The means already exists to use the GPU as a general purpose physics engine. For some reason, this deal doesn't surprise me. NVIDIA gets a team of hardware engineers out of the deal, and IP for PhysX that they can now convert into CUDA. The unfortunate side is that CUDA is an NVIDIA only API for their GeForce 8 series GPUs, thus eliminating any chance of being supported on any of ATIs latest GPUs.
It wouldn't surprise me to see an SLI setup used, but using the PCIe bus specifically to offload physics math to the second GPU nearly exclusively, since through the bus and CUDA, they can also access all of the GPU memory on board the second card.
From what I've been told, there is a requirement that in order to sell Apple products at a store, the shop needs to be able to prove that they are able to move over $10,000 (or is it $100k) a month in Apple product. That is one of the primary reasons that one of our local computer stores doesn't carry Apple product, even though they would like to.
NVIDIA isn't providing free software. They are providing a means to use their hardware. Unfortunately in this case, Vista users are stuck with a card that doesn't work as advertised because the drivers that provide the means for the card to work... don't work.
I don't think it is fair to compare average time per work unit since there are a lot of different work units available out there, hence why Stanford assigned different scores to different work units. Your best bet is to try and have the CPU and the GPU work on the same work unit separately (not necessarily simultaneously due to overhead), and get a direct comparison of the time required to process.
Over at Pixar, one frame from Finding Nemo took 4500 computers over 90 hours to render.
This would be entirely uneconomical from both the rendering engine standpoint, and a network standpoint. Does rendering images at 2k resolution take long? Sure, but not THAT long. Pixar is a purely RenderMan (PRMan for those who are picky) house in terms of rendering. Why not? They invented the damn renderer.
The renderer works by distributing RIB files to various available CPUs in a cluster. The RIB file is a full description of a single frame of animation. Those 4500 CPUs didn't render one frame. They rendered 4500 frames, at probably 90 minutes a frame rather than 90 hours. This of course, not counting network overhead for distributing jobs to all of these rendering nodes.
If it did take 90 hours a frame on 1 node, a citation would be nice on that even. RenderMan is one of the top renderers in the industry for a reason. It's fast, and it also does production renders with full motion blur and depth of field faster than any other commercial renderer on the market.
Picture quality and audio quality isnt affected by the Blue Ray or HD-DVD disc any more than the sound quality of your MP3s is affected by your having a Seagate hard drive vs a Maxtor hard drive.
Only, if you store your MP3s on a Maxtor hard drive, you dramatically reduce the length of time you'll be enjoying those MP3's...;)
From the looks of things, they use a process similar to coal gasification technology. The CO2 can be harnessed and sold back to the oil industry. Especially up in the oil fields in Alberta, being able to pump CO2 down into wells can dramatically increase the yield of the well.
That 1% has nothing to do with the percentage of financial loss or gain. That has more to do with the amount of errors on a spreadsheet. The value of that error could mean anywhere from hundreds of dollars of loss or gain according to the spreadsheet, to billions, depending on how critical the locations of that 1% of errors are.
Yes. In some of the washrooms at the Pengrowth Saddledome in Calgary, they have these LCDs above the urinals. Advertising displayed on these things is operated by Flush Media. I've seen things from movie trailers to home leisure advertisements on them.
Offices aren't just trying to get more people working more hours at the office. The push for the Centrino platform by Intel has probably started to convince employees and employers that the life of a worker exists solely to the company.
Give them a laptop and they shal work at home in the off hours, or even on vacation.
I got to try this device while at SIGGRAPH. While it actually does work, and feels wierd, at the moment, it does require a large aparatus to wear, and in most people (according to the notes I saw at the end survey), it is uncomfortable. Then again, you try feeling comfortable with electrical pulses constantly prickling behind your ear.
Couple problems with your logic. Keeping in mind the original question regarded name brand PC box sellers, it would be fair to compare how much it would cost to get 2GB of memory preinstalled in computers such as Dell or HP.
Take for example, I am going to build a 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 that comes with 512MB standard, the cost to upgrade it to 2GB (2x1GB) is $450. Looking at a Dell Precision workstation, the same upgrade costs an additional $650 from 512MB on their Dell Precision Workstation 670 XP64 Edition. Same with most of their workstations for that matter. HP will charge $670 on the workstation I priced.
Part for part, Apple and regular PCs use the same memory, so specifically targeting memory isn't really a valid comparison to the price of Apple computers versus other name brand PCs
I believe it is a little worse than salesman trying to call... It is fax machines, and I don't have a fax, and I don't know how to contact these people back to tell them to stop faxing me... appearently my number used to be a fax number, and it gets constantly spammed. Those are the ones that occur often at any time, 24 hours a day. The salesman are the ones that usually call in the evenings.
At least once a week. No lie. Usually the call comes in on the call display as Datamed Software, or Digital Contact. Those seem to be frequent around the clock calls that come in, and they use multiple numbers, which means it is near impossible to just block them.
Is there a list like this available to Canadian telephone subscribers? I get too many unsolicited calls per day, gets annoying when I am being woken up at 4 in the morning. These days, if it is a number I don't recognize, I just pick up and hang up the phone.
