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The folks at Eurocom have released another monster 'mobile workstation'
This time around the company's released the Sky X9W complete with a quad-core, eight-thread, Intel Core i7 6700K capable of operating at 4.2GHz and nestled amidst an Intel Z170 Express (Skylake) chipset. The NVIDIA Quadro M5000M dwarfs the CPU for core count: it's got 1,536 of its own.
Pack in 64GB of DDR4-2133, 2400 or 2666 RAM, if you please, then throw in up to four NVME SSDs and give them the RAID 10 treatment for data protection.
There's also a 17.3 inch 4K screen at 3840 x 2160.
[... it also has] a single USB-C port, a pair of mini display ports capable of driving four monitors, an HDMI outlet, five USB 3.0 ports, a pair of RJ45s and Wi-Fi.
Configurations start at $2930 (and weigh in at 4.8 kg / 10.6 lbs — ouch!) , but you can configure it to a price well over $4000.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/05/eurcom_sky_x9w/
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @09:40AM
Can I haz computer now?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @09:43AM
This kind of machine would've really been exciting for me a decade ago, but now I find myself increasingly impressed with what people are doing with stuff at the exact opposite end of the spectrum: tiny computing.
In an age of Alpine Linux (10MB!), Rasberry Pi, BeagleBones, Docker containers (and et cetera) I must confess I'm nonplussed.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:52PM
If you get one for free, please give it to me. I appear to find more value in the concept than you do.
It would be nice to have a computer that will have acceptable performance for at least five years, run VMs and allow me to test the environments I want to test -- without requiring an internet connection or subscription to do it. I bet I can even play games on that thing. And -- it's portable, if not the size of a Motorola RAZR. I guess nothing is anymore, since too small is useless for many complex tasks (RAZRs did not do what your smartphone does, but was impressive for its size and capabilities at the time), and my tasks often find the hardware and services you discuss to be useless except for perhaps as nodes reporting to something like this laptop.
I will always take more than I need if I can get it affordably, because I want the product I own to die of old age before I buy a new one, as opposed to finding that I need the next version of the pi, or pay more for hosting, or a faster internet connection, because I was cheap to begin with.
Nothing scales better than choosing the right solution to begin with. And having more solution than you need lets you then pick goals, via serendipty or the option to be flexible, simply due to having the luxury of being able to creatively experiment.
Everything you say are certainly luxuries to creatively experiment with. But I can't do my job soley on any of them, and with a laptop like this, I can do my job and emulate all of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:17PM
http://www.fanlesstech.com/ [fanlesstech.com] has a lot of good AMD64 builds for people who want a happy medium between power/traditional apps and small, fanless cases.
Me? I have a fanless i7-5557U with 32GB of RAM and 2.5TB of SSD. The case is about the size of a small pizza box. It uses about 28W of power. That's even a lot compared to some of the new Skylake processors.
Tiny computing doesn't have to mean powerless. Although, I probably won't upgrade until I can get a decently supported ARM-based machine that outperforms this one in about 7-8 years.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday February 07 2016, @11:12PM
Nah, local computing power and storage will always be useful. I regularly run 1.0 load or higher. A computer exists to do all the hard stuff people can't, and that involves a lot of multitasking. If you don't have all sorts of scripts and programs doing/assisting your work in the background, you aren't using your computer to its fullest.
It also helps that your work doesn't blink out whenever the network connection is flaky.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 07 2016, @09:46AM
I can't quite justify spending $3000 or more on a laptop, but I've specced similar machines on other sites. This IS a serious computer, one that I would love to own. Most laptops are just toys in comparison. But, most people use their laptops for frivolous purposes. Browsing the web and playing media don't require a lot of power. I like their use of the term, "Desktop laptops". Yeah, it's portable, but it should have all the power that is normally restricted to desktop workstations.
I never really thought about building a RAID array in a laptop, but if it makes sense in a workstation, then it makes as much sense in your portable machine. Especially if that portable is big and bad enough to replace your stationary machines.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Sunday February 07 2016, @01:14PM
Browsing the web and playing media don't require a lot of power
Unless you open as many tabs as I do. :)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 07 2016, @02:57PM
I've found that browser tabs eat memory like candy, but it doesn't consume a lot of other resources. At this moment, Firefox is using 5.31% of my memory, but it only using .90 to 1.25% of processor time, with an occasional spike up to ~2.3%. As I open more tabs, the memory consumption increases rapidly, while processor usage may or may not increase a little bit.
