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Racking Mac Pros

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Re: Racking Mac Pros

#151

Post by angersock »

tlrobinson wrote: post #136
rylee wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so good about this OS X graphics pipeline that isn't on anything else? I'm now super curious.

Core Image: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Graphi... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Image I'm not super familiar with it or the competition, but I assume this is what they're talking about.

So, it's basically the MESA Intel graphics pipeline?

EDIT:

For the downvoters and the unclear, the relevant bit talks about compiling exactly the instructions needed to change the image. As I understand it, this JIT recompilation of pixel shaders is effectively what was implemented in the mesa drivers for Intel chipsets.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#152

Post by lurkinggrue »

15155 wrote: post #102
skuhn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix and wrote this post) From a pure hardware perspective, I would love to move this part of the service to Linux systems with GPUs. I spent some time evaluating this before we committed to the Mac Pro solution -- built some prototype hardware and did a cost analysis. It just wasn't the right move, because of the engineering cost for us. OS X's graphics pipeline is really strong, and…

> who may be prone to pass on theories of how things work rather than facts This is the biggest nightmare about working with OS X, to me. Any forum discussion you find on Macrumors or the Apple forums is hilariously misguided with pathetically bad "theories" on why something isn't working and how to fix it. "Zap the PRAM!" can be found in any/every thread, and that's a mild example.

Zap the PRAM is the mac version of "Have you tried switching it off and on again?"

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#153

Post by angersock »

TD-Linux wrote: post #134

Given all of the effort spent to use Quartz's graphics operations, I was curious as to how they actually performed. I opened an account and tried out the upsampling, and was a bit disappointed. http://chen.imgix.net/rose.png?w=560 What other upsamplers look like: https://github.com/haasn/mpvhq-upscalers/blob/master/Rose.md Looking at the other operations available, I fail to see what is done better by Quartz than jus…

As I recall, the basic idea was for something lighter-weight than spinning up and spinning down imagemagick.

Then again, one wonders why not just use FreeImage or something?

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#154

Post by chx »

IF that's what you want, that's a fairly ingenious solution. If you look at https://macstadium.com/mac-pro you'd think you can just build the racks with the Mac Pro opening back and front. But it's 6.6" inches wide so you can only have two, three would be more than 19" (and you can't put 19" of equipment inside a rack). But this way you can squeeze four in the same space and since the cylinder is 9.9" high if you'd need you could squeeze in quite a few external hard disks as well although that would require using some fans to help moving air. You perhaps have 6-8 inches free space, one 3.5" HDD is 5.75 inch high so you could stand it on the shorter 4" edge and put in 6 taking 1" from the 19" and probably have two banks of this to arrive to 3 disks per Mac Pro and leave 4-6 inches still for moving air. It might not be impossible to squeeze in 6 disks per Mac Pro but cooling would need to be very impressive for that.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#155

Post by lurkinggrue »

SG- wrote: post #145
frugalmail wrote: post #133

This seems like a company destined to fail: 1) Massive premium for compute 2) They're at the mercy of Apple, a single completely unpredictable vendor. 3) Apple changes it's form-factors to the latest "design" way to frequently 4) Apple sucks to manage in mass

1) They did a cost analysis and it was alright, I can't imagine high-end servers with dual GPUs being much cheaper or much more expensive myself. 2) This isn't the 90s where Apple was at risk of folding and going away. 3) They actually don't other than phones. Go back to all their Pro desktop lines starting with the PowerMacs. The previous MacPro case lasted quite long and came from the PowerMac G5.

> 2) This isn't the 90s where Apple was at risk of folding and going away.

No, but they are seriously unpredictable. Just ask anybody that built expensive workflows around Final Cut only to find out the new version wasn't backwards compatible with project files.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#156

Post by skuhn »

jallmann wrote: post #112
josu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look at it as an entry barrier that protects them against competitors too. If they are the only ones offering this setup, they can charge very high prices and recover the initial investment relativelly quickly.

> look at it as an entry barrier that protects them against competitors too What barrier to entry? Their customers don't care that OSX is running under the hood. You can offer an image processing service using any platform today. Sure, on Linux it probably wouldn't be as efficient, but it doesn't have to be. Scaling is a Good Problem to have. Basically, as you grow, it helps to take a critical look at risk factors an…

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix, and I wrote the article)

I completely agree with your concerns, and I'm constantly evaluating our business for operational risks and inefficiencies. There's a lot of stuff that I can't share in public about this, but what I can say is that the math works out (for now): OS X graphics processing is worth the downsides. It may not always be the case, and we're built in a flexible way where we can make a change when it makes sense to do so.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#157

Post by acdha »

TD-Linux wrote: post #134

Given all of the effort spent to use Quartz's graphics operations, I was curious as to how they actually performed. I opened an account and tried out the upsampling, and was a bit disappointed. http://chen.imgix.net/rose.png?w=560 What other upsamplers look like: https://github.com/haasn/mpvhq-upscalers/blob/master/Rose.md Looking at the other operations available, I fail to see what is done better by Quartz than jus…

Upsampling is a pretty unusual operation, though. A more useful comparison would be something like the common website task of scaling an image down to a thumbnail and adding a bit of sharpening and auto contrast/levels, etc.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#158

Post by skuhn »

rsync wrote: post #109

I have two conflicting responses to what I am seeing here ... First, this is awesome. Just like I want to live in a world where people are paying picodollars for cloud storage[1], I also want to live in a world where a bunch of mac pro cylinders are racked up in a datacenter. Very cool. Second, this is complete silliness. I'm not going to go down the rabbithole of flops per dollar, but there is no way that you can't…

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix, and I wrote the article)

I've alluded to this elsewhere, but the math doesn't add up to your gut reaction. It's cheaper, but not by a significant enough margin relative to the engineering costs, to go with commodity servers and GPUs.

Building things out of sheet metal is actually easier than migrating to Linux, for one big reason: we can pay someone else to do it, because it isn't part of our core competency. In fact, I'm pushing to open source the design of this chassis, in tandem with our design partner (Racklive). Not sure if it will happen, but I'd love to see it.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#159

Post by rconti »

mozumder wrote: post #67
exelius wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except IBM's x86 hardware has always been stupid expensive for no good reason other than it's IBM. And didn't they spin off their xSeries server business to Lenovo once the market settled on HP systems that cost half what IBM's did?

Even an HP 4 socket system like the DL980 G7 is going to be as expensive. None of these servers are going to be cheap.

Also the DL980 G7 is an unholy piece of crap. HP doesn't know how to build or fix them. I've gone through countless service requests on just a dozen machines or thereabouts.

It's the worst piece of any kind of hardware I've ever used, hands down.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#160

Post by skuhn »

tinco wrote: post #113
rsync wrote: post #109

I have two conflicting responses to what I am seeing here ... First, this is awesome. Just like I want to live in a world where people are paying picodollars for cloud storage[1], I also want to live in a world where a bunch of mac pro cylinders are racked up in a datacenter. Very cool. Second, this is complete silliness. I'm not going to go down the rabbithole of flops per dollar, but there is no way that you can't…

Obviously, but running OSX on non-Apple hardware is a violation of its EULA. I have contacted a lawyer for this (I wanted to run Hackintosh in the office), the language is very clear. The author of the software has the full power to license its use to you with any restrictions they find necessary no matter how ridiculous. If Apple only sells you the license if you promise not to run it on a thursday, you'll be in vio…

This is correct, and a huge impetus for our use of Apple hardware. We simply cannot risk our business on saving some money at the expense of violating Apple's EULA.
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