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The means already exists to use the GPU as a general purpose physics engine. For some reason, this deal doesn't surprise me. NVIDIA gets a team of hardware engineers out of the deal, and IP for PhysX that they can now convert into CUDA. The unfortunate side is that CUDA is an NVIDIA only API for their GeForce 8 series GPUs, thus eliminating any chance of being supported on any of ATIs latest GPUs.
It wouldn't surprise me to see an SLI setup used, but using the PCIe bus specifically to offload physics math to the second GPU nearly exclusively, since through the bus and CUDA, they can also access all of the GPU memory on board the second card.
From what I've been told, there is a requirement that in order to sell Apple products at a store, the shop needs to be able to prove that they are able to move over $10,000 (or is it $100k) a month in Apple product. That is one of the primary reasons that one of our local computer stores doesn't carry Apple product, even though they would like to.
I'm guessing you haven't played real golf then... ;)
NVIDIA isn't providing free software. They are providing a means to use their hardware. Unfortunately in this case, Vista users are stuck with a card that doesn't work as advertised because the drivers that provide the means for the card to work... don't work.
I don't think it is fair to compare average time per work unit since there are a lot of different work units available out there, hence why Stanford assigned different scores to different work units. Your best bet is to try and have the CPU and the GPU work on the same work unit separately (not necessarily simultaneously due to overhead), and get a direct comparison of the time required to process.
Over at Pixar, one frame from Finding Nemo took 4500 computers over 90 hours to render.
This would be entirely uneconomical from both the rendering engine standpoint, and a network standpoint. Does rendering images at 2k resolution take long? Sure, but not THAT long. Pixar is a purely RenderMan (PRMan for those who are picky) house in terms of rendering. Why not? They invented the damn renderer.
The renderer works by distributing RIB files to various available CPUs in a cluster. The RIB file is a full description of a single frame of animation. Those 4500 CPUs didn't render one frame. They rendered 4500 frames, at probably 90 minutes a frame rather than 90 hours. This of course, not counting network overhead for distributing jobs to all of these rendering nodes.
If it did take 90 hours a frame on 1 node, a citation would be nice on that even. RenderMan is one of the top renderers in the industry for a reason. It's fast, and it also does production renders with full motion blur and depth of field faster than any other commercial renderer on the market.
Picture quality and audio quality isnt affected by the Blue Ray or HD-DVD disc any more than the sound quality of your MP3s is affected by your having a Seagate hard drive vs a Maxtor hard drive.
;)
Only, if you store your MP3s on a Maxtor hard drive, you dramatically reduce the length of time you'll be enjoying those MP3's...
From the looks of things, they use a process similar to coal gasification technology. The CO2 can be harnessed and sold back to the oil industry. Especially up in the oil fields in Alberta, being able to pump CO2 down into wells can dramatically increase the yield of the well.
That 1% has nothing to do with the percentage of financial loss or gain. That has more to do with the amount of errors on a spreadsheet. The value of that error could mean anywhere from hundreds of dollars of loss or gain according to the spreadsheet, to billions, depending on how critical the locations of that 1% of errors are.
I for one choose to welcome our corporate overlords.
I'd be interested in hearing your rant with them if you have the time.
Yes. In some of the washrooms at the Pengrowth Saddledome in Calgary, they have these LCDs above the urinals. Advertising displayed on these things is operated by Flush Media. I've seen things from movie trailers to home leisure advertisements on them.
e-penis++
Offices aren't just trying to get more people working more hours at the office. The push for the Centrino platform by Intel has probably started to convince employees and employers that the life of a worker exists solely to the company.
Give them a laptop and they shal work at home in the off hours, or even on vacation.
I got to try this device while at SIGGRAPH. While it actually does work, and feels wierd, at the moment, it does require a large aparatus to wear, and in most people (according to the notes I saw at the end survey), it is uncomfortable. Then again, you try feeling comfortable with electrical pulses constantly prickling behind your ear.
Couple problems with your logic. Keeping in mind the original question regarded name brand PC box sellers, it would be fair to compare how much it would cost to get 2GB of memory preinstalled in computers such as Dell or HP.
Take for example, I am going to build a 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 that comes with 512MB standard, the cost to upgrade it to 2GB (2x1GB) is $450. Looking at a Dell Precision workstation, the same upgrade costs an additional $650 from 512MB on their Dell Precision Workstation 670 XP64 Edition. Same with most of their workstations for that matter. HP will charge $670 on the workstation I priced.
Part for part, Apple and regular PCs use the same memory, so specifically targeting memory isn't really a valid comparison to the price of Apple computers versus other name brand PCs
I believe it is a little worse than salesman trying to call... It is fax machines, and I don't have a fax, and I don't know how to contact these people back to tell them to stop faxing me... appearently my number used to be a fax number, and it gets constantly spammed. Those are the ones that occur often at any time, 24 hours a day. The salesman are the ones that usually call in the evenings.
At least once a week. No lie. Usually the call comes in on the call display as Datamed Software, or Digital Contact. Those seem to be frequent around the clock calls that come in, and they use multiple numbers, which means it is near impossible to just block them.
Is there a list like this available to Canadian telephone subscribers? I get too many unsolicited calls per day, gets annoying when I am being woken up at 4 in the morning. These days, if it is a number I don't recognize, I just pick up and hang up the phone.