LOL - I just found the flaw in my statement. I opened ten pages in new tabs, and CPU usage increased dramatically. I scrolled through the tabs, and found a stupid Flash video loading. Closed that tab, and CPU usage dropped back down to 1.6% to 2.1%. Yeah, media can consume a great deal of CPU resources, and a lot of web pages contain media.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:45PM
With respect to your sig, not that I have a problem with it, indeed I respect all people of faith because they dare to profess it, but the argument doesn't wash. People complain bitterly of cancer because it's in-your-face deadly, but they die of other stuff like obesity etc just as completely, although it's not associated with the same fear. It's all perception. You can be sure that if you sufficiently offend any of those two religious groups they will destroy you, one way or another. Go ahead, die slowly instead of quickly, but you still die.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday February 08 2016, @06:00AM
I wouldn't really call this a "laptop" as with specs like that the battery life must be calculated in minutes, more of a "portable computer" like those big clunky Osborne and Compaq PCs with built in screens.
I've had a couple customers try to go this route in the past and there is one thing nobody ever seems to realize...these things die quickly and die HARD. The reason why should be obvious, there is no way to dissipate that much heat in that small a package, i don't care how many fans you hook to the bloody thing. One had an alienware he spent nearly 4K on, back when it was alienware and not Dell, and the other bought a custom job from Seattle, Falcon? Both of them were dead less than a year after warranty and both had to be sent back under warranty, once for the alienware, twice for the falcon. in both the boards just cooked, even with big fan coolers mounted under the things when gaming they just got too damned hot!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday February 07 2016, @09:50AM
I haven't been laptop shopping in a while, thanks for reminding me of why I hate it with a passion. Oh.. and fun fact: In recent years Quadro has fallen to the wayside as a 'professional graphics line' in favor of actual proper gaming cards, particularly those that handle Direct X 11 well. It's coasting on its reputation. I'm not sure what's available in mobile-land in terms of gaming video cards, but whatever's out there isn't even an option for this machine. The engineering team here is a little out of touch.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:04PM
At 5 kg, that's not a portable computer, it's transportable.
Possibly, a movie clip could better answer to the question of "for how long can one hold this thing". But, even not quite what you asked, here's a photo [wordpress.com] of what may happen after a short while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:21PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:39AM
and i can retrieve with minimal difficulty
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Sunday February 07 2016, @11:34AM
I was never into the beefy laptops, preferring a beefy workstation that I can upgrade as I wish, and with all the power I could want. My desire for a laptop was always for it to be light and have long battery life.
Nowadays with "cloud computing" et al, there is even less reason to lug around such power. I can spin up amazon instances when I need to execute something seriously heavy duty, or SSH into my desktop if the requirements are not that high. Essentially my laptop is a thin terminal, into more powerful machines where my data is stored and there is power on tap.
I.M.O. the era when you would have to lug around all this in a laptop for those moments when you need all the power have become a niche. The only people who would be interested in this are gamers who go to a lot of lan parties, or workers who have to go to remote places with poor Internet access, but need the power (e.g. workers at oil rigs, CAM/CAD/CFD consultants). Demand yes, but generally a niche.
(Score: 1) by Pax on Sunday February 07 2016, @12:41PM
and DJ's too!!
I went digital to save weight. Now with the software i use (Traktor and PCDJ RED) i can also sync up a video i have prepared with my set.
Hardware wise I use numark mixtrack pro 2
I have a Clevo i7 based laptop as it has the balls to do the job and I can also game while travelling with it. I know I'll have at least another 2 years before I'll need and upgrade. All in all it cost 1197.00 GBP
I know some guys who also hook into lighting systems to that the audio,video and lights are all synced up.
But in general I reckon you are right.. it's a lan gamers/niche application type spec.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by HonestFlames on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:33PM
I was always the "I'll upgrade my desktop" guy.
