Laptops With 128GB of RAM Are Here (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Brace yourself for laptops with 128GB of RAM because they're coming. Today, Lenovo announced its ThinkPad P52, which, along with that massive amount of memory, also features up to 6TB of storage, up to a 4K, 15.6-inch display, an eighth-gen Intel hexacore processor, and an Nvidia Quadro P3200 graphics card. The ThinkPad also includes two Thunderbolt three ports, HDMI 2.0, a mini DisplayPort, three USB Type-A ports, a headphone jack, and an Ethernet port. The company hasn't announced pricing yet, but it's likely going to try to compete with Dell's new 128GB-compatible workstation laptops. The Dell workstation laptops in question are the Precision 7730 and 7530, which are billed as "ready for VR" mobile workstations. According to TechRadar, "These again run with either 8th-gen Intel CPUs or Xeon processors, AMD Radeon WX or Nvidia Quadro graphics, and the potential to specify a whopping 128GB of 3200MHz system memory."

Comments

For what use?

[DogDude]

I don't have any use for something like this, either personally, or in my work. What's the point of something like this? What kind of software needs this kind of juice?

Re:For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

VirtualBox

Re:For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern web browser with multiple tabs.

Re:For what use?

[tk77]

Think of these kinda of machines less like laptops and more like portable workstations. Its easier to transport one of these around then it is having to transport everything needed to run a similar desktop. More "on-location" work can be done rather then having to wait to get back to a studio, for example. The battery in heavy use cases can be thought of as giving the ability to move the machine from outlet to outlet without having to shut down/power off.

Re:For what use?

[dryriver]

Precisely this. In fact, in my segment we'd actually buy 8, 10 or 12 Core laptops or even more if we could actually get them. The battery is indeed used mostly to move the laptop about without having to switch it off. Kind of like an Uninterruptable Power Supply for those 20 - 30 minutes where you might not have power coming out of a wall socket, or where you are moving location.

Re:For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

I don't have any use for something like this, either personally, or in my work. What's the point of something like this? What kind of software needs this kind of juice?

Surely none that also requires portability.

Re:For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to ask, it ain't for you.

Re:For what use?

[dryriver]

The biggest CAD/3D models these days are for 3D buildings - like a new factory, airport or shopping center. Those CAD files can very easily become bigger than 64GB and not fit in RAM anymore. If you need to go to the construction site with a 98GB CAD model that can be inspected, how do you do that without a laptop that has 128GB RAM? Do you take a 35,000 USD dual Xeon CAD workstation with 3 GPUs that weighs 40 to 50 lbs and carry it to the construction site in a van? That's what these new laptops are for. Opening huge 3D CAD files away from the office desk - and very likely at a construction site.

Re:For what use?

[ctilsie242]

Lots:

Vagrant.
Virtualbox.
Developer tools.
Photo/video editing.
Sound editing.

A 128 GB machine will be ideal for a developer who has it for his/her daily driver, and who has to show that their code works on some test VM bases via Vagrant. This gets rid of the "it works on my machine, but not in production" type of bugs.

Even if the RAM is not needed, it works as a cache, making I/O faster.

Re:For what use?

[gameboyhippo]

I felt the same when 1G ram became a thing...

Re:For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I do quite a bit of hard-core engineering: electrical and mechanical. A lot of FEA analysis as well for EMI, mechanical, and acoustical output. I currently have a P71 with 64 GB of RAM and I will often push that limit on more advanced FEA runs. I would love to get this new laptop provided it has a 17" (or better yet, 18") screen.

Re:For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

The biggest CAD/3D models these days are for 3D buildings - like a new factory, airport or shopping center. Those CAD files can very easily become bigger than 64GB and not fit in RAM anymore. If you need to go to the construction site with a 98GB CAD model that can be inspected, how do you do that without a laptop that has 128GB RAM? Do you take a 35,000 USD dual Xeon CAD workstation with 3 GPUs that weighs 40 to 50 lbs and carry it to the construction site in a van? That's what these new laptops are for. Opening huge 3D CAD files away from the office desk - and very likely at a construction site.

No. You throw your 128 GB iMac Pro in the back of your car.

Done. And a big enough display that is is actually USABLE.

Next question?

Re:For what use?

[admin7087]

Composers who use large orchestral sample libraries, for instance.

Re:For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have any use for something like this, either personally, or in my work. What's the point of something like this? What kind of software needs this kind of juice?

Well you see, last year all the people wanting to learn to work with and code for massively parallel systems would throw together a bunch of nodes into a cluster, typically something cheap like Raspberry Pi or Intel NUCs.

Their accomplishments get posted to Slashdot, and technology haters all came out to say what they did was stupid, just virtualize it!

Now hardware comes out with the resources to virtualize 128 nodes at 1GB ram each, and naturally the same people say that is just as stupid.

I presume because you personally don't use or run such systems, due to your opening comments, you feel the rest of the world doesn't need such things to exist.

You'd probably live a much happier and less confusing life if you could only grasp the concept that no one else is exactly like you.
You might also want to do something about the person with a gun to your head forcing you to purchase one of these things you don't want. Do you need our help? That's the only reason I can think of that would make it so impossible for you to just not buy the things you don't want to buy...

Re:For what use?

[sexconker]

Sounds to me like the CAD and modeling people need to optimize their shit.

Re:For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

False. I travel extensively and have a monster laptop (P71 with 64 GB RAM, 17" screen, etc) so that I have my workstation whenever I am on-site with clients. I don't have to worry about maintaining two systems, sharing/transferring SW licenses (most real CAD programs have licensing systems), etc. Last week I was in China, doing work - and engineering. This week is Los Angeles. Next week is the Bay area. I take my workstation with me, because it IS portable, and it CAN replace a desktop.

Re: For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you have a point other than being a condescending dick head?

Answer his question or stfu. You didn't even answer it. You just threw a bunch of buzzwords at the guy.

You are a fucking tool. Goober.

Re:For what use?

[dgatwood]

Sounds to me like the CAD and modeling people need to optimize their shit.

Alternatively, this seems like a great use for a thin client, i.e. use your laptop to VNC into a beefier computer.

Re:For what use?

[amiga3D]

The new Windows version coming soon. You'll need at least 128GB for it.

Re:For what use?

[jellomizer]

The ThinkPad P series are more of a mobile workstation then a laptop or a notebook computer.
I can use up 128 gigs of RAM easily. I do so at work all the time, (Normally for the first pass proof of concept, then I optimize it down).
With million record databases trying to forecast future probabilities, so to make a business decision on to hire more, or find problems to fix.

I normally have a server for this that I will remote connect to with my laptop. But If I/my place of work could afford a laptop like that, I would happily max the sucker out.

Re:For what use?

[Hadlock]

Our "dev db" is 10 GB, down to 7GB if you take a chainsaw to it. And then each of my java containers/microservices uses 512mb so that's 16GB right there and we haven't even touched my OS or dev tools' memory requirements.
 
I do all my dev work in AWS and remote in because my "pro" macbook is limited to just 16GB memory. I can't even standup my dev stack on my laptop anymore.
 
Heaven forbid Chrome is running on a system in the same timezone as my laptop. I'm glad 640K is enough for you, but I regularly bump in to memory problems.

Re:For what use?

[mark_reh]

I use a 5 YO Lenovo W530 as a replacement for a desktop machine at home. It has a quad core i7, 32 GB of RAM, and 2GB Quadro graphics board built in. I use it for CAD and 3D mesh manipulation, among the usual things. I plug in an external keyboard, 3D mouse, regular mouse, 32" display, and speakers. It literally replaced an aging desktop that had so many fans it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Now it's quiet, and having a battery is great if there's a power failure. I spent about $350 on the W530 and all the stuff to put in it.

Most (all?) CAD uses only a single core. Fusion 360 will use all available cores, but only for renderings. I think a lot of video editing software will use multiple cores.

Re: For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I was doing CAD in 1987 on an IBM XT (of course it was only 2D lines and arcs). The capabilities (solid modeling) and size of models/amount of detail (ever opened a BIM model of an 88 story building?) far exceed what was being done previously.

Re:For what use?

[Xord]

Seismic survey processing applications would use it. Those guys had 256GB RAM in their workstations as the software could process data more quickly with more RAM. To have that in a portable system to take onto ships would be a use case for this.

Re:For what use?

[Hadlock]

Most developers I know have a single laptop as their primary workstation. We were complaining about the 16GB limit on macbook "pro" laptops in 2015 as the on-premise software appliance we were developing at the time used about 10GB memory, which quickly ballooned to 17GB by mid-2016.
 
The product we were using was also designed to scan other machines, which meant that you would likely have between .2 and 8 VMs running on your local machine to dev/test the entire product.
 
So yes this is absolutely supposed to replace your personal workstation. I do about half my work from home these days, the 2-3 days a week I am in the office I still probably do 4 hours of work at home. Splitting your work between two machines is a real bear. Here we are three years later and the best "professional" macbook offering still only offers 16GB memory, where Lenovo and Dell have been offering 32GB memory in laptops for two+ years now. Will I need 128 GB? No probably not tomorrow but 64GB would be a reasonable ask for someone in my line of work. There's something like half a million software developers in the Bay area, I'm sure more than 5% of them are running in to memory problems at least monthly.

