This is a draft.
Update Alert: Apparently the next generation threadripper pro is months away from announcement and/or release. It would make sense to wait a few months and see what happens.
This is a discussion of the issues one might consider when building/upgrading a home studio that is used for 3D rendering and some machine learning. It has been over 4 years since I upgraded my computing here in Santa Barbara and the world has changed several times in that time period. What I thought would be a straightforward review of existing technologies scaled to my budget has turned into a several month slog through all kinds of things I wish I did not have to think about. I review some of the issues involved below.
There are two different goals.
1. Upgrade my main Linux workstation to improve rendering performance.
2. Buy a completely new, modern technology workstation which would be used for both rendering, localized machine learning, and development.
The 1st goal was motivated by simplicity and cost. I am using a 1st generation scalable Xeon, and bought an entry level CPU for it. There are many more CPUs available, some of them of very modest cost (so it seemed). The second goal could take longer, and fixes a problem I had with limited PCIe bandwidth in the 1st generation of scalable Xeon, especially with the UP configuration or when you did not populate both sockets of a dual socket server. The budget of the latter system would be more expensive, but would solve both problem sets at one time. The budgets might be $1,000 and $5,000 respectively.
But there are many issues, some expected and some unexpected. Issues include:
-- Is there a good difference between what is a server and what is a workstation? The provisional answer is that a workstation has a higher base frequency, has features such as audio on the MB, and has a chipset to handle a bunch of small-change IO such as legacy USB.
-- What are the limitations of the current configuration beyond raw processor power? Am I memory bandwidth limited? Cache limited?
-- What are the real costs of a better 1st or 2nd generation Xeon? Why are there seemingly great deals from unknown vendors but the top vendors keep list prices which are seemingly high for 5 year old technology.
-- Why does Intel make so many different versions of each generation of Xeon. Specialization varies as to the extent of the market? Which ones would I want, or can afford? Not all these processors seem to be equally available from the reputable vendors.
-- What warranty do the "really good price" vendors of refurbished processors offer? My experience with 1st generation Xeon says that you may go through several CPUs before you find one that works, but that once it works it just keeps on working.
-- The AMD threadripper pro is about to be updated. Should I wait a few months for the update? But the updated system will certainly take advantage of newer technology which means among other things a higher memory cost. Do I really care between DDR4 and 5? PCIe 4 vs 5?
-- All of these processors seem to have a "base speed" and a variable "turbo speed" which it automagically uses when it has to. Well it will only do that if several important conditions are met, one of which is that the processor must be cool enough to allow this without exploding or melting. The only way that could possibly work is if we are using liquid cooling for the CPU.
-- My experience in this area a few years ago said that you had to be able to return several non working components before you got one that worked. Choose carefully.
- One issue has been whether or not I save $700 or more and reuse components from the current workstation. Power supply, chassis and disk. Do I really want to destroy a working system, however slow? Hasnt that often been a mistake?
-- As alluded to above, there are real differences between current generation AMD, next generation AMD, 4th generation scalable Xeon and their 5th generation coming out end of year. Whatever you do youre fucked.
What fun. All you need is cash and these issues go away. Thats what the real people do and if you cant just spend you dont deserve anything good.
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