Except every time it was time to upgrade, there was no damn upgrade path that didn't involve replacing the motherboard and RAM. Oh, and the hard drive interface had gone through another revision... plus there's a new connector for GPU's. So... you can keep the case, keyboard, mouse and monitor but most everything else needs swapping out.
I got real tired of that. OK, this isn't quite as true these days. PCIe has been the thing for GPU's for a while (although nVidia are about to launch something new on that front) and SATA isn't going anywhere... except maybe NVMe is taking over.... so actually maybe this *is* all still true.
Long story short: I ploughed £1800 into a laptop that I then upgraded with 2 SSD's, 1 hybrid drive and some nice RAM. Total probably around £2200.
This was 3 years ago. It's a monster laptop (Clevo, but not Clevo branded) and it doesn't do anything other than behave itself and do what I tell it, which lately is sometimes running Mac OS X in a virtual machine.
I'm just about ready for an upgrade, but I'm holding off until a while after nVidia release their fancy new stuff... i.e. the kind of mobile GPU that can push a 4k display when I want it to or a 1080p gaming experience without the fans trying to deafen me. The 680m in my laptop has (according to GPU Boss) roughly equivalent performance to a desktop 750Ti. Current king-of-hill is the desktop 980 in mobile form - which this Eurocom linked in the article is supposed to have as an option, but doesn't list it in the drop-down.
My all-time, 'do want' laptop would be something Eurocom probably could put together, with Xeon CPU, ECC RAM, a couple of NVMe drives, a 4k IPS display and a GPU to drive it all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:25PM
I just built a desktop workstation with almost identical specs for CADCAM. Having the same thing in a luggable format would be handy.
CADCAM requires a lot of horsepower, and since most files are proprietary one cannot cloud, unless of course it's your own personal cloud.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:56PM
Exactly. For the stuff that I need to do locally, the 1TB SSD, quad-core i7 and 16GB of RAM in my laptop are adequate, though 32GB would be nice for a few more (and larger) VMs. For stuff where I really need compute power, we have a rack with a few 24-core boxes with at least 384GB of RAM (512GB or 1TB in the newer ones) and a deduplicated ZFS pool with a big SSD for L2ARC and log device (so the big spinning rust disks are there for persistent storage but never end up on the hot path for disk I/O). If anything, those machines could be faster - I certainly wouldn't want to compromise their performance by requiring that they be portable, or able to run for more than 5 minutes on a battery.
The one thing that I would like in a laptop is the 128MB eDDR for L4 cache that a few of the newer Intel chips have. That makes a huge difference in a few of our workloads (FPGA synthesis times half of the fastest Xeons that we can buy without it).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 07 2016, @01:25PM
At some point in the future, 5 TB flash+ storage, 64 GB RAM, 4K screen, and a quad-core with matching integrated graphics will be found in a sub-$1000 1-2 kilogram laptop.
Well, maybe. Multi-terabyte flash storage is easy, just expensive. Both NAND and post-NAND technologies are going 3D and will be able to pack many terabytes into 2.5" or smaller format. 16 GB DDR4 DIMMs are appearing, 32 GB will be around in the future. Two likely die shrinks, from 14nm to 10nm to 7nm, will increase the transistor budget for integrated graphics. 5nm or lower is anybody's guess, and the future of the CPU/GPU is looking like it will include a neuromorphic/machine learning companion. The holy grail of multilayer 3D stacking for transistors would add decades to Moore's law, and might even be a bad thing since it would reduce pressure to innovate and use lower powered neuromorphic chips.
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(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:20PM
Currently 3D stacking is limited by thermal dissipation. I'm hopeful for room temp superconductors and Photonics to help with that eventually. Imagine if none of your components required cooling.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Sunday February 07 2016, @01:49PM
It's the size of a pizza box and weighs as much as a small child, but they couldn't wedge a BluRay drive in there?
