Scanning a 35mm negative and getting all of the info off of it, including grain, takes a 50MP scan. We have full frame sensors in that range now. Granted, snapping a photo that will do the capabilities of the film justice requires some very high-grade glass.
My old 10MP DSLR is limited by the kit lenses I use with it.
Entirely replacing any medium-format film platform with digital is a long way off, but I have seen cameras that use the same principle as a flatbed scanner, with a super-high-res one-pixel-tall sensor bar. They're not very fast, naturally.
California... where people think mountains top out at 25 meters. California... where Hollywood is a species. California... they're "trying real hard". California... not "technically" a virus.
I don't think I'm entirely mistaken, just off by a bit. But I think you helped me refine my views. I've been every type of gamer, from ditch to high-end. When 3D acceleration was still a novelty in the late-90s, I settled for a 2MB Voodoo Rush card from Intergraph (okay, it had a dedicated 4MB in 2D mode, but that's not what I bought it for). When VR hit, I pre-ordered a GTX 1080 the same day the same day I switched my Rift order to a Vive.
I hear a lot more about "70" GPUs being employed for mining than "80"s. Binning comes into play, for sure. Maybe mining is "bread n butter" for now, while high-end and low-end are gamer territory?
Come to think of it, I've used Quadro GPUs (and hacked a GeForce into a Quadro in 2006), but I've never used a Tesla. I don't know much about what the specialized Pro gear (Tesla) has to offer over the GeForce/Quadro stuff, if anything.
Of the coin miners I know, like 90% bought solar power rigs for their houses. One had his ASIC miners linked to his brother's under-construction house and paid for something like 30kW of solar gear outright. He made a profit from the start (expensive electricity at that level, plus offsetting heating costs).
When the miners are garbage, the panels will still work.
Not long-term, but if you run a company and smell easy money, you adapt and chase it. That's just good business, if only for being able to survive... or beat your competition to the punch.
R&D departments don't necessarily release the best of their best all at once unless they want to stomp a competitor. It's like I related back in the 90s: If you know how to make a 24X CD-ROM drive (that may not be reliable above 20x) and your competitor can only make a 6x, just release an 8x that can be boosted to 12x if they try to surprise you, and spend time working on making 24x and faster speeds reliable, if not chase a new technology. That's dated, but it's still the same principle today.
FinFETs and Perpendicular storage were nowhere near as new as they seemed when they hit the market. SSDs (within their class; they wipe the floor with HDDs) weren't, either. I don't follow that stuff as closely now because the Delta-V just isn't what it used to be. "$1,000 on top of the $500 I spent three years ago gets me something twice as fast as what I have now?... No, thanks. I can wait the extra 240 milliseconds."
Unless trimming that extra time makes me enough money to make the investment worth it, I'm sticking with what I've got. If your competitor is running twice your speed, but has downtime or data corruption issues that negate more than half their work, you're still ahead.
Maybe I'll expand on this. I dunno. (c) Copyright 2018 - Fryode Electronics
If there were a smaller market for GPUs, the economy of scale aspect wouldn't be working in anyone's favor. No chipmaker gives a shit whether your framerates are 30FPS or 60FPS or that you can bump your resolution to 4K versus... unless you can do so on their competitor's cards at a price point that threatens viability of their own offerings (If nobody buys it because someone else has something way better, they don't make back the sunk costs of R&D, tooling, manufacturing, marketing, etc).
There are still coins you can mine from GPUs. I'm actually intrigued by what the Dogethereum project might do to the market since that's shifting back to GPU.
100,000 gamers: "I want a new GPU for cheap because I want higher framerates, but I'm poor!" 10,000,000 cryptocurrency miners: "I want several better GPUs because I can make more money from them and I'm willing to pay for that privilege if you'll deliver a respectable ROI." GPU maker: "Okay, miners, you'll get your new card. Gamers, since yields are never perfect, we'll offer the cards to you for cheap if you're okay with the cores that don't work being disabled in hardware. It's still over four times as fast as anything else the other guys can offer for the price." All: "Great!!"
It sounds like OP is asking "Why are GPUs so damn powerful so soon?"