Re:For what use?

[Type44Q]

What's the point of something like this?

I don't know but the following words were probably well-chosen:

Brace yourself for laptops with 128GB of RAM...

My asshole's quivering already.

Re:For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

False. I travel extensively and have a monster laptop (P71 with 64 GB RAM, 17" screen, etc) so that I have my workstation whenever I am on-site with clients. I don't have to worry about maintaining two systems, sharing/transferring SW licenses (most real CAD programs have licensing systems), etc. Last week I was in China, doing work - and engineering. This week is Los Angeles. Next week is the Bay area. I take my workstation with me, because it IS portable, and it CAN replace a desktop.

Ok, I can see that use-case. But you still have to have additional displays wherever you go. ..and still, a pretty narrow market-segment.

Re:For what use?

[BlueStrat]

A 128 GB machine will be ideal for a developer who has it for his/her daily driver

640GB should be enough for anybody.

I bet the chintzy bastages didn't even allow for upgrading the RAM either. At a piddly 128GB one might as well haul out the abacus. /s

Strat

Re:For what use?

[naris]

Because no one would ever need more than 640MB of memory!

Re:For what use?

[Nothing2Chere]

Even if the RAM is not needed, it works as a cache, making I/O faster.

The only thing that makes I/O faster is faster I/O. Everything else is just delayed or asynchronous I/O. n2ch

Re: For what use?

[b0s0z0ku]

Fuck the cloud. Some people work on confidential data that doesn't need to be on "someone else's computer."

Re:For what use?

[Lab Rat Jason]

I'm in to machine learning, and this thing is right up my alley. It would be great to take my workstation with me to conferences rather than trying to VPN and remote into a rig, considering how bad the latency can get. I doubt I can personally field the cost though, so I'll not be having one any time soon. My current personal portable rig is (sadly) almost exactly 1/10 the specs of this in terms of RAM, GPU, and hard disk capacity. I would imagine that travel bloggers would love encoding video on a rig like this, and architects would love doing on-site design work with advanced CAD models with a rig like this too. Basically, anybody who has a hard-core workstation type workload who also needs to work while traveling is the target market for a system like this.

Re:For what use?

[nospam007]

"I don't have any use for something like this, either personally, or in my work. "

Just like a SUV, but you got one anyway.

Re:For what use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let me know how well that works for you from a job site where you may not always have useful cell or wifi due to conditions of the site.

Re:For what use?

[GerryGilmore]

Dude, that's easy - to run Android Developer Studio! (And I thought Eclipse was a dog...)

Re:For what use?

[AHuxley]

RAM drive.
Photoshop.

Re: For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I want it. Many other consultants and engineers want it. I want a laptop that is as powerful as a "proper box" - and that I can take with me, so I can work at home, at an office, on an airplane, etc. Not all of us are simple bit-flippers, we actually design REAL, TANGIBLE goods and need something more than a basic platform that will simply run a compiler (but I do some of that too, having written commercially sold FEA packages).

As far as the cloud, when I'm working on models that 60-80 GB each, I have a dozen such models in play at any time, and I need to access them wherever I am (last week I was in China, for example - no way I can get Dropbox or Google Drive over there), the cloud doesn't work. Why rent someone else's computer when I can have my own computer easily host everything - and not have to wait for a 2 Mbps WIFI connection in a hotel room in Akishima, Tokyo trying to download a 40 GB model?

Re:For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Nope. A 17", good quality screen is plenty for 90% of the time. I don't need to have lots of windows open; it can be more convenient to do so, but 90% of the time I'd be on one screen anyway. So why do I need a second monitor? And I would say this is pretty normal for most technical hardware consultants/engineers I know - you can do what you need really on a decent 17" screen. If I'm surfacing a new enclosure, or optimizing the curvature on a molded spring, why would I be bouncing between windows? I'm sitting in CAD. Likewise if I'm laying out a PCB - I'm in the PCB software, I'm not bouncing around to other windows, no need to do that at all.

Simply put: what YOU think works doesn't apply to lots of other people. There is a need for this kind of laptop - and I (and the 2 dozen or so other technical consulting engineers I know) are the market. There are hundreds of thousands of us out there - we're the market.

I currently use a P71, fully loaded, and it works well 80% of the time; some models bring it to a crawl, more RAM would help. And I love having a built-in PANTONE screen calibration, so when I am showing my client the current Keyshots of a concept, I can do it in true color - and with a 17" screen, it's actually possible to have two people looking at it as the same time at a desk.

Re:For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Check the Lenovo P71. I have one of them... Lots of CPU, RAM, SSD, a great 17" screen (quite usable for CAD/CAM), and a 99Whr battery built in. I can get between 5 and 10 hours runtime on it, depending upon how much FEA and heavy-duty rendering I'm doing.

Re:For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Sucks when you're overseas... I'd hate to rely upon a VPN back to the US whilst working in Japan or China, and sit around waiting on a 2 Mbps connection. Or being told in an EU factory that I'm not allowed to connect to the local LAN/WIFI network because of security reasons.

Re: For what use?

[iggymanz]

Wrong, CAD, CAE, rendering, prototyping, all available on OSX. Why don't you Google?

Re: For what use?

[iggymanz]

Nope, graphics is the problem that prevents that

Re:For what use?

[Lennie]

Not sure about the time frame, but Lenovo also sells 64GB laptops at this time.

Re:For what use?

[Lennie]

Your limit is actually Apple, not the underlying PC laptop hardware. You are able to buy machines with more memory than 16GB for a while now.

Re:For what use?

[Lennie]

Not sure, but maybe it could also help with bringing down the price of laptops with less memory.

Re:For what use?

[hackertourist]

For CAD, thin clients tend to suck. I use Microsoft RDP at work. As client software goes, this works a lot better than VNC. But (despite being on Gb Ethernet, with the RDP server in the next room) I still get input lag. Trying to drag the edge of a window becomes hit-and-miss. Other accurate mouse manipulations (such as the ones you have to do all the time when drawing) suffer the same fate.

Re:For what use?

[fisted]

Thank you for including the "/s", otherwise we'd have had no chance at identifying the sarcasm.

Re:For what use?

[fisted]

Yeah around that time, memory efficient programming basically became extinct. The resources are there, so hell let's use them all.

This might be repeating now, but on a much worse scale.

Re:For what use?

[N1AK]

If you think about use cases that require PCs with this amount of memory does the non-VPN remote client option really sound appealing though? To take the CAD example, if someone is manipulating an 80GB CAD plan then space to store it locally probably isn't an issue but that plan is now stored on the device (potential security risk), and any changes will either require GBs of data to be communicated to store on a server or the updated version will not be available to other users and would be lost if the individual device was damaged or lost. The bandwidth requirements of a terminal connection are relatively modest.

Re:For what use?

[BlueStrat]

Thank you for including the "/s", otherwise we'd have had no chance at identifying the sarcasm.

Yes, you and I can usually detect most sarcasm (in this case I understood yours without a tag).

However keep in mind that this *is* Slashdot, and many here to all appearances were born without the sarcasm-detection gene or at least without it being dominant. I doubt that you could not find at least one serious 'whoosh' of that sort in any 2 consecutive Slashdot story comment sections.

To mangle a famous quote; "Never underestimate the obliviousness of the average "Slashdotter"."

I mean, c'mon! Many never read TFS never mind TFA, hell it's almost a tradition here and memed to death, why would anyone expect them to read & comprehend subtleties like sarcasm in posts they reply to or even their own posts?

Slashdot is one of the reasons behind why the "sarc tag" became a thing.

Strat

Re:For what use?

[AmiMoJo]

I'd still prefer a desktop though. If I don't need the portability then the desktop will have superior cooling and be able to maintain performance for longer. Plus it's easier to throw more storage in later, where as with laptops you generally have to replace what you have or go external.

Laptop screens and keyboards are not very ergonomic either...

Re:For what use?

[zifn4b]

Future proofing against the bloat of Windows?

Re:For what use?

[mysidia]

The battery in heavy use cases can be thought of as giving the ability to move the machine

It's just a portable UPS, because the typical desktop UPS is too much to carry around, but these are more efficient since they work only on DC power. Because the power grid is almost always less than 99% reliable, and unexpected power outages of an hour or so are common: every computer should be used with an UPS in order to give the user enough time for a graceful shutdown after a power outage --- and to help protect the computer itself; for a laptop the battery provides the UPS, and the replaceable AC to DC power brick provides some surge protection.

Re:For what use?

[mjwx]

The biggest CAD/3D models these days are for 3D buildings - like a new factory, airport or shopping center. Those CAD files can very easily become bigger than 64GB and not fit in RAM anymore. If you need to go to the construction site with a 98GB CAD model that can be inspected, how do you do that without a laptop that has 128GB RAM? Do you take a 35,000 USD dual Xeon CAD workstation with 3 GPUs that weighs 40 to 50 lbs and carry it to the construction site in a van? That's what these new laptops are for. Opening huge 3D CAD files away from the office desk - and very likely at a construction site.

