If mags is truly using Final Cut Pro for serious work, the rig he got is the right tool for the job. FCP will use every CPU cycles of his 8 cores and the GPUs on the graphics cards, too. At least he didn't drop $12,000 on three of those Sharp 4K monitors the thing can drive.
Eight cores! Wow! I worked on a project back in the late 60s to study how many processor could be harnessed together in a practical system. We came up with Seven being the likely top before diminishing returns would begin to over load the benefit. Then we were to were define the benefits in expected gain to be experienced by adding engines. I objected as that would be too limited to the thinking of the project members where as the world may find benefit in ways with work loads we never could imagine. The Professor on the project set me up with a meeting with Kurt Gödel at Princeton. where we discussed the many benefits of Incompleteness. It sort of fleshed out my objection. Perhaps picking Seven processors should have been left unsaid also although I suspect eight is cheap enough now that it is no longer a valid concern.. You sure went the opposite direction from me, My latest system I installed in my boat is a mini guad, not really even a guad being a hyperthreading duo but it looks like a quad. It does the duty though and only draws 1.75 amp on 12v power. Now I just don't even need to worry about shutting it down to conserve battery power.
I'm not using FCP for work. Most my work is fine from my laptop. This unit is mainly for my music production. I use FCP just to edit our home movies. I don't like iMovie as well.
Has your Mac shipped yet Mags? Didn't really read through it all (since I'd never buy any of these), but here is a comparison of a base Mac Pro with 2 comparable options (one HP and one Lenovo). HP costs $4500. Lenovo costs $4400. Mac costs $3200 :MARIS61::MARIS61::MARIS61::MARIS61::MARIS61: DIY was cheaper (I think $2800), but a ~15% premium on a professionally built product is more than worth it to me. It'd be like complaining that you can make a burger at home, buying ingredients at Wal-Mart for a dollar or two less than at a restaurant. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013 Also, this Mac is FUCKING COOL. Everytime I look at the size comparison between he last generation and this one, I'm amazed. It also uses something like 70% less energy to run. And, it seems to be extremely upgradable (unlike my rMBP). Mags, I'm jealous as hell.
Seven seems like a very odd choice - there are reasons why the usual configuration is a power of 2. Also very wrong, as there are lots of applications for thousands of processors nowadays - but understandable from the point of view of the 60s. barfo
I haven't gotten it just yet. I got the (2) 27" monitors. I'm sure the computer should be here next week. I'm anxiously waiting!
ummm, It seems like you are discussing the use of a network of computers where I am speaking of a multi- engine computer sharing common memory and instruction stream which does require a level of synchronization. Thus the probability of diminishing returns. However, the the question of them being built in pairs or not is irrelevant, with the 60s technology. In that day an 360 model MP65 (dual processor) took up about half the space of a large bedroom. The Triadic in plan was never built. The first Quadratic (water cooler) went on the market in 1980 and it still required floor space.
I'm jealous that you got to hang with Godel. Was just reading about him and his compadres (Turing's Cathedral)
This looks like a local Network of computers approach to me. "He said: 'FPGAs are not used within standard computers because they are fairly difficult to program but their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker - so they are also a greener option.' While most computers sold today now contain more than one processing core, which allows them to carry out different processes simultaneously, traditional multi-core processors must share access to one memory source, which slows the system down. The research scientists were able to make the processor faster by giving each core a certain amount of dedicated memory." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ip-make-desktop-machines-20-times-faster.html
^^^ That's not talking about contention for memory, just that memory itself is much slower to access than the CPUs are capable of performing operations. Modern CPUs have on-board CPU cache memory which is much faster. But the CPU has to slow down when data is in your RAM, not the cache. The FGPA setup is fast because they implement cache memory and have a very limited task the "CPUs" are performing. Those tasks require no access to RAM, just the onboard cache. It's a cheat or trick made possible by the FGPA being programmable. It's not at all general purpose. You couldn't use one of those in a computer to run Windows or Linux or anything else.
True, but you could use it to run Windows XP and 8 along with Linux. The only time processor get slowed down is contention for the same resource and that is totally dependent on the work load. My old product, IMS Fastpath was specifically designed to exploit Multiple engines accessing the same data every transaction, Point of sale banking , Federal Reserve money control and 800 number telephone control to name a few. So the coding of the data and transaction managers was critical. Even the Application data handling techniques are special. Ha! If the OBama exchange people had any clue of just how special it gets.
