Nvidia releases a Linux desktop supercomputer that's better price/performance wise than anything Wintel is doing and their whole new software stack will only run on WSL2. They aren't porting to Win32. Wow, it may actually be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
Seems more like a workstation. So, that’s just a continuation of the last could Decades of Unix on the Workstation, right?
Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
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Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#152Is there any effort in local cloud computing? I can't justify $3000 for a fun device. But if all devices (6 phone, 2 iPads, a desktop and 2 laptops) in my home can leverage that for fast LLM, gaming, and photo/video editing, now it makes so much more sense.
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the size and pricing ($3000) alone, it's safe to conclude it has less raw FLOPs than a 5090. Since it uses LPDDR5X, almost certainly less memory bandwidth too (5090 @ 1.8 TB/s, M4 Max w/ 128GB LPDDR5X @ 546 GB/s). Basically the only advantage is how much VRAM it packs in a small form factor, and presumably greater power efficiency at its smaller scale. The only thing it really competes with is the Mac Studio for…
Of course. It has much less FLOPs than the 5090, after all this will have a TDP of ~50W and run off a regular USB-PD power supply. It's basically the successor to the AGX Orin and in line with its pricing (considering it comes with a fast NIC). The AGX Orin had RTX 3050 levels of performance.
I hope to see new Jetsons based on Blackwell sometime in 2026 (they tend to be slow to release those).
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#154Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the enthusiast side of things is a negligible part of the market. That said, enthusiasts do help drive a lot of the improvements to the tech stack so if they start using this, it’ll entrench NVIDIA even more.
I’m not so sure it’s negligible. My anecdotal experience is that since Apple Silicon chips were found to be “ok” enough to run inference with MLX, more non-technical people in my circle have asked me how they can run LLMs on their macs. Surely a smaller market than gamers or datacenters for sure.
I have a bit of an interest in games too.
If I could get one platform for both, I could justify 2k maybe a bit more.
I can't justify that for just one half: running games on Mac, right now via Linux: no thanks.
And on the PC side, nvidia consumer cards only go to 24gb which is a bit limiting for LLMs, while being very expensive - I only play games every few months.
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#156Would consider at a lower price of $500 USD, way too expensive for what it brings.
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI work happens predominantly on the GPU, not the CPU. This GPU with CUDA will run rings around M4 with MLX. And with much more RAM than you can get in a Mac for $3k. A lot of people have been justifying their Mac Studio or Mac Pro purchases by the potential for running large AI models locally. Project Digits will be much better at that for cheaper. Maybe it won't run compile Chromium as fast, but that's not what it'…
The quotes I've seen mention the maximum config (128GB ram and 4TB of storage) and the minimum price. Nothing saying $3k for 128GB ram and 4TB of storage. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm betting the max price is at least twice the minimum price.
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a lot more gamers than people wanting to play with LLms at home.
There's a titanic market with people wanting some uncensored local LLM/image/video generation model. This market extremely overlaps with gamers today, but will grow exponentially every year.
Do I buy a Macbook with silly amount of RAM when I only want to mess with images occasionally.
Do I get a big Nvidia card, topping out at 24gb - still small for some LLMs, but I could occasionally play games using it at least.
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#159Welcome to tomorrow's "personal" computer, a single unmodifiable SoC with closed source software stack.
Re: Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
#160Is there any effort in local cloud computing? I can't justify $3000 for a fun device. But if all devices (6 phone, 2 iPads, a desktop and 2 laptops) in my home can leverage that for fast LLM, gaming, and photo/video editing, now it makes so much more sense.