The same way we've been doing it for years. Remote desktop. This was back in the day when having 2GB on your laptop was a lot and 16GB was good for a server. So the GIS applications would be on servers with the data and onsite work would be done remotely.

Internet is a lot faster today than back then Sonny Jim.

BTW, RAM was not the problem, GIS required huge map files, so you'd need an array of 120 GB disks to hold it all. Erm... Vacate my ground coverings forthwith.

Re:For what use?

[jedidiah]

>VirtualBox

Possibly. You also have to consider IO contention too. So I would be inclined to concentrate more resources on storage.

Re:For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Nope. A 17", good quality screen is plenty for 90% of the time. I don't need to have lots of windows open; it can be more convenient to do so, but 90% of the time I'd be on one screen anyway. So why do I need a second monitor? And I would say this is pretty normal for most technical hardware consultants/engineers I know - you can do what you need really on a decent 17" screen. If I'm surfacing a new enclosure, or optimizing the curvature on a molded spring, why would I be bouncing between windows? I'm sitting in CAD. Likewise if I'm laying out a PCB - I'm in the PCB software, I'm not bouncing around to other windows, no need to do that at all.

Simply put: what YOU think works doesn't apply to lots of other people. There is a need for this kind of laptop - and I (and the 2 dozen or so other technical consulting engineers I know) are the market. There are hundreds of thousands of us out there - we're the market.

I currently use a P71, fully loaded, and it works well 80% of the time; some models bring it to a crawl, more RAM would help. And I love having a built-in PANTONE screen calibration, so when I am showing my client the current Keyshots of a concept, I can do it in true color - and with a 17" screen, it's actually possible to have two people looking at it as the same time at a desk.

There is study after study that directly correlates efficiency with available screen real-estate. And no, a 17" laptop screen, even a 4k one, doesn't qualify.

In any engineering and/or software development job I have ever had, a MINIMUM of one external monitor, plus a laptop screen, is necessary to keep my life from becoming little more than an exercise in window-management. And I am no where near alone in that opinion.

Apple has had the ability to have Pantone screen calibration since before IBM/Lenovo released their first laptop. I agree it is sometimes indispensable when dealing with picky clients.

Re:For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

What? You mean I can take my iMac Pro with me on the plane, and use it in the lounge? Or I can take it on BART as I spend a few hours at two different clients each day? Toss it in the top case on my motorcycle and ride on down to Orange County for a 3 hour meeting? Or move easily from upstairs in my office to out in my backyard where the sun is out and it's perfect? How about an actual laptop that is powerful enough on its own - one that will do what is needed.

Oh, and for those who do CAD, they are most likely running Windows anyway; there really is no 3D parametric CAD for OSX, nor any professional PCB/schematic capture software. So why by an iMac Pro and load Windows on it? Just get a better PC in the first place, for less money, that comes with Windows pre-loaded. Like a solid, workstation-class laptop.

First, we've had the discussion about what CAD/CAE tools are available for macOS. But it doesn't matter, because, News Flash! Macs run Windows, too!!!

As I said, I agree that, for some limited use-cases, having a laptop with "workstation guts" is likely an interesting thing. But it seems like there are too many compromises with cooling, available hardware choices, I/O, and (extreme) lack of battery-life, that make it more of an expensive curiosity than a practical solution for most.

Re: For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Wrong, CAD, CAE, rendering, prototyping, all available on OSX. Why don't you Google?

I have actually Googled that stuff FOR this moron several times. He will just rebut with "Yeah, but what about [x]?"

No winning with LynwoodRooster. And for someone who supposedly jets all over the planet, servicing his many and varied engineering clients, he sure has a lot of time to engage in day-long, multi-posting, flamewars on Slashdot.

I've also caught him on several occasions posting incorrect "proof" of his points.

Re: For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

FreeCAD, QCAD, ARESCommander... ...oh you mean professional tools with the features people need.

Aside from AutoCAD the CAD, CAM, CAE offerings are pretty thin for the Mac and really when you have great tools that work already who really gives a shit what operating system they're running on underneath.

You mean like Siemens NX:

https://www.tatatechnologies.c...

https://community.plm.automati...

Or VectorWorks (which beats the PANTS off of AutoCAD!) :

http://www.vectorworks.net/en/... ...and, as for PCB/Schematic Capture, now that EaglePCB is owned by AutoDesk, I guess it is "legit", too:

https://www.autodesk.com/produ... ...and although their website looks like a 8 year-old designed it, the venerable McCAD is still kicking around, and is actually QUITE nice. It's Autorouter, for example, is second-to-none:

http://www.mccad.com/ ..and there is also the Open Source XCircuit, which I know nothing about:

http://opencircuitdesign.com/x...

Re: For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Now go and see who does what with NX, or Vectorworks. You'll find that 95% of the industry is either Solidworks or Pro/E. You've locked yourself out from interoperability with your vendors, CMs, and technical consultants. It's like saying you're working with a Mac in a world dominated by Windows. It's a shackled ball to your ankle...

Re:For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

That is a good point, but I usually have Carbonite running on my laptop, so the files tend to get backed up overnight or on the weekends. Pulling data down can be excruciatingly slow. And some have said use a thin client and run CAD back on the server, but hundreds of milliseconds of lag in mouse motion makes that essentially unusable. You'll always miss what you wanted, selections will be incorrect, etc.

Re:For what use?

[nmr_andrew]

I also don't usually need more than about 8 GB, but there are many ways the extra RAM could be useful,. Others have already mentioned CAD or VMs, AR/VR, better/faster caching, etc. I also don't doubt people will come up with new and clever ways to exploit the extra memory.

My real concern with this, though, is that in the next year or two we'll wind up with software like Windows 11, Office 2021, and the next versions of Adobe CC applications being released and requiring so much memory that 32 GB will quickly become the minimum needed for a smoothly functioning PC. It's happened over and over and I have no reason to believe things will be different this time around.

Personally, I'd love to see devs and beta testers work on 5-10 year old hardware (feel free to compile or render on a server) so they know how their stuff will behave on what "normal" users have. It'll never happen.

Re:For what use?

[Methadras]

These are engineering laptops. Relax.

Re: For what use?

[TheFakeTimCook]

Now go and see who does what with NX, or Vectorworks. You'll find that 95% of the industry is either Solidworks or Pro/E. You've locked yourself out from interoperability with your vendors, CMs, and technical consultants. It's like saying you're working with a Mac in a world dominated by Windows. It's a shackled ball to your ankle...

I have a friend/client who does theatre archtecture/staging consulting. All of the architectural firms he works with run AutoCAD on Windows (or something similar that speaks DXF/DWG). He has used, and still uses, VectorWorks.

It has been a LONG time since he has had any problem importing/exporting drawings with those people using VectorWorks' DXF/DWG Import/Export support.

I am not sure about how well that would fare with SolidWorks of Pro/E; but those both support some industry-standard (or at least widely-supported) Protocols that would probably work. It has just been about a decade since I last played in that particular world, though.

Re: For what use?

[dfghjk]

Sad that the idiotic GP is modded Insightful and this is not.

Also, what "job site" that would require access to this kind of data set would not have "useful cell or wifi"?

Re: For what use?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Architectural work, fine. What about 3D parametric CAD - which is NOT architectural? NX, Pro/E, Solidworks - you know, programs used to design things like cell phones, cars, motors? That's hardcore engineering, and it's dominated by Solidworks and Pro/E (now called CREO).

If you live in the world of DXF and DWG, then you're doing 2D work - those are 2D formats. 3D formats would be things like STEP or IGES, but those break all parts trees, assembly constraints, etc. So you see a lot of SLDASM and SLDPRT files, ASM, PRT, etc. 3D parametric data is much more complex than basic 2D DXF/DWG files.

Re:For what use?

[thegarbz]

Sounds to me like the CAD and modeling people need to optimize their shit.

They have. The optimum solution is for every tiny detail to exist in CAD. Just because we didn't have the capability to achieve this in the past doesn't mean it was more "optimal".

Re:For what use?

[thegarbz]

Alternatively, this seems like a great use for a thin client, i.e. use your laptop to VNC into a beefier computer.

Oh wow. I see someone who has never tried VNCing an application like this.

Re:For what use?

[cthulhu11]

Plus the latency of cell data wouldn't make for a great experience.

Re:For what use?

[johnsie]

People with spades said the same about the JCB.

Re:For what use?

[Joey Vegetables]

Pipe organ emulator software (e.g., Hauptwerk, GrandOrgue, OrganWerx) typically requires a great deal of RAM to hold pipe samples in memory. Spinning rust was never fast enough. As those get slowly displaced by SSDs, and as those get faster, direct-from-disk may become an option. Today, for this particular use case, it's not. CPU requirements for this job are not particularly insane, but RAM requirements still are and will be for some time to come.

Re:For what use?

[ausekilis]

Lots:

Vagrant.
Virtualbox.
Developer tools.
Photo/video editing.
Sound editing.