In a word: Cryptocurrency mining
People were willing to pay for faster and faster GPUs for their mining farms and their profits allowed it. Look at the overwhelming demand for dedicated space heaters, er, miners. If there was no money in it, it wouldn't have happened.
It has been said that porn built the internet. Based on traffic share, that's a safe bet. There was money in being a 1 frame per second camgirl and there was money in video, which was difficult to get over a dial-up modem. A few fibers and cables later, even T1 lines were eclipsed.
Except that's a quote from "The Roof Is On Fire" by Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three from the 80s.
Bloodhound Gang covered and mutated it so it took a level in awesome, gaining a decade or so of relevance. It was featured in one of the CKY videos due to Bam Margera being a personal friend of Jimmy Pop of Bloodhound Gang.
Or you know, maybe some of us have genuinely no idea who this artist is.
I was among those... I thought. Turns out I just didn't know his name even though I am familiar with The White Stripes. I could have been modded Troll and brushed it off, but taking a moment to learn something new paid off.
Fun Fact: The White Stripes presented themselves as a brother/sister duo, but they were actually husband/wife with Jack Gillis taking his wife's surname. I understand why they aren't a group anymore.
Your light-handed approach convinced me to do some research. Jack White is half of The White Stripes! I know their music. I was never a fanatic, but I don't hate it.
I'd mod you up if I could, but it looks like you're maxed out already, as well you should be.
Thank you for your positive approach and I guarantee I will pay it forward sevenfold.
Musk is definitely an executive personality. It's hard for ordinary commoners to understand what motivates those kinds of people.
That's precisely why I'm as skeptical about him as I am of any other executive.
Simple... he can't stop. If I run, foot-pounding at full-rice into a wall, I bounce off. If freight train Elon runs into the wall, it's the wall that moves.
Another analogy based on the D.A.R.E. thing from school: You can pretty much influence the shape of a marshmallow however you see fit. To casually attempt the same with a jawbreaker will fail, but you can crack it in you squeeze hard enough. A razor blade, on the other hand... it's not the blade that bleeds.
It's a bit like trying to give criminals fourteen consecutive life sentences and pretending it's more than one.
You raise a good point. I'll field this one.: Multiple consecutive life sentences are handed out to secure the sentence in the face of potential successful appeals. Even if all but one of those appeals is successful, the convict is still stuck in the slammer til they croak.
In Elon's case, I look at it like he's going for the high score record in an arcade game. When you work that hard, shake things up enough to change the world, and contribute that much to humanity, why not go the extra mile, er, kilometer, and leave the kind of legacy kids in school will be taught about millennia after you're gone?
I've seen what happens when subscriptions aren't renewed. I've also seen prices increase over time. Impermanence is just one more failure point to have to deal with.
I see the same thing with hardware purchased secondhand that has a non-transferable license to the software required to run it. You call the manufacturer and end up learning you can get a license... for some incredibly outlandish price.
I'm reminded of how it used to be that you could sell your old game cartridges or discs... not anymore.
For things like Photoshop and 3DSMax/Maya, there are things like GIMP and Blender. Granted, they're not perfect replacements, but much like getting sick of Microsoft's antics resulted in proliferation of Linux, all it takes is people getting fed-up enough to jump ship and tilt the market share enough to make the alternative attractive enough to invest in.
Trump can't seriously think the proper equipment for growing silicon for the necessary wafers just appears out of thin air for free, can he?
Or does the tariff only apply to completed panels, leaving the ready-to-integrate cell wafers untouched by this measure? "Made in the USA" and "Assembled in the USA" are different.
Slashdot Mirror
Scanning a 35mm negative and getting all of the info off of it, including grain, takes a 50MP scan. We have full frame sensors in that range now. Granted, snapping a photo that will do the capabilities of the film justice requires some very high-grade glass.
My old 10MP DSLR is limited by the kit lenses I use with it.
Entirely replacing any medium-format film platform with digital is a long way off, but I have seen cameras that use the same principle as a flatbed scanner, with a super-high-res one-pixel-tall sensor bar. They're not very fast, naturally.
California... where people think mountains top out at 25 meters.
California... where Hollywood is a species.
