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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."
Modern web browser with multiple tabs.
... 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.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
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.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
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.
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.
Call me when they have 640 GB of RAM, thought ought to be enough for anybody !!!
A.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
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...
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.
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.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I felt the same when 1G ram became a thing...
Composers who use large orchestral sample libraries, for instance.
I'll buy one for $300 in about 5 years!
Alternatively, this seems like a great use for a thin client, i.e. use your laptop to VNC into a beefier computer.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The new Windows version coming soon. You'll need at least 128GB for it.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
.2 and 8 VMs running on your local machine to dev/test the entire product.
The product we were using was also designed to scan other machines, which meant that you would likely have between
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.
moox. for a new generation.
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.