A 128 GB machine will be ideal for a developer who has it for his/her daily driver, and who has to show that their code works on some test VM bases via Vagrant. This gets rid of the "it works on my machine, but not in production" type of bugs.

Even if the RAM is not needed, it works as a cache, making I/O faster.

You forgot Crysis and Firefox.

Re:For what use?

[sexconker]

I don't have a Facebook account. I do know what I'm talking about.

Just because you CAN shit up the machine with a heavier workload doesn't mean you should or that you'll actually benefit from it.

For all the advancements in computing and computer modeling, buildings haven't gotten any more exact in actual construction and weather forecasts haven't gotten any more accurate. People still end up with ridiculous variances that result in the city flagging them for an exterior wall being to close to the curb. People still get rain on their wedding day.

Learn to prune useless detail. Learn to abstract. As Tim Gunn would say, "Edit, people, edit!".

You may as well go measure the coastline down to the millimeter.

Re:For what use?

[sexconker]

The optimum solution is to detail only meaningful details. Not everything is meaningful. Much of it is noise. When humans deal with things, they filter out the vast majority of details as noise unless they matter.

Re:For what use?

[thegarbz]

Not everything is meaningful right until it is. That's the problem with defining precisely that is meaningful on a 3D model, you will ALWAYS want more information.
I have plenty of cases where we would have saved some significant project time and money: power sockets, not normally shown on 3D models.
I have plenty of cases where we actually ended up with massive construction rework: cable trays not being in piping drawings, valves shown without stems only to find they didn't fit in an orientation that was useful.
I even have a case that cost us well over $5m: Instruments connections shown, but not instruments themselves or the tubing connecting them leading to construction crews to put them on separate platforms leading to performance issues which shutdown the plant.

As for noise. There's no such thing as noise when you're trying to fit things into a model. There's only detail. If your drafters can afford to draft it, and your model is capable of running it than absolutely any solid object should end up in the model. Hell the best thing we ever did was get a point cloud laser scan of a site I worked at complete with incredibly high resolution 360degree photos from every point source. The amount of money saved by us continuously advancing our model and us being able to see pretty much what was actually on site through the point cloud paid for itself in folds.

Obligatory 640k is enough for everybody.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you think, /.'s remaining scum can't possibly get any dumber, socially degenerated and psychopathic.

Nex, they will start resembling the average "voter".

Re:Obligatory 640k is enough for everybody.

[jellomizer]

640k is actually a lot of storage, and enough for most (even modern) application to run their core logic. What is filling most of the RAM today is things like pictures, large data sets prefetched data. A lot of the stuff in active RAM may never be used in the application. Being that Unicode data for hello world uses two bytes for character in generals makes strings 50% inefficient.

For the time where screen resolutions were 320x200 4 color, getting data from a disk took minutes. 640k was enough for anyone. But that was for the programs of the time.

Re:Obligatory 640k is enough for everybody.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use UTF8, you insensitive clod!

Re:Obligatory 640k is enough for everybody.

[fisted]

Being that Unicode data for hello world uses two bytes for character in generals makes strings 50% inefficient.

Wut

Re:Obligatory 640k is enough for everybody.

[fisted]

Better not try to explain something you don't really understand in the first place, I guess.

FWIW you're apparently conflating Unicode and UTF-16 (i.e. your Windows background is showing). The rest of the world tends to use UTF-8, which is a superset of ASCII (which is a 7 bit code BTW), and represents unicode code points using 1-6 bytes.

Re:Obligatory 640k is enough for everybody.

[jedidiah]

I'm amused by how you mindless butt hurt morons have actually avoided answering the question. Back in the day, it was pretty easy to come up with very good reasons why you wanted more RAM than the Borg Cube would allow for.

Most people don't use laptops as workstation replacements. Even those of us that have workstations and bruiser laptops can find it hard to exploit all of RAM we already have.

If you've got any actual practical experience (rather than mindless snark), we're all ears.

Pointless ...

[Anonymous Coward]

up to a 4K, 15.6-inch display

Is a 15.6 inch 4K display even usable? I doubt you could see it; I still have to squint at my 17" HD screen on my laptop.

The 128GB of RAM is cool though. Not sure most people will need that in a laptop, but it is cool.

Re:Pointless ...

[dryriver]

On a 17 inch laptop, the difference between 1080HD and 4K is immediately visible. Much smaller and finer details in true 4K videos and games, icons and text with no aliasing whatsoever, and even 1080HD video renders slightly better and sharper on a 4K UHD screen. So the difference is there if you have sharp eyesight. On 15 inch you're pushing things a bit, but even there, 4K video should look sharper overall than at 1080HD.

Re:Pointless ...

[OrangeTide]

At extremely high DPI you might not need to anti-alias fonts, which tends to make them blurry. Even so I calculated that panel to be only 280 DPI. That's nice but it's not the extreme end of things, and in the ball park of the early Retina displays.

Re:Pointless ...

[Lennie]

What I do believe is: if you use a 4k camera, you can get better 1080p videos.

Re:Pointless ...

[OrangeTide]

2012 13" macbook is 2560x1600 and about 226 DPI. the 15" works out to the same DPI.

When I worked in R&D for an ebook reader we were playing with 300+ DPI eInk/EPD.

Re:Pointless ...

[thegarbz]

On a 17 inch laptop, the difference between 1080HD and 4K is immediately visible.

That isn't exactly a good metric. On my desktop with it's 1920x1080 monitor the difference between 1080p and 4K video is also immediately visible. Many thanks to the subcoding schemes used in compression for every the highest quality of video the difference is visible.

How well does it do on games? Framerate aside you need a metric that doesn't rely on fancy compression to tell the difference on displays. I'm not saying there isn't a difference, just that video isn't a good metric to use to judge.

I still like my first computer...

[DrTJ]

... with 3 kB RAM, 8-colour TV display with 176x184 pixels, and magnetic tape storage.

I bet it is just as fun as this machine. At least for me.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[dr.Flake]

Colour??? COLOUR???

2 bit black and white, 1K Ram, 8k ROM, 64x44 plotting resolution.

oblig " get off my lawn" quote ;-)

In 5 minutes someone will top this of course with his punch-card machine

Re:I still like my first computer...

[NormalVisual]

My slide rule laughs at your dependence on electricity! I'd use my abacus, but it's harder to do square roots on it.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[DrTJ]

Black AND white??

My computer prior to my first one only had black!

Even worse, it only had zeros - the ones weren't invented yet!

I'll admit that it was a bit of a challenge to use it.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[sconeu]

You had an Abacus? We had to carve marks in stone using flint tools!

Re:I still like my first computer...

[doconnor]

How long did it take you to get the 16K RAM pack? Slippery slop, man.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[DarkRookie]

Holy fuck, you guys are all old.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[avandesande]

My amber screen laughs at your black and white!

Re:I still like my first computer...

[jez9999]

You had flint tools? We just had to imagine the numbers in our heads.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[Chris Mattern]

In 5 minutes someone will top this of course with his punch-card machine

Started to do that before I read the rest of your post...(and yes, my first programming was on punch cards...can't really call it "my first computer", though, since individuals didn't really own those beasts. It was just what I did my first programming course on)

Re:I still like my first computer...

[amorsen]

Amber was nicer than green... They both had the advantage of long afterglow, no damn flickering.

Then first year at university, workstations with 4 "colour" greyscale. Except the monitors were so old that white was only marginally brighter than black.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Numbers are so overated... We were able to do everything with the concepts of "one" and "many"

Re:I still like my first computer...

[LynnwoodRooster]

You had a head? Pure luxury! Why we were still dealing with being one-celled organisms!

Re: I still like my first computer...

[iggymanz]

We prototype RNA analogues had to excrete the RNA that made you DNA lifeforms to get these kinds of problems finally solved 4.3 billion years later.

Re: I still like my first computer...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Sure... Bring up the fact we're slooow... You RNA types are all so high and mighty with your "evolved to replicate in 500 million years". You had it easy! You didn't have to deal with getting TWO strands lined up... Leave the hard work to us, while you go and rest after a pittance of time! Pikers, all!

Re:I still like my first computer...

[antdude]

But can that old machine play Crysis? :P

Re:I still like my first computer...

[zwarte piet]

Your square root doesn't fit into my round hole.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[mjwx]

You had a head? Pure luxury! Why we were still dealing with being one-celled organisms!

Organisms? Pah! I had to coalesce celestial gasses into a star.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[0111 1110]

Do you ever miss punch cards? I would like to have a device that punches holes in cards. Such cool tech. Would be great for a bitcoin wallet that can be locked in a safe.

Re:I still like my first computer...

[DarthVain]

You had concepts? We had to make do with metaphors of darmok and geland at tanagra

Re:I still like my first computer...

[thegarbz]

You had imagination? I just work at Microsoft and re-create ideas from the past in less efficient ways necessitating the need for an ever increasing amount of hardware.

CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[dryriver]

People doing CAD, 3D/CGI, Scientific Computing, GPGPU/HighPerformanceComputing use monster workstations every day - Dual Xeon 8, 12 or 16 Core, multiple Nvdia Titan GPUs, 64 to 256GB RAM and so on. That's what you need for today's 3D DCC and CAD design workflows. Anything lower, and everything slows down to a crawl and you don't make your deadlines. These new laptops don't even satisfy what is really needed - at least 8 to 12 CPU cores and room for 2+ powerful GPUs - but will be good enough to get work done on the go. That's the segment they are aimed at - the one that cannot get anything much done on quadcore core i7 CPUs and mobile GPUs.

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[jellomizer]

It really depends on the work that you do.
Some CAD Designs require more power then others. If you are using CAD to design a CPU vs CAD to design a motherboard. or CAD to design a Laptop. There are different resource requirements, just because the complexity is different.

I don't do much CAD but I do a lot of Database development. Some databases would work fine with systems with under a gig of free ram. Others I really want a Terabyte of RAM. It depends on what I am trying to do with the data, how fast I need to do it, and how many people will be trying to access it.

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[iggymanz]

If you do time dependant analysis on CAD models you can easily use more than 24GB of RAM

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[exomondo]

Why are people doing CAD, etc on laptops?

Because they want/need portable workstations.

Also I was doing CAD on workstations with 8gb of ram. You do not need 128gb of ram to run cad programs.

There were a lot of people doing CAD on workstations with 1mb of RAM too, therefore 8gb is massive overkill? You'd think that 640k Bill Gates quote has had enough exposure that people would have got the point of it by now, obviously not.

Needing power sucking CPUs and multiple GPUs, this laptop does not solve that problem.

They use desktop-grade CPUs rather than low-power portable ones and if you really need it you can expand the GPU capability with an eGPU for those times that you need it.

So again, what's the point?

Oh no you can buy a laptop with 128GB of RAM, what a terrible thing! What's the point of complaining about it? If you don't need it don't buy it, if nobody needs it nobody will buy and it will go away and you can stop whining about the existence of something you don't want or need.

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[Anonymous Coward]

its a sad state of affairs when anythning new in technology is greeted with an adenoidal whining of "I dont need this so what's the point?"

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[fisted]

Yeah have fun getting rid of all that heat in a laptop-sized "monster workstation"

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[crypticedge]

I have a few dozen engineers who do all their CAD work on dell laptops that would disagree with you.

Key thing for them was 64 GB RAM and SSD, because when it came to their designs, the CPU was not the bottleneck, it was the RAM and disk speed.

Now, these laptops are quad core w/ HT, and have a gaming graphics card in them. My monitoring software shows they average 30-35 GB RAM dedicated just to autocad 2018.

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[jedidiah]

> its a sad state of affairs when anythning new in technology is greeted with an adenoidal whining of "I dont need this so what's the point?"

So you've got wrapped stacks of cash you can just throw into a fire pit and burn?

If not, then you have to consider how you are going to benefit from this overpriced monstrosity. The guys shouting out "CAD" at least have a reasonable answer beyond "It's new and shiny you fucking Luddite."

My old bruiser still crushes most laptops (both literally and figuratively). That doesn't mean I am going to be sanctimonious ass to people who think it's a bit much.

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[Thelasko]

Because they want/need portable workstations.

Because at some point those CAD Models/ 3D CG/ Scientific Models need to be presented to the bosses/customers. Reality is, you can have the fanciest models in the world, but if you can't show them to other people, they are basically worthless.

Example:
Boss: Johnson! What have you been working on?
Johnson: This really important CAD model.
Boss: This will be the perfect thing to impress the board of directors. Have it ready to show them in an hour. Meet me in the board room.
Johnson: I can't get my massive computer to the board room.
Boss: That's too bad. Smith! What have you been working on?
Smith: An equally impressive CAD Model.
Boss: Can you show it to the board of directors in an hour?
Smith: My super spiffy laptop and I will have a presentation that will blow their minds!
Boss: Perfect! If we impress them enough I'll ask for a raise.
Smith: If you get a raise, can I have one too?
Boss: Absolutely!

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[DarthVain]

As someone (several) pointed out, you don't do that kind of work on a laptop, certainly not the the type that will use 128GB of RAM. You have a stationary workstation, or a server off someplace else that does that kind of crunching.

As someone that has done this kind of work, 128GB of RAM doesn't generally make you finish your job faster. It just means you can do more in a single job without running out of memory, having a failure and then having to restart the job from scratch again. The type of jobs that might eat up 128GB of ram isn't something you do in minutes, or hours, but days of processing. Which for a mobile laptop makes very little sense in all but a very few very specific situations... i.e. you need to set up a temporary mobile processing center for some natural emergency or something where dragging containers of workstations isn't ideal, and connections to offsite are not feasible...

Though I suppose having a internal battery would be a nice bonus if 2 days into your 3 days of processing the lights go out. Then again those types of systems tend to have their own UPS. Though I guess it could serve as an additional couple hours of backup, backup power source. Still for the likely cost, not worth it, just buy more UPS would be more reasonable.

Anyway in many cases for truly large runs, users will break it down into more manageable chunks, not only in terms for memory usage, but also to mitigate risk of losing the whole job to some other error, or power, or whatever.

Having said all that I do have a laptop workstation, however I only use it for small jobs, at most several hours of processing time. However even it only has 8GB of RAM I think, and if I had larger jobs to do I don't think my preference would be to use my own machine for the work. Multitasking and multiprocessor and whatever, but your computer isn't going to be all that usable while it is crunching, and if you ever unplug the thing you're battery isn't going to last that long either so what's the point?

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[cellocgw]

Smith: If you get a raise, can I have one too?
Boss: Absolutely!

Said no boss ever.

But I have to ask: is this Smith, Winston, or Smith, Matrix?

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[exomondo]

This also serves to hide the fact their employers *expect* them to work anywhere, all the time.

Sounds like you're working for the wrong company.

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[exomondo]

So what do people use portable workstations like this - which have been around for decades - for? If not CAD/CAM/CAE, video editing, audio editing, scientific computing, etc... then what are they used for?

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[samwichse]

Yep, I do scientific computing... my DDs are desktop with 32 threads (one DP with 16 Xeon cores, one DP with 32 AMD cores) and 128GB of RAM.

I've been looking at the new EPYC processors for our next upgrade. On the other hand, this machine isn't so much a laptop as a luggable...

Re: CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[tehcyder]

its a sad state of affairs when anythning new in technology is greeted with an adenoidal whining of "I dont need this so what's the point?"

YMBNH.

Slashdot has been like that for as long as I can remember. Look at any story about mobile phones. Half the posts are on the lines of "I want a physical keyboard, no camera, and a removable battery that is three inches thick and lasts for two months. And a full size 1/4 inch headphone jack. If I can't have that, I'm not interested and so nor will anyone else be."

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[tehcyder]

So what do people use portable workstations like this - which have been around for decades - for? If not CAD/CAM/CAE, video editing, audio editing, scientific computing, etc... then what are they used for?

Professional gaming.

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[exomondo]

So what do people use portable workstations like this - which have been around for decades - for? If not CAD/CAM/CAE, video editing, audio editing, scientific computing, etc... then what are they used for?

Professional gaming.

On these portable workstations with Quadro GPUs? No.

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[DarthVain]

As I said I have a portable workstation, and do use it *occasionally* for process intensive type work. All I am saying is that the amount of RAM included on this thing isn't the amount you need for occasionally doing some slightly intensive work. I've got 8GB in mine which is a couple years old now.

What is 128GB being used for in a portable workstation? Well the answer is: probably nothing. The same reason someone buy a corvette, bragging rights and little else.

Perhaps there is some small niche it might be useful. However even in my work, while I have a nice discrete workstation type GPU, much of the work done now is less GPU intensive than it is CPU really which has changed over the years.

Re:CAD, 3D CG, Scientific, GPGPU, HPC Needs It

[exomondo]

As I said I have a portable workstation, and do use it *occasionally* for process intensive type work.

Yeah but what I was asking is what do you think people use these machines for? Are you saying you think everybody uses them the same as you do? If they aren't used for CAD/CAM/CAD, video editing, audio composition, scientific computing, etc... then why would anybody buy these horrendous things and lug them around instead of a more appropriate machine? The answer is they are used for those tasks, that's why they exist, they're bought more by companies than by individuals and they're the goto machine in industries like the mining industry where you're dealing with massive datasets on site.

Perhaps there is some small niche it might be useful.

Yes and that is the point. The fact that it exists doesn't mean you have to buy it, if anything it means it drives down the cost of lower end machines that suit your work so that's a good thing. Even if there were people buying 128GB for "bragging rights" I'm not sure why you're so impressed or offended by that, who gives a shit?! You actually believe companies are bragging about how much RAM is in their employees' laptops? Get real.

We will never need more than 640 GB of RAM

[WillAffleckUW]

Seriously.

By the way, we use laptops with lots of TB of data storage and our blade servers have a lot more RAM than that, so some of our datasets can't be loaded and processed on laptops.

We would love better laptops.

