way to know which of the three (I never rule out the cable and connectors even if they look fine :p) is to check them separately.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Depending on the monitor's age/make, it could be as simple as the computer trying to display a resolution the monitor doesn't support. I'd also try booting up in safe mode to force a low resolution to eliminate that possibility.

But yeah, test the monitor with your laptop, too.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Is this a CRT? Because if it's an LCD, not even being able to display any control menus pretty much nails down the fault being with the monitor.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

figmentPez said:
Is this a CRT? Because if it's an LCD, not even being able to display any control menus pretty much nails down the fault being with the monitor.
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Was gonna say the same thing. Normally has OSD but doesn't now? = monitor problem (at a minimum, I mean it could be both).

--Patrick
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Eriol said:
This is near-insanity what's happening with supercomputers:
View attachment 25058
That rig purports to get 70 TFLOPS. That's terrifying because that's only 3 orders of magnitude (1000 times less) than the #1 in the WORLD, the Sunway TaihuLight which pulls 90PFLOPS. And this thing could almost sit on your desk. Oh, and according to the article: $7,495

This is nuts. It's awesome, but nuts.
Click to expand...
I sent this to our CTO and our IT guy. Our cluster is getting ancient, and we've taken to renting cycles from a local service. But it's expensive. We're renting 1000 cores, and it's costing us 30K a month. And that's cheaper than AWS, Hadoop, and the like for equivalent service. And we're screwed on replacing ours, because power requirements have gone up, and we're already at the building's limit.
 
Eriol

Eriol

fade said:
I sent this to our CTO and our IT guy. Our cluster is getting ancient, and we've taken to renting cycles from a local service. But it's expensive. We're renting 1000 cores, and it's costing us 30K a month. And that's cheaper than AWS, Hadoop, and the like for equivalent service. And we're screwed on replacing ours, because power requirements have gone up, and we're already at the building's limit.
Click to expand...
Good luck then. This seems like quite a lot less than $30k per month, and not insane power requirements either. I hope it does what you need. I just linked it as "wow this is interesting" not "I hope somebody here finds this useful IRL!" But if it is, awesome.
 
Gared

Gared

All these tech threads are starting to make me feel like a luddite. Seriously. Several of you have home servers. @PatrThom is installing a server rack in his basement right now. I struggle to play networked games with my wife (who is literally sitting right next to me at the table) if the game or client doesn't set it all up nicely for us like Steam and Minecraft. I was building computers, configuring databases, setting up VoIP services, and writing software 6 years ago and now I feel like a toddler again.[DOUBLEPOST=1503018180,1503018055][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh - and the worst part of it? I can still pick stuff up in a snap, but I have to know which questions to ask/technologies to pay attention to/languages to pick up; and it was honestly like stepping off of a busy sidewalk one day, looking back over, and seeing that the sidewalk had been replaced by the LA interstate.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Gared said:
@PatrThom is installing a server rack in his basement right now.
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That's not me, that's @Tinwhistler, I think. We have a rack installed in the garage and another in the basement, but those are left over from when my father-in-law used to pull Cat3 for the local businesses and school districts, and right now they have antiquated 10Base-T switches installed and so are just used as a glorified patch panel. All I did was get a sweet deal on the build-to-order 12-core version of one of these and jump on it. It's designed to be clamped in such a way that it can be rack-mounted, but I don't intend to do so. I honestly bought it as a workstation to finally be able to clean up/edit video footage (but I might have it running server duty when I'm not doing that, which will honestly be most of the time).

Many years ago, I got another incredible deal when I bought a copy of Shake (List $3000) for just $200(!), and it's truly an amazing piece of software, but running it on a 2GB 1GHz G4 was an exercise in patience. Now I have a 12c machine where each core is > 9x faster than that 1GHz G4 for a potential render speedup of > 110x (minimum!), and thats not including any boost provided by the step up from the modified X800 I have in the G4 to the 5870 in the Pro (Passmark estimates that speedup to be just over 26x) And I'm not even going to get into how much faster file access with a PCIe SSD will be over the G4's now-ancient 500GB ATA133 drive, or how much advantage it will be going from 2GB RAM up to 48 or even 96GB RAM. This computer was literally the exact dream model I ogled while I was suffering through that editing process, which is why I'm so happy to have it. It's also old enough to run the older OS I'll need (10.6) to be able to run this older software "as it was meant to be used."

Screen Shot 2017-08-17 at 9.32.25 PM.png

Mmm, that's a beautiful picture. I hope to test its potential someday.

The biggest obstacle is that I have nowhere to put it at the moment (and of course the RAM and SSD). But that's a question for another day.

--Patrick
 
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Eriol

Eriol

Saw this today on StackOverflow:
Code: 
msg[ipos++] = checksum(&msg[1], ipos-1);  // <---- Undefined Behaviour?
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I thought that was really great that the COMPILER caught this. It's quite subtle, but good to know about. I can see other subtle ways this could occur that the compiler would NOT catch (like if ipos was a straight-out by-reference parameter to checksum, and updated inside of it), and so being aware of this kind of thing is good.

There are always exceptions (pun intended), but in general I try and keep the left side of my assignments simple. It's just easier for everybody involved.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

fade said:
I sent this to our CTO and our IT guy. Our cluster is getting ancient, and we've taken to renting cycles from a local service. But it's expensive. We're renting 1000 cores, and it's costing us 30K a month. And that's cheaper than AWS, Hadoop, and the like for equivalent service. And we're screwed on replacing ours, because power requirements have gone up, and we're already at the building's limit.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you might find this of use, too.
ASUS_B250_Mining_Expert.jpg

The new B250 Mining Expert motherboard from ASUS is one of just a handful of motherboards designed specifically for mining, and the only one in the world to pack 19 expansion slots onto a single slab of electronics. All but one of those slots are PCIe Gen 3.0 x1 slots, while the remaining one is a PCIe 3.0 x16 slots.
Click to expand...
I know it's geared more towards mining, but your tech guy(s) might find it interesting as well if you're just looking to glom together a whole bunch of CUDA or something.

--Patrick
 
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