Panasonic fits one into the SZ and that's a 1 kg, 283x203x25mm (11x8x1 in inches) laptop.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by HonestFlames on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:23PM
Few people in the market for this laptop need to touch optical media for anything. Those that do, buy an external drive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @02:01PM
Well over 4k? I just went there and configured one over 10k. Thats hardware alone, no OS even. It did have something like 4tb of ssd space in it though :)
If I ever win the lottery I will buy one of these for myself. Till then not happening lol.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 07 2016, @02:02PM
Most DARPA research projects had a simple target that they would call "zero zero zero" for short - I forget the three primary units, but the idea was this: If you're not at: zero weight, zero volume, zero power consumption (which is primarily considered as a contributor to weight and volume), zero cost per copy, then you've still got further development to do. Infinite capability wasn't usually a concern, you want a tool that can achieve the mission - if the specs happen to exceed mission requirements without impacting the zero targets, that's great - it might find cross-application in other missions, but specs for specs' sake isn't a goal.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @02:35PM
Which laptops do you guys use that work well with Linux? Important things to me include: matte screens, good keyboard, normal-sized track pads that are centered on the G/H keys rather than a giant pad centered on the palm rest, strong BIOS compatibility (no broken ACPI suspend/wake), fully functional with Linux, preferably under $1200. System 76 probably has the most complete offering but only gloss screens, terrible track pads, and the drivers are only guaranteed to work with Ubuntu (which I don't want). Asking on Reddit resulted in a bunch of advice to buy a used Thinkpad but I really shouldn't have to settle for old hardware just because I prefer Linux; it's not a second-class OS...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:47PM
Then buy a new ThinkPad, maybe?
Seriously, if you ever want to go the (Open)BSD route, ThinkPad is a very sensible choice (T450, this one).
(Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:55PM
My primary 'desktop' at home is a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 running Gentoo. I had to swap out the wireless card because when I ordered the laptop I foolishly spec'ed the wrong card which was iffy with linux drivers. This things sits on a docking station most of the time.
The computer I take places with me is a Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet running OpenSuse 13.2 (Haven't yet upgraded it to 42.1) It's very light, convertible pen tablet. It's a little bit limited since it maxes out at 4GB of memory and I've been wanting for a bit more than the 2.5Ghz Core2 Duo. All the tablet stuff works, which is great.
I don't know what the current crop of Thinkpads are like, but they historically run *great* with Linux, the situation may have changed in the last few years though. That said, were I in the market for a brand new machine, I'd consider System76, since I can't justify the $5000 for one of the beasts in TFA.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:01PM
Any Dell Latitude or Precision series machine will work without issue on Linux.
They have matte screens (well, on everything that isn't a touchscreen), they have both a trackpad and a trackpoint, magnesium alloy designs, strong hinges, and for the newer machines, you get the choice of having an off-centered keyboard with number pad (which is the thing to do these days), or a traditional centered keyboard WITHOUT the number pad (like the big Thinkpads used to have).
Personally, I carry a E7450 for travel. There is a new 15" Precision with Xeon processor and up to 64GB of ECC memory. It has a centered keyboard. I would get it if I didn't just throw down $1500 on this desktop build.
Oh, and the BIOS supports all of the battery-saving features that requires the tp_smapi module for Linux on Thinkpads. That means you get the same battery control features that tp _mapi provides regardless of preferred OS. And of course, things like the backlit keyboard, screen brightness, disabling touchpad, etc. are handled by the BIOS and do not need a special driver to run.
I used to recommend Thinkpads, but not anymore, after Lenovo shit all over its Linux users by not selling without Windows (a position they have since retracted from for now) and then separately bundled malware on its consumer-grade products. As an IT professional, carrying around a Thinkpad would be about as irresponsible as a medical doctor endorsing a certain brand of cigarettes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:08PM
Oh yeah, forgot to mention, my position on not using Thinkpads anymore is hardly unique. Visit the forums at Thinkpads.com. The old-timers fall into two camps: 1) Those who don't use anything newer than the W520 (most powerful machine with a proper centered 7-row keyboard), and 2) Those who have moved on to Dell Precision Series, HP Elitebook, Macbook Pro, and Panasonic Toughbooks. There's a reason the T61 Frankenpads still command $1000 from serious buyers.
The people who are just parroting the "Get a Thinkpad" line are out of touch with reality. Lenovo is an evil organization that still gets by because people