One of my colleagues is starting a lab soon, and one of the conditions of his startup package was a top of the line laptop suite and blade servers.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[kaka.mala.vachva]

Call it a portable workstation, if you like that. I need my "laptops" to move around with me - so I have a properly specced computer with me wherever I work. I don't necessarily need a lot of battery life. Just because you CAN'T see a usecase, doesn't mean there ISN"T one.

Oh, goodie.

[forkfail]

That's a whole lotta spy and bloatware that we are now going to be further expected to have the RAM to maintain.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[dryriver]

CAD and 3D models are getting really huge these days. Particularly in architectural visualization. So if you need to load the 3D CAD model of an entire car engine, or the highly complex 3D model of an entire shopping center, you may very well run out of RAM if you only have 64GB. In architectural visualization, you may be loading a building model that has dozens of rooms or hundreds of windows and other details. 128GB is not unusual to work on such monster scenes, and it has never been available in mobile form until today. So there are real world uses for that much RAM.

Apple, have courage

[onyxruby]

Dear Apple,

Please have some courage and release a pro version of your laptop. If IBM and Dell can do this, you can do the same. It's the year 2018, 16 GB should be a base, not the maximum.

Re:Apple, have courage

[Graymalkin]

Dear Intel,

Release a mobile chipset that supports LPDDR4 so vendors can support more than 16GB of RAM without using a memory controller using 2-3x the power of the low power chips. Lots of RAM in laptops would be great but not at the cost of battery life.

Re:Apple, have courage

[onyxruby]

It's all about the use case. Just because I need a portable computer, doesn't mean I need to sit at a cafe all day.

Most people that use laptops for work leave them plugged in most of the time. While I appreciate a long battery life, I need the ability to perform my work to begin with.

Re:Apple, have courage

[fluffernutter]

I honestly wonder who these people are, who flit around from place to place, using their laptop 30 minutes at a time. Sip of battery here, sip of battery there. Oops! Battery almost out, I'll just take smaller sips. I don't use my laptop like that, and I don't think most people do.

Re:Apple, have courage

[Graymalkin]

Just because I need a portable computer, doesn't mean I need to sit at a cafe all day.

Wanting good battery life is not about sitting in a cafe all day. I want a portable computer that I can use places away from my office/desk for long periods of time without hunting for a power outlet. I also want to use my laptop and not have it throttle way down on the battery. It would also really nice for it to be light so it doesn't weigh down my bag.

Portables have aspects with inverse proportions. Intel dropping the ball after Skylake has meant any manufacturers wanting high performance parts in a small envelope can't pack a lot of RAM unless they sacrifice battery life by using much higher power draw DDR4.

A higher power draw means lower battery life (for the same sized battery) and likely a lot of thermal throttling issues. DDR4 uses several times as much power as LPDDR3E used in the MacBook lines. Even if you are willing to sacrifice the battery life, the thermals would be a major issue even on AC power. The higher power RAM/controller would eat up the thermal budget for the CPU meaning it would enter TurboBoost mode less often or worst case actually stay throttled down.

The ThinkPad in the story is a brick. This means thermals and battery life probably aren't major concerns. From the looks of it actual portability isn't much of a concern either.

Re:Apple, have courage

[tlhIngan]

I honestly wonder who these people are, who flit around from place to place, using their laptop 30 minutes at a time. Sip of battery here, sip of battery there. Oops! Battery almost out, I'll just take smaller sips. I don't use my laptop like that, and I don't think most people do.

Most of the time, my work laptop is at my desk on AC power.

But I do go to meetings, and I carry it in, and the meetings can lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

I think last week was the worst when I literally was flitting from meeting to meeting. No, I didn't bother bringing the adapter, if I needed it, I could run to my desk and fetch it.

Re:Apple, have courage

[fluffernutter]

But the point is you could plug in for every meeting, so you lose a bit of convenience at best.

Re:Apple, have courage

[junk]

I honestly wonder who these people are, who flit around from place to place, using their laptop 30 minutes at a time. Sip of battery here, sip of battery there. Oops! Battery almost out, I'll just take smaller sips. I don't use my laptop like that, and I don't think most people do.

I don't think most people take their laptops everywhere with them any more. There was a time in the 2000s where coffee shops were filled with people showing off their overpriced fruit machines but that seems to have passed. I'd prefer a desktop but companies buy laptops for... reasons that I don't quite understand. Probably because so many more of us work remotely and/or from home, that it's the only sane thing to do.

I honestly wonder who these people are, who flit around from place to place, using their laptop. Full stop. Who does that?

Re:Apple, have courage

[Rockoon]

DDR4 only uses more power if you go for the higher clocks. At equivalent clocks, DDR4 is supposed to use 40% less power than DDR3. Its the whole reason why they can clock DDR4 higher before running into a burdensome heat issue.

The real issue may be that at equivalent clocks, DDR4 has meaningfully higher latencies than DDR3 does. Mobile processors generally dont have large caches, so memory latency could potentially be beyond an inflection point until CPU's get even faster.

Re:Apple, have courage

[Jason1729]

Apple laptops come standard with 128 gig. Of storage space. It takes real courage to buy from Apple.

Almost there...

[bunyip]

Call me when they have 640 GB of RAM, thought ought to be enough for anybody !!!

A.

Re:Almost there...

[ebvwfbw]

I remember arguing with a guy back in the early 1990s about a 20 meg hard drive. He said you can put stuff on floppies, no one needs anything bigger than a 20 meg drive. I thought that was funny then, crazy foolish now. I told him I had an 80 meg drive. Full height 5.25" drive. He thought that was a big waste of money.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Call it a portable workstation, if you like that. I need my "laptops" to move around with me - so I have a properly specced computer with me wherever I work. I don't necessarily need a lot of battery life. Just because you CAN'T see a usecase, doesn't mean there ISN"T one.

The problem is that something that needs that much horsepower almost always needs multiple displays. and those just don't "port" as easily as a laptop; so again, if you have to lug around your environment to be efficient, then why not at least port around a high-end All-In-One, like an iMac Pro. it is available with up to 128 GB RAM, 18-Core Xeons, multiple TB3 ports, built-in 5k display that is large enough to actually SEE things on, etc...

Re:64gb for the dells

[cmeans]

Until this week, their 64GB non-ecc option was actually cheaper than the 32GB option. Also, still no 3200MHz options.

Re:AMD

[dryriver]

I'd love a Dual AMD EPYC 2 X 32 Core laptop. =)

Pictures

[cerberusss]

I was curious to see how this beast looked like. I can't find pics on Lenovo's own site, but notebookcheck.net has an article. Pics from the article:

Image 1
Image 2

Re:Pictures

[jez9999]

If that's an actual pic, it has REAL buttons at the bottom of the trackpad. I'd love to know how to get them, I can't find one without the awful "buttons integrated into trackpad" design these days.

Re:Pictures

[sconeu]

Pics explain the need for 128GB.... It's running Windows 10

[ducks]

Re:Pictures

[LynnwoodRooster]

Check the Lenovo P71. A great keyboard (with around 8mm of actual travel), and REAL BUTTONS on the trackpad. And it has a bigger 17.3" screen that you can do actual work on.

Re:Pointless

[dryriver]

Lots of applications require large datasets to be loaded - for example, architectural CAD, where you may have a 3D model of a shopping center with 92 different shops and 400 different windows in it. Until now, those datasets could only be opened on expensive desktop CAD workstations that weigh 40 lbs and that you cannot easily take to a construction site or to a client meeting. So these 128GB laptops are aimed at that - going to a construction site or a client's office and opening and manipulating very large CAD or scientific data sets. 6 CPU cores is a bit low for that, but its mostly the GPU that gets used, and its a lot better than having to move a large desktop workstation to a presentation or construction site.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

CAD and 3D models are getting really huge these days. Particularly in architectural visualization. So if you need to load the 3D CAD model of an entire car engine, or the highly complex 3D model of an entire shopping center, you may very well run out of RAM if you only have 64GB. In architectural visualization, you may be loading a building model that has dozens of rooms or hundreds of windows and other details. 128GB is not unusual to work on such monster scenes, and it has never been available in mobile form until today. So there are real world uses for that much RAM.

But not supported by a single 15" laptop display, unless you are TRULY desperate.

Re:Pointless

[OrangeTide]

Loading and viewing large data sets in science and industry. Maybe you'd do calculations on the data sets on some big network of servers, but at the site you might want to browse the results of your oil and gas survey without access to a network.

And for many of us we only have laptops at work and no longer get powerful desktop workstations. I now have to remotely access the real processing power as it is shared by multiple employees over multiple timezones. I will admit that while inconvenient our new environment is a lot faster than my old 12-core workstation.

Great!

[mark_reh]

I'll buy one for $300 in about 5 years!

Re:Great!

[amiga3D]

It's cheap steel you wont be getting. I hear the price of a Toyota may be going up by as much as $400.

Re:Great!

[halivar]

Tell them to leave off the flimsy trunk liner. That's your $400 right there.

Re:Great!

[Carewolf]

I'll buy one for $300 in about 5 years!

I was about to say it will take a long time for it to get to $300, but yeah 5 years might do it. It is the price for a used W530 now after all.