California... they're "trying real hard".
California... not "technically" a virus.
Does Edge hog RAM like Chrome does?
I swear Chrome could store each page as a big ol' bitmap and still use less RAM than it does.
Imagine a worldwide BSOD.
People get scared so no.
It's a nice wish, though.
It was a Shitcoin.
Now 4 more Doge.
I don't think I'm entirely mistaken, just off by a bit. But I think you helped me refine my views. I've been every type of gamer, from ditch to high-end. When 3D acceleration was still a novelty in the late-90s, I settled for a 2MB Voodoo Rush card from Intergraph (okay, it had a dedicated 4MB in 2D mode, but that's not what I bought it for). When VR hit, I pre-ordered a GTX 1080 the same day the same day I switched my Rift order to a Vive.
I hear a lot more about "70" GPUs being employed for mining than "80"s. Binning comes into play, for sure. Maybe mining is "bread n butter" for now, while high-end and low-end are gamer territory?
Come to think of it, I've used Quadro GPUs (and hacked a GeForce into a Quadro in 2006), but I've never used a Tesla. I don't know much about what the specialized Pro gear (Tesla) has to offer over the GeForce/Quadro stuff, if anything.
Money it it now /= money later.
Of the coin miners I know, like 90% bought solar power rigs for their houses. One had his ASIC miners linked to his brother's under-construction house and paid for something like 30kW of solar gear outright. He made a profit from the start (expensive electricity at that level, plus offsetting heating costs).
When the miners are garbage, the panels will still work.
They're certainly not driving GPU R&D.
Not long-term, but if you run a company and smell easy money, you adapt and chase it. That's just good business, if only for being able to survive... or beat your competition to the punch.
R&D departments don't necessarily release the best of their best all at once unless they want to stomp a competitor. It's like I related back in the 90s: If you know how to make a 24X CD-ROM drive (that may not be reliable above 20x) and your competitor can only make a 6x, just release an 8x that can be boosted to 12x if they try to surprise you, and spend time working on making 24x and faster speeds reliable, if not chase a new technology. That's dated, but it's still the same principle today.
FinFETs and Perpendicular storage were nowhere near as new as they seemed when they hit the market. SSDs (within their class; they wipe the floor with HDDs) weren't, either. I don't follow that stuff as closely now because the Delta-V just isn't what it used to be. "$1,000 on top of the $500 I spent three years ago gets me something twice as fast as what I have now? ... No, thanks. I can wait the extra 240 milliseconds."
Unless trimming that extra time makes me enough money to make the investment worth it, I'm sticking with what I've got. If your competitor is running twice your speed, but has downtime or data corruption issues that negate more than half their work, you're still ahead.
Maybe I'll expand on this. I dunno.
(c) Copyright 2018 - Fryode Electronics
If there were a smaller market for GPUs, the economy of scale aspect wouldn't be working in anyone's favor. No chipmaker gives a shit whether your framerates are 30FPS or 60FPS or that you can bump your resolution to 4K versus ... unless you can do so on their competitor's cards at a price point that threatens viability of their own offerings (If nobody buys it because someone else has something way better, they don't make back the sunk costs of R&D, tooling, manufacturing, marketing, etc).
There are still coins you can mine from GPUs. I'm actually intrigued by what the Dogethereum project might do to the market since that's shifting back to GPU.
100,000 gamers: "I want a new GPU for cheap because I want higher framerates, but I'm poor!"
10,000,000 cryptocurrency miners: "I want several better GPUs because I can make more money from them and I'm willing to pay for that privilege if you'll deliver a respectable ROI."
GPU maker: "Okay, miners, you'll get your new card. Gamers, since yields are never perfect, we'll offer the cards to you for cheap if you're okay with the cores that don't work being disabled in hardware. It's still over four times as fast as anything else the other guys can offer for the price."
All: "Great!!"
I guess I understand the gay thing in theory. I just can't relate on any practical level.
Hey, if it's love, it's love, and love is difficult enough to find in the "straight" world as it is.
If that old thing can see something so unique and far away, I can only imagine what the James Webb Space Telescope is ultimately capable of.
If it ever launches.
