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Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

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Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#461

Post by davemp »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #412
arjie wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garbage operating system support. If you can’t do Linux support it’s a bit pointless because there’s two platforms for this that matter: Linux and Darwin. Qualcomm is like AMD was for GPUs for like decades. Lots of announcements and people on the Internet are huge fans based on web pages they’ve read but if you try to make it work it’s a nightmare. Snapdragon X Elite doesn’t work on Linux so it’s a pointless platform…

How does Darwin matter more than Windows?

I assume because most windows installs are corporate IT garbage that if anyone cared about performance they could just turn off one of the three endpoint protection services or tune the backup service down and get better results than processor upgrades.

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#462

Post by sroussey »

arka2147483647 wrote: post #323
cm2187 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And conveniently, by making your machine non upgradeable, it allows the manufacturer to enforce market segmentation / charge a huge premium for small RAM upgrade ( a la Apple)

There is LPCAMM2, if manufacturers want to use it. So, it does not have to be soldered.

LPCAMM2 is available in real systems at 7467MT/s and 120ns latency, vs apple (and intel) at 9600MT/s (and apple soldered memory at 100ns latency).

I don't know how linear or sensitive CPU and GPU benchmarks are to such a 20% slowdown, but i don't think Apple wants to pay it. And it looks like the next generation will be even closer to the SOC.

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#463

Post by seemaze »

canyp wrote: post #383
seemaze wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I am with 128GB Strix Halo longingly eyeing the Blackwell cards that spit tokens 10-20x the speed. The question is ultimate shape of knowledge compression and bandwidth optimization at which we arrive I suppose.

If you haven't already, check/increase the GPU memory carve-out on your UEFI. More details: https://rocm.docs.amd.com/en/docs-7.2.0/how-to/system-optimi...

Currently utilizing 126GB GTT on a headless host

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#464

Post by aabdi »

cthalupa wrote: post #302
aabdi wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this thing only has as much gpu bandwidth as the spark, it’s kinda pointles

Not true. This is aimed squarely at the Strix Halo and Mac markets. It's basically just strictly better than the Strix, and it's not clear cut vs that Macs in any sort of blanket statement. My M5 Max 128gb MBP decodes faster than one of my Sparks, but the Spark's prefill is so much faster it can often answer the same query before the mac's prefill is finished. If you have large prompts, low cacheability, etc., a spar…

Fair, but I don’t see what case you have w this. Mind sharing?

Seems niche to be both uncacheable and long context?

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#465

Post by lrae »

unmole wrote: post #51
infecto wrote: post #15

"I am not sure how many people will run AI models locally. It still seems like a niche application to me. However, it will make decent machines to play video games." I don't know who will be the winner but with some of the recent releases from gemma it seems more probable that you may run some models locally if only from a cost perspective, not even considering business security. Not sure how this type of architectur…

> you may run some models locally if only from a cost perspective I have a hard time believing running a model on a laptop will be cheaper than running it in a datacenter. Why wouldn't economies of scale apply here as with every other computation?

Does it apply for every other computation? Purely for the computation part? You can host all kinds of things locally cheaper right now than in the cloud, no? (At least pre memory price hikes.) It does, of course, come with its downsides like availability/reliability, less convenience, scaling options,..., but purely the computing price - I don't see why it wouldn't be cheaper in the future - at least for some use cases.

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#466

Post by pjjpo »

stego-tech wrote: post #197

The Unified Memory pool is what will continue to be the “game changer” in systems architecture, especially outside of data centers. The reality is even cutting edge games and consumer workloads don’t actually take full use of the PCIe bandwidth of the GPU or the bandwidth of its GDDR memory. Even local AI use cases don’t substantially or meaningfully benefit from faster memory, at least to average consumers. A unifie…

Isn't the big drawback not having a swappable GPU? Perhaps that's not as important anymore but I'm not sure we've confirmed the market demand for that.

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#467

Post by trympet »

llm_nerd wrote: post #123
dagmx wrote: post #76

This feels fluff to me on the part of the author (whose work I don’t want to trivialize) but I don’t think they’ve actually looked deeper than a paper spec sheet on this. 1. Yes it has the same number of cores as a 5070 mobile. It’s also running at a shared peak of 2/3 the bandwidth and a shared peak of 2/3 the TDP. The GPU by itself will likely perform at half the dedicated units performance 2. Apple may not have SV…

It is absolutely fluff, and the only reason this worthless tweet is on the front page of HN is that this audience has a habit of canonizing certain people, and treating each of their bowel movements as prophetic. Guy suddenly became aware of a chip that the rest of the industry long knew about, seems completely unaware of the competitors, and posts about how it's a BEAST and will be a GAME CHANGER. Like the DGX Spark…

Yes. This reads like a LinkedIn post rehashing old news. I’m not even in the industry.

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#468

Post by nine_k »

cm2187 wrote: post #307
stego-tech wrote: post #197

The Unified Memory pool is what will continue to be the “game changer” in systems architecture, especially outside of data centers. The reality is even cutting edge games and consumer workloads don’t actually take full use of the PCIe bandwidth of the GPU or the bandwidth of its GDDR memory. Even local AI use cases don’t substantially or meaningfully benefit from faster memory, at least to average consumers. A unifie…

And conveniently, by making your machine non upgradeable, it allows the manufacturer to enforce market segmentation / charge a huge premium for small RAM upgrade ( a la Apple)

Maybe I won't care about upgradeability right now. The architecture is clearly in flux, the roles of traditional "CPU" and "GPU" are rapidly evolving. Maybe in 5 years, or even 3 years, a brand-new machine from 2026 won't be worth upgrading for a new role due to a seriously different architecture, but would only be relegated to do something "traditional".

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#469

Post by nearbuy »

gmueckl wrote: post #432
nearbuy wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think much of the difficulty is just that, for example, the 1.8 TB/s of an RTX 5090 is a lot of bandwidth for a game to use. That's over 50,000 4k textures per second at 32bpp.

That sounds like a lot, but: modern renderers do between 20 to 40 passes, many of them in screen space. And each screen space pass typically reads from at least two input images, sometimes 3 or 4 even with optimally packed inputs. At 60fps that can quickly get up to way over 2000 full screen buffer reads per second and more for less than optimal access patterns in some algorithms. That also doesn't account for textur…

Very true, but I'll point out that even those 2000 full screen reads per second at 4k are only 4% of the 5090's bandwidth. Sacrificing some of that speed for a unified memory architecture seems like a good trade.

Plus, DLSS can greatly reduce the bandwidth requirements for 4K gaming.

Re: Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs

#470

Post by Rohansi »

derefr wrote: post #146

> The game changer is the unified 128 GB memory. That is the path Apple took years ago. Instead of separate memory for the CPU and GPU, everything shares a single pool. It is increasingly popular. > The memory is not as fast as dedicated GPU memory, but it is cheap enough while delivering enough bandwidth to run AI models locally. So, the reason "dedicated GPU memory" is fast, isn't because it's "dedicated"; it's bec…

Theoretically, maybe? But they are completely different interfaces so it would surely get complicated. It's also approaching the current behavior in non-unified memory systems where you have two pools of memory with different performance characteristics. You'll realistically want the CPU to always use low latency memory and the GPU to use high bandwidth memory with very little moving between them.
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