Re:Great!

[ModernGeek]

My 15" Retina MacBook Pro that I bought for $4,200 maxed out in 2012 goes for around $1,099 on eBay, so maybe not for $300, but for cheaper.

Re:Great!

[Carewolf]

My 15" Retina MacBook Pro that I bought for $4,200 maxed out in 2012 goes for around $1,099 on eBay, so maybe not for $300, but for cheaper.

I was talking a nominal model with a new price around $2000. I have no idea what a fully maxed out workstation thinkpad sells for, but I could imagine it is a lot, many people love the old keyboards they last used around 2012.

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storag

[Joe_Dragon]

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storage locked on MB Starting at only $4999

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[SuiteSisterMary]

So at your home office you have your multi-monitor setup, and at your on-site office you have your multimonitor setup, and now you have a 'portable' workstation that you can more easily lug between the two.

Look at your mouse too...

[kackle]

Did you know optical mice use ~ 5 times the power of roller-ball mice?

Re:Look at your mouse too...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Did you know optical mice use ~ 5 times the power of roller-ball mice?

What about capactive touchpads?

Re:Look at your mouse too...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Unusable for CAD. A space mouse is almost always . And even if you're working with a normal mouse, it's nice to have a LARGE area that you can do decent drag modes. Can you set up your touch pad to do click-and-drag over an entire screen width AND still have very fine resolution? I've tried it (yes, even on a Macbook) and it simply isn't realistic. It's really slow. Get at least a regular mouse...

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[bluefoxlucid]

why even call something like this a Laptop?

It's a typographical error. They meant "cell phones".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[BronsCon]

You can buy a few monitors to leave on the various desks you'd use something like this on. Much cheaper than entire workstations at each location and you always have your data with you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[bluefoxlucid]

It appears to have a "longer battery life" than the P51, which has a 9-hour battery life.

6-row keyboard

[XanC]

Still waiting them out on my x220, waiting for real keyboards to return.

Re:Not for Apple users

[fluffernutter]

Buying Apple is getting more and more courageous every day.

Yo Mamma

[spacemky]

Now I can finally open a pic of yo mamma!

*badum-ching

Re:64gb for the dells

[symes]

I would think you would want the ecc option - if you are loading that much data into ram to work on it will probably be a task that takes a while and requires accuracy and stability.

Re:64gb for the dells

[cmeans]

We went with the i9 CPU, and Non-ECC memory was the only option.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

I have a 64 GB, 1 TB Lenovo P71 with a 17.3" screen - and a 99 Whr battery, stock. I get a solid 7-8 hours on battery from it - enough for about a full day of work (a few hours of meetings, lunch - and that leaves 7-8 hours of run time). Sure, it's 8 pounds - but it can actually be used to design something like a Macbook, whereas a Macbook - can't.

Oh, it also has 4 USB type A connectors, HDMI (great so I can plug into just about any projector without the need for a flaky dongle that is always forgotten), Ethernet (some clients will let me use wired, but it's a big hassle to get WIFI - so I go wired), DisplayPort, SD card reader. Essentially everything I need to not only design stuff, but install a lot of higher end test equipment that is USB connected.

Just because YOU don't need something, doesn't mean someone else doesn't need it. Some of us do real engineering work - like designing the toys and products for companies like Apple, Microsoft Google, and others. And that takes real workstation power. Having it portable means I can work anywhere in the world.

And yeah, it's 8 pounds (just over 10 with the power supply), but if a person cannot carry a 10 pound laptop through an airport, they need to cut back on the Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

Re:Pointless

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Do some heavy graphics processing. I regularly use over 70GB of ram when working with images on my computer. Just because you can't use that much doesn't mean others of us can't. It takes a lot of memory and processing power to make images that are in the multiple gigapixel range that have 16bpc color depth.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[bill_mcgonigle]

I mean, why

Because people have use cases for portable workstations with a built-in screen and are smart enough to understand that more power requires a lower battery life, and they're willing to make that trade-off. This is how every market-based purchasing decision anywhere and everywhere is made.

It's probably not the same person you see at Starbucks with a MacBook Air sipping a flat white while being outraged on Twitter.

That's actually OK.

Re:imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and sto

[TheFakeTimCook]

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storage locked on MB Starting at only $4999

whatever.

You actually think this laptop will be significantly less than that?

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

So at your home office you have your multi-monitor setup, and at your on-site office you have your multimonitor setup, and now you have a 'portable' workstation that you can more easily lug between the two.

Meh.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

why even call something like this a Laptop?

It's a typographical error. They meant "cell phones".

LOL!

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

You can buy a few monitors to leave on the various desks you'd use something like this on. Much cheaper than entire workstations at each location and you always have your data with you.

As I said above: "Meh".

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

It appears to have a "longer battery life" than the P51, which has a 9-hour battery life.

Unpossible. Not with that much RAM, GPU, CPU.

Arm announce ...

[denisbergeron]

Arm processor as good that the i5. So laptop urge to grow better than your next phone... but then who need a 128gb laptop ?

Re:Arm announce ...

[Rockoon]

but then who need a 128gb laptop ?

Someone using their laptop as a workstation. Apple has certainly made a market for this with their Pro laptops so people like this must not actually be rare.

Personally I too seek a lot of power in a small form factor for my desk (seriously considering building my own mini-itx case), but not a god damned laptop.

to compete agains them self

[denisbergeron]

Arm processor as good that the i5. So laptop urge to grow better than your next lenovo/moto phone...

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

I mean, why

Because people have use cases for portable workstations with a built-in screen and are smart enough to understand that more power requires a lower battery life, and they're willing to make that trade-off. This is how every market-based purchasing decision anywhere and everywhere is made.

It's probably not the same person you see at Starbucks with a MacBook Air sipping a flat white while being outraged on Twitter.

That's actually OK.

Really? Are you SURE?!?

Well, it does appear there may be some limited use-cases for this kind of laptop; but they are pretty rare, methinks.

Porn aficionados rejoice!

[Locke2005]

My laptop only has 32GB of SSD, thank you.

Well, that's a real panty-dropper, isn't it?

[Locke2005]

Too bad chick aren't impressed with the size of your RAM...

Re:Well, that's a real panty-dropper, isn't it?

[ruir]

I am not impressed with your command of "Engrish"

up to

[h4x0t]

Max out all the sliders and get ready to drop 10k....

"The company hasn't announced pricing yet"

[slashmydots]

Considering the level of illegal price fixing in DDR4 right now, I can safely say it definitely costs more than the average house.

Malware ready

[Anonymous Coward]

128 GB is bare minimum to properly run all the malware included with your new laptop.

Re:imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and sto

[Carewolf]

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storage locked on MB Starting at only $4999

whatever.

You actually think this laptop will be significantly less than that?

No slightly less in price not significantly less, but an order of magnitude or two more powerful.

Looks like a regular boring laptop.

[Qbertino]

Nothing to see here. Then again, this is 2018 where you can get .5 TB MicroSD Cards for real so go figure.

Re: Looks like a regular boring laptop.

[Bing Tsher E]

I 'only' have a .125TB sd card in my phone, because I'm cheap.

That's a HUGE difference between high and low end.

[sims 2]

I sell second hand devices (laptops, tablets and occasionally desktops) and people are still bringing in brand new windows 10 devices with only 2GB of ram but most now have 4GB. 8GB is rare and I haven't even seen one with more than 16GB yet and i've only seen two of those.
The ones that I have seen were maxed out and didn't support any larger amount of memory. Like the laptop i'm using right now is maxed out with 8GB and the one I use at home is maxed out at 16GB.

Windows needs least 4GB of ram to not page to disk when installing windows updates by itself! It's infuriating that they still sell them with less.

Re: AMD laptops

[Bing Tsher E]

My netbook is an AMD laptop. It has the max 8gb of ram, too. An Acer Aspire One. Perfect use case for an AMD processor.

Laptops aren't really designed

[nehumanuscrede]

for power hungry applications as they don't really handle thermal dissipation as well as their full size workstation brethren.
Not to mention the high end hardware that can deliver the power you need will eat a battery so fast it's shocking.

Since the damn thing is going to have to be plugged in at all times anyway ( with the added bonus of that tiny ass screen ) why
get a laptop for this sort of work ? ( I use CAD and DCC software and I'm sure as hell not going to do it on a 17" monitor on a road trip )

Additionally, I've never really liked laptops as their upgrade possibilities are extremely limited ( if they exist at all ).

Re:Laptops aren't really designed

[ledow]

I bought a high-end laptop about 8-9 years ago.

It's still going.

It literally runs every game on my Steam account (1000+) still.

It has a bundle of virtual machines on it with VMWare, and I regularly develop on one OS inside another to let me test the code compiles/runs on both.

It's always plugged in, except for when I take it on a plane (i.e. leisure, not business). Then you put it in low-power mode and it's still a laptop with a bunch of RAM and an SSD which means that it gets everything done REALLY quick and doesn't have to spin anything up to do so, which means its power requirements are low (but bursty). Just because you have to plug it in, doesn't mean it's not portable, and it doesn't mean that you run it full-whack when it's not plugged in. I always get a full-movie out of it on the plane, at least. And it's a big screen.

