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Nvidia RTX Spark

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Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#411

Post by abenga »

lmm wrote: post #342
Matl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just like their GPUs are So with proprietary blobs that give you more trouble that they're worth?

What trouble? If you want a GPU that works on Linux, let alone FreeBSD, you buy nVidia, install their drivers and get on with your life (and sure, maybe you can't use Wayland, but why would you want to?). I'm all for open-source in theory, but in practice the AMD drivers cause far more trouble than the nVidia ones ever do.

After I switched from Nvidia to AMD GPUs on my main rig, I can now run Sid without issue and upgrade my Kernel whenever I want to without getting a black screen with a blinking cursor on the next boot.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#412

Post by fg137 »

pjmlp wrote: post #373
fg137 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It often works, but you always lose something compared to native Linux.

Nah, before WSL I was already using a mix of Virtual Box and VMware Workstation, between home and work computers. Installing Linux natively on laptops has always had some specific features not working. Even my Asus netbook, which came with Linux pre-installed, had wlan issues that I learned to work around with, and the driver never supported the same OpenGL version as the Windows one (3.3 vs 4.1).

My comment was saying you lose something (e.g. performance) when using WSL2 compared to native Linux on a proper workstation.

Linux driver has always been an issue on laptops, but that's not the concern for running Python code.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#413

Post by kllrnohj »

zamadatix wrote: post #409
kllrnohj wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Apple it worked because they waited until they had a really, really good ARM ISA CPU (combined with arguably sandbagging their x86 offering for a few years prior but I digress). Qualcomm is also working on a really good ARM ISA CPU with their acquisition of NuVia and subsequent Oryon architecture. Meanwhile this is just using off-the-shelf ARM CPUs in a MediaTek SoC with blackwell bolted to the side of it. ARM's…

> Meanwhile this is just using off-the-shelf ARM CPUs in a MediaTek SoC with blackwell bolted to the side of it MediaTek is involved in the SoC but both the CPU & GPU from Nvidia are bolted on to it. I.e. it's not a standard MediaTek CPU with an Nvidia GPU added.

MediaTek's press release pretty clearly indicates the CPU came from MediaTek, and so far Nvidia doesn't have any custom CPU core they've called "Grace". Seeing as the DGX Spark has what seems to be the same core chip, it'd be really surprising if the RTX Spark swapped out the CPU cores without any fanfare announcing that

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#414

Post by raudette »

Matl wrote: post #404
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had a single problem with my Nvidia GPUs on Linux.

It can work quite well in the desktop GPU 'happy path' (single monitor etc.) if you don't care about the proprietary nature of it. But once we're talking about laptops, hybrid graphics etc. it quickly shows that this is not a platform Nvidia cares about.

Agree - but even for the basic use case, it has not been trouble free for me. With a simple 1080p display on a desktop running LTS Ubuntu on an older 3060: - I've had updates where stuff just stopped working and I had to futz around with drivers - Just the fact that you have to 'pick' from a selection of drivers (which one won't you hit issues with for your use case?) - At least on mine, there have been display glitches on suspend/resume - as it's a desktop, I just leave it running

Just anecdotal, but I never had these issues with the desktop AMD APU I had before it or Intel on board graphics on numerous laptops.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#415

Post by zer0zzz »

wtallis wrote: post #172
pipyakas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

desktop is GB300, not GB10 like Spark

GB300 is nominally "available" in desktop form factor workstations priced around $100k. That's a few orders of magnitude away from the ordinary desktop PC market that consumers participate in.

Yeah this is why it’s important to get something with similar programmability for less money. I don’t need the power of a gb300 just to do experiments with tma or “tcgen05” instructions

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#417

Post by Danox »

FireBeyond wrote: post #366
raggles wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

128 GB memory is also lame. I'm hankering for a windows equivalent of the mac studio that came with 512 GB.

The one that Apple discontinued not because of demand but memory pricing?

Isn't there a possibility they were killed because the M5 Ultra is coming why waste memory on a M3 series Ultra or any other high memory Mac Studio computer when the next generation is coming within six months?

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#418

Post by Danox »

mbreese wrote: post #331
ilia-a wrote: post #323

Looks like just rebranded DGX in laptop form, the biggest miss is the weak memory speed, 1/2 of the M5 laptop memory speed, and 1/3 of the M3 ultra that is now years old...

I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. It's not going to challenge the Apple M5, but if you're specifically looking for something in the "not-Mac" market, having a laptop-sized version of the DGX is probably going to be pretty successful.

Then they better release it within the next two weeks.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#419

Post by ilia-a »

ActorNightly wrote: post #362
ilia-a wrote: post #323

Looks like just rebranded DGX in laptop form, the biggest miss is the weak memory speed, 1/2 of the M5 laptop memory speed, and 1/3 of the M3 ultra that is now years old...

The main bus is 300gb/sec, which is on par with MB Pro. MB Max has the 600gb/sec of unified memory (about ~500 or so in practice for token generation) only for the 40 core variant, which is like $7k +, which is ironically more expensive than a dual 3090 card desktop. The 32 core variant which is still wildly expensive is like ~400 gb/sec. The biggest thing where this will crush Apple is the initial prefill phase. 600…

Because of the memory costs lately, I doubt this will be much cheaper. Also this is quite a bit slower than even 4070 let alone *90 Nvidia variants albeit with much lower memory.

Re: Nvidia RTX Spark

#420

Post by Danox »

easygenes wrote: post #384
eigenspace wrote: post #83

I'm surprised they released this thing. Brand perception is probably a lot more important to Nvidia than whatever sales they could get from this thing, and if it's basically just DGX Spark, it's likely to underwhelm. I've heard there's still a large backlog of both software problems, and hardware problems with the platform. The software problems could be fixed with time, but they'll still give a shitty first impressi…

Speaking as someone who has had a DGX Spark all year and been active developing at the driver and kernel level for it and other ARM64 Linux devices the last couple of years, it's not bad now and certainly doesn't have any issues that I wouldn't expect to be fully fixed with the second-gen motherboards going into these. The main hardware issues are not with the core SoC. They're replaceable edge peripherals like the P…

It has to work on day one whatever the Apple Mac M5 Ultra or Mac M6 Ultra are they will work well on day one, the cost of the laptop Spark probably in the thousands of dollars has to work from the start or its dead.
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