[CALUG] Looking for advice

[Open Source Rocks]

Bryan,
Thanks for explaining, I was unaware of the AMD's advancements. My
background is mostly as an OS Engineer - system administrator, systems
architect - tailoring the OS to meet company standards, setting standards
and policies.

Now a days, I have left that field and go to the dark side - security - so
not much techie stuff hands on.

Your explanation made sense and made me look up stuff. :) thank you.

Too bad, i could not make it into the meet yesterday, had to do a chocolate
and tiny gift bag stuffer for my son's school valentines day. Hopefully,
next month.

-Rajiv




On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 7:42 PM Bryan Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:

> Open Source Rocks <opn.src.rocks at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Fantastic discussion - i learnt a few new things. I have always played it
>> safe since I switched over to linux back in 2001 for my main desktop.
>> Always went with Intel CPUs. I am not gamer, so did not need Nvidia or any
>> external video cards.
>>
>
> I long tended to prefer AMD for double-precision FPU, coming from an
> engineering background and early CFD clusters in the '90s.**
>
> The funny thing is that AMD's relationship with TSMC and other fabs means
> it's going to beat Intel in feature size this year, even going to 7nm while
> Intel is still trying to get to 10nm.  Add in the Zen2 improvements, and
> it's going to be extremely difficult for Intel to complete.
>
> E.g., with the Zen ('17) and Zen+ ('18) at 14nm versus Intel at the same
> fabrication, even in single threaded applications, Intel had - - at most -
> - an 8% lead.  In heavily threaded applications, it was no contest, AMD Zen
> smacked Intel's latest i-Core, forcing Intel to quickly' re-brand their
> next generation, and even pull in their Xeon high core count (at a loss of
> speed) as the i9 consumer/workstation product.
>
> It will be interesting to see where Zen2 ends up, and how the 7nm yields
> are coming out of TSMC, but right now it's not looking good for Intel this
> year in the consumer/workstation space.  And then we have a whole, new slew
> of 32 and 64-core ARM processors, with massive cache sizes, on the Server
> end, challenging Xeon too - - matching some of the top performance, at far
> less power requirements.
>
> Now a days, my son plays on the computer and I have Nvdia card. In the
>> last 7 to 8 years, I have not had an issue with Nvidia drivers. The OS
>> prompts me if I want to use Nvidia drivers or Open source drivers and I go
>> on.
>>
>
> AMD's own proprietary builds are really going away.  Their AMDVLK code is
> open source, and the Mesa RadeonSI and RADV developments are extremely
> competitive... Even against nVidia's proprietary drivers.
>
> That's why I'm seriously considering an all-AMD solution on my next
> self-assemble SFF 'cube,' let alone a notebook.  And AMD's SoC really
> brings pricing of the board/system down in integration too, something Intel
> is only getting around to doing.
>
> For those that don't game, I'd love to see some inexpensive Epyc BGA
> Nano-ITX and Pico-ITX options in a tiny little box, like they did with the
> prior Jaguar/Kabini units 2011-2013 (that are also at the cores in the XBox
> and PS4 as well).
>
> I have noticed on one of my laptops (toshiba - 4k touch screen) it has
>> some kind of a hybrid nvidia/intel graphics card or chip (intel 530, nvdia
>> gm107m/gtx 950m). The OS (deepin linux) prompted me multiple options (a)
>> intel default (poor compatibility), (b) open source driver (poor
>> performance), (c) Bumblebee solution (save power to reduce power
>> consumption) & (d) NV-Prime Solution (for laptops with hybrid graphics).
>>
>
> Optimus is a real PITA, with either driver set.  I disable it on my Dell
> Precision m4000 series notebooks, and just use nVidia all-the-time.  I'm
> more hopeful with the AMD equivalent in an all AMD stack when I go that
> direction.
>
> I chose (c) and it has been working well, at least with the steam games my
>> son and I play.
>>
>
> SteamOS (Linux)?
>
> A note of OS - I have gone down a different path from Ubuntu or Fedora or
>> even Linux Mint - I switched over to Deepin Linux. It has worked with all
>> kinds of hardware I have thrown at it - right from Core 2 Duo to i7 4th
>> gen. Sadly though, they no longer support 32-bit hardware, so my core 2 duo
>> is stuck on an older version of Deepin Linux.
>>
>
> It's just difficult to support i686 at this point.  Lots of extra work.
> With uEFI (always 64-bit in a PC, sans early Apple's) taking over, it'll be
> even less and less. Intel has basically pushed all mainboards to drop all
> CSB (16-bit BIOS Service compability) starting next year.
>
> Good discussion, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I will try to make it
>> in today.
>>
>
> - bjs
>
> **P. S. Don't get me started, especially since the whole idSoftware/Doom
> episode made people [incorrectly] believe Intel had a better FPU, no, it
> didn't, the Pentium just had a very defective ALU, long story.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.unknownlamer.org/pipermail/calug/attachments/20190214/c886412d/attachment.html>