The "gaming laptop" is really the ideal machine. Portable enough. Fast enough to do ANYTHING. Works in low-power when you need. Survives power cuts. Does everything your work will require, plus your entertainment.

CAD - I'm not sure, but anything that has a decent enough card to run modern games will likely do most of the CAD you require. If it doesn't, sure, it's not for you. But CAD usage is niche. A laptop that people can game, browse, work and travel on isn't.

Upgrades? I bought it with maxed RAM. Apart from changing one of the two drive bays to an SSD, I've never needed to upgrade. The SSD upgrade literally doubled the speed of the thing.

Thermals? Sure, if I play GTA V for hours and hours on end, it gets hot underneath. It may even ramp a core down (visible in the Windows event log as a firmware event). I don't notice in-game because it "just works".

Nobody is saying such laptops are the absolute best thing for everyone and every purpose. But I wouldn't be interested in a machine that was the best machine for CAD.
  Or one that was the best machine for gaming. Or one that was the best machine for portability. But they are EASILY the most comfortable medium, without compromising heavily in any particular area.

I'm looking at another now as, after 9 years, my battery is starting to wither. A double-capacity battery is GBP50 on Amazon. An equivalent laptop (in terms of what this was when I bought it) is about 1000-1500GBP. But I need NO other machine. Per hour of usage, that easily drops it into the fractions-of-a-penny range.

The only reason I don't is that I'll probably have to buy a new version of VMWare.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Nope. CAD is almost always done on a single screen - you don't need dual screens. I have an extra one at home, it's nice to toss up Outlook and a music player on the laptop and use the bigger screen for CAD, but I'm essentially working in a single screen. Same as when I'm on the road.

Re:imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and sto

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes. A Lenovo P71, fully loaded with 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB of SSD, and the 17.3" 4K screen, comes in at $4166. I wouldn't expect this new unit, with more memory, SSD, but a smaller screen, to be significantly more cost, certainly no more than $5000.

And of course an iMac Pro is by NO means a "portable" solution. I can toss my P71, power supply, mouse, 4 days of clothes, toiletries, and UE Boom 2 and cables into an Everki Titan backpack and go anywhere. I did just that last week, spending 8 days in Asia at 3 factories and 2 hotels. Can't do that with an iMac, no way no how. I can pick up my laptop and run between floors in buildings, hard to do that with an iMac Pro - even to move just a desk or two over.

Now, you CAN use an iMac (running Windows, of course, if you're doing any serious hardware engineering) Pro to do everything, and rely upon a second laptop to remote in to your iMac Pro. But I dare you to try to do 3D CAD with 100-200 msec of latency - good luck getting the right surfaces or reference points selected! And that is a LOW latency for many situations, such as a Starbucks, an airport lounge - or overseas.

Re: Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Wow. I have a 14 GB Pro/E file for a mid-sized product I'm working on right now. Running that on a 16 GB machine is like running through frozen molasses. Having my 64 GB machine right now at least allows me to spin it as I'm working on surfaces, in something close to real time, rather than "move mouse and wait 5 seconds for first move; 5 seconds for second move; 5 seconds for 3rd move"... And don't even get me started on an FEA impact analysis of an ABS enclosure hitting a concrete floor from a 1.5 meter fall...

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Versus the option of not even being able to SEE the file because you do not have a suitable portable computer on site? I'll take "it's a bit small but workable on a 15.6 inch display for $200, Alex" any day...

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

So if it doesn't work for you, and there isn't an Apple alternative, the case must not exist and be tiny? Do you realize that iPhones make up about 15% of the market, they must be tiny so should be ignored and dropped. After all, if 7 out of 8 people use Android, then why does iOS even exist? Clearly it's pretty rare...

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Between 1 and 10 hours for the P71, a bigger version of this. In real-world use, I see about 5-8 hours on a charge, doing a mix of CAD, surfing, and e-mail. Apparently you can watch around 14 hours of video on a charge... So plenty of battery life. Of course, it's not "courageously" thin, but then this is a real man's computer, not something for a limp-wristed pantywaist who traipses around with skinny jeans raving about saving 0.1m thickness on the latest phone because COURAGE!

Cool...

[doom]

That's almost enough memory to run Firefox.

Brace myself

[Daralantan]

Why am I bracing myself for a laptop?

Apple Philosphy

[Dr. Evil]

There’s some logic in doing this kind of work in the cloud. It doesn’t save much money or effort in the long run having a development environment on your workstation.

If it’s not the RAM limiting you, it’s the data sets, storage, or shared environments, or even just leaving it running when you head home, or having another set of eyes collaborate on your problem.

That said, it is stupid Apple doesn’t have beefy pro laptops as an option, but running a dev environment on your laptop should not be the reason.

Re:imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and sto

[TheFakeTimCook]

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storage locked on MB Starting at only $4999

whatever.

You actually think this laptop will be significantly less than that?

No slightly less in price not significantly less, but an order of magnitude or two more powerful.

I'd truly like to see something that is an order or two of magnitude more powerful than an 18 core iMac Pro, that didn't also require a rack.

How heavy?

[cormandy]

The power supply will no doubt weigh 1kg.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Nope. CAD is almost always done on a single screen - you don't need dual screens. I have an extra one at home, it's nice to toss up Outlook and a music player on the laptop and use the bigger screen for CAD, but I'm essentially working in a single screen. Same as when I'm on the road.

Maybe that's the way you prefer to work; but not me.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Between 1 and 10 hours for the P71, a bigger version of this. In real-world use, I see about 5-8 hours on a charge, doing a mix of CAD, surfing, and e-mail. Apparently you can watch around 14 hours of video on a charge... So plenty of battery life. Of course, it's not "courageously" thin, but then this is a real man's computer, not something for a limp-wristed pantywaist who traipses around with skinny jeans raving about saving 0.1m thickness on the latest phone because COURAGE!

A "Real Man's Computer"

Now I KNOW you've got issues...

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[ahodgson]

I've been doing this for 10 years. It works great. And I have a very functional laptop when I do travel or work in odd locations. Even in airports I can usually find an A/C outlet when I need to work for more than an hour.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Why, because I actually want something that works, has the connectors pretty much needed (no dongle hell!), and lasts for a day? Are you so fragile that an extra 6 pounds will hurt you?

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

What CAD do you do? What mechanical team do you work with?

I'll Buy That...

[maxbuzz]

For a dollar!

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

Why, because I actually want something that works, has the connectors pretty much needed (no dongle hell!), and lasts for a day? Are you so fragile that an extra 6 pounds will hurt you?

No, not at all.

It's because you feel the need to bolster your argument, and hardware choice, by impugning the manhood of those who choose to work another way.

Oh, and what about the millions of female engineers? Are they less "manly" if they don't work the same way you do?

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[TheFakeTimCook]

What CAD do you do? What mechanical team do you work with?

Not any for about the last decade, unfortunately. The 2008 economic crash nicely put an end to THAT career-path, unfortunately.

Now I just write stupid Windows business software. So I am already spending my time in Hell; hoping to get "time served" when I die.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[LynnwoodRooster]

How about those same folks who said I don't need 128 GB of RAM, and that if I was "serious" about it I should just pack an iMac Pro around... Sound familiar?

Optane Hype for intel

[Kuruk]

fake news. Optane aint memory

Re:Optimizing The Wrong Thing

[sexconker]

Uh, RAM is very expensive right now, and there are hard caps to the amount of RAM given platforms support.

Yes, it is cheaper than in the past, but the growth of the workload has outpaced the price increase (and outright availability) of the hardware it runs out.
All without meaningful improvement into getting shit done or doing it better!

Sure, you can model and render the bumps on chicken skin for some background prop in a 3D scene. Or you can use a decent texture.

Re:imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and sto

[Carewolf]

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storage locked on MB Starting at only $4999

whatever.

You actually think this laptop will be significantly less than that?

No slightly less in price not significantly less, but an order of magnitude or two more powerful.

I'd truly like to see something that is an order or two of magnitude more powerful than an 18 core iMac Pro, that didn't also require a rack.

You mean something an order of magnitude faster than a overheating unupgradable tin can from 5 years ago? Have you tried wallmart?

Re:imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and sto

[TheFakeTimCook]

imac pro no repair over priced upgrades and storage locked on MB Starting at only $4999

whatever.

You actually think this laptop will be significantly less than that?

No slightly less in price not significantly less, but an order of magnitude or two more powerful.

I'd truly like to see something that is an order or two of magnitude more powerful than an 18 core iMac Pro, that didn't also require a rack.

You mean something an order of magnitude faster than a overheating unupgradable tin can from 5 years ago? Have you tried wallmart?

We were talking about the iMac Pro, you dolt.

Re:Laptops with 128 GB of RAM...

[bluefoxlucid]

You obviously haven't seen how much power a 33MHz 486SX consumes. One would think these 8-core 2.1GHz monsters would kill the battery in your phone in 14 seconds, yet here we are sucking 1W at peak.