It sounds like OP is asking "Why are GPUs so damn powerful so soon?"
In a word: Cryptocurrency mining
People were willing to pay for faster and faster GPUs for their mining farms and their profits allowed it. Look at the overwhelming demand for dedicated space heaters, er, miners. If there was no money in it, it wouldn't have happened.
It has been said that porn built the internet. Based on traffic share, that's a safe bet. There was money in being a 1 frame per second camgirl and there was money in video, which was difficult to get over a dial-up modem. A few fibers and cables later, even T1 lines were eclipsed.
The radio is distracting. But it's nothing compared to billboards.
Or LED-based cop lights, for that matter.
Except that's a quote from "The Roof Is On Fire" by Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three from the 80s.
Bloodhound Gang covered and mutated it so it took a level in awesome, gaining a decade or so of relevance. It was featured in one of the CKY videos due to Bam Margera being a personal friend of Jimmy Pop of Bloodhound Gang.
He's not black like Barry White is, he's white like Frank Black is.
We dont need no water let the mother fucker burn... burn mother fucker, burn.
The 90's fucking rocked.
"Hello, my name is Jimmy Pop and I'm a Dumb White Guy. I'm not old or new, but middle-school, Eighth Grade like Junior High..."
Or you know, maybe some of us have genuinely no idea who this artist is.
I was among those... I thought. Turns out I just didn't know his name even though I am familiar with The White Stripes. I could have been modded Troll and brushed it off, but taking a moment to learn something new paid off.
Fun Fact: The White Stripes presented themselves as a brother/sister duo, but they were actually husband/wife with Jack Gillis taking his wife's surname. I understand why they aren't a group anymore.
Your light-handed approach convinced me to do some research. Jack White is half of The White Stripes! I know their music. I was never a fanatic, but I don't hate it.
I'd mod you up if I could, but it looks like you're maxed out already, as well you should be.
Thank you for your positive approach and I guarantee I will pay it forward sevenfold.
n/t
Musk is definitely an executive personality. It's hard for ordinary commoners to understand what motivates those kinds of people.
That's precisely why I'm as skeptical about him as I am of any other executive.
Simple... he can't stop. If I run, foot-pounding at full-rice into a wall, I bounce off. If freight train Elon runs into the wall, it's the wall that moves.
Another analogy based on the D.A.R.E. thing from school: You can pretty much influence the shape of a marshmallow however you see fit. To casually attempt the same with a jawbreaker will fail, but you can crack it in you squeeze hard enough. A razor blade, on the other hand... it's not the blade that bleeds.
It's a bit like trying to give criminals fourteen consecutive life sentences and pretending it's more than one.
You raise a good point. I'll field this one.: Multiple consecutive life sentences are handed out to secure the sentence in the face of potential successful appeals. Even if all but one of those appeals is successful, the convict is still stuck in the slammer til they croak.
In Elon's case, I look at it like he's going for the high score record in an arcade game. When you work that hard, shake things up enough to change the world, and contribute that much to humanity, why not go the extra mile, er, kilometer, and leave the kind of legacy kids in school will be taught about millennia after you're gone?
It's not often you see an executive who doesn't have a Golden Parachute.
This is cool. I wonder what he has planned?
I've seen what happens when subscriptions aren't renewed. I've also seen prices increase over time.
Impermanence is just one more failure point to have to deal with.
I see the same thing with hardware purchased secondhand that has a non-transferable license to the software required to run it.
You call the manufacturer and end up learning you can get a license... for some incredibly outlandish price.
I'm reminded of how it used to be that you could sell your old game cartridges or discs... not anymore.
For things like Photoshop and 3DSMax/Maya, there are things like GIMP and Blender. Granted, they're not perfect replacements, but much like getting sick of Microsoft's antics resulted in proliferation of Linux, all it takes is people getting fed-up enough to jump ship and tilt the market share enough to make the alternative attractive enough to invest in.
Trump can't seriously think the proper equipment for growing silicon for the necessary wafers just appears out of thin air for free, can he?
Or does the tariff only apply to completed panels, leaving the ready-to-integrate cell wafers untouched by this measure? "Made in the USA" and "Assembled in the USA" are different.