It's a ripper

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Did you need to get 400V three-fase connected to the house?

[RickS (Rick)]

We had 3-phase installed when we built Also cat 6 cabling.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

I like your thinking ahead Rick!

On top of being a very effective IR emitter - it is also a delightfully fast computing machine that is being used for a noble cause

[lazjen (Chris)]

Actually, these machines aren't as power hungry as you might think. They've improved things a lot. Still a long way to go though.

[lazjen (Chris)]

Tonight's effort has just claimed the #1 position in the world for PI benchmark Knocked off a 28 core Intel Xeon box.

CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. AuthenticAMD
CPU model .............. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor

System Information
Platform ............... Linux
Operating system ....... 4.15.4-gentoo #9 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 25 14:40:15 AEST 2018 GNU/Linux
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.05.1352 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 32
Total memory size ...... 62.885 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:18.55
CPU time ............... 00:16.82
Swap time .............. 00:01.71
Swap transfer rate ..... 9666.072 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 25357
CPU performance ........ 22501
Swap performance ....... 53536

Last night's memory settings didn't pass the test (failed after 90 min testing grrr).

Tonight, went back to the base 3466 for Ram, but kicked the CPU up to 3.9G (from 3.4Ghz).

[lazjen (Chris)]

And let's beat my "world record":

CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. AuthenticAMD
CPU model .............. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-Core Processor

System Information
Platform ............... Linux
Operating system ....... 4.15.4-gentoo #9 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 25 14:40:15 AEST 2018 GNU/Linux
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.05.1352 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 32
Total memory size ...... 62.885 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 00:18.02
CPU time ............... 00:16.75
Swap time .............. 00:01.25
Swap transfer rate ..... 13282.940 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 26108
CPU performance ........ 22590
Swap performance ....... 73568

Switched to a RAM disk and did a compromise improvement to the memory timings (untested fully).

Side Note: When I'm done playing with the system for these benchmarks, I think I'll be reverting the CPU overclock (and I certainly won't bother with a RAM disk). The PI performance difference from a comfortable baseline is probably <5% maybe, so no need to over stress the machine for daily use.

[RickS (Rick)]

Congrats on the world championship, Chris

Likewise, I'm not bothered about extracting the last couple of percent for real world use. So long as the Ripper is several times faster than my old processing workstation I'm happy.

[lazjen (Chris)]

Haha, thanks Rick - I couldn't let that 28 core Xeon system keep the throne when our numbers were so close.

I think the new system will be a minimum 4 times faster than my old system for PI. For some intense operations, I expect that number to be even higher.

[LewisM]

You sure that's not a Large Hadron Collider? Seems to accelerate pixels at astonishing rates...

[Atmos (Colin)]

I don’t think it’ll take much of an upgrade to beat my 4 year old laptop hehe

[lazjen (Chris)]

I was replacing a near 5 year old laptop, so yeah, bit of a difference.

[LewisM]

Mine is 8 years and counting (after I replaced the hard drive after that failed).

In fact, the old ASUS i7 crunches pixels faster and better than this new (2 y.o) POS Lenovo i7 I am typing this on GRRRRRRRRR. Only good thing about the Lenovo "Gaming laptop" (yeah, runs the original Zork real well ) is the red lit keyboard. Other than that, the ancient ASUS is my pride and joy.

[RickS (Rick)]

AMD has announced a new range of embedded processors based on a modified version of the Ryzen/Threadripper 8 CPU die. It's called the Epyc Embedded 3000 family, code name Snowy Owl. I wonder if I can talk the HW guys at work into using some of these in a new product. A rack full would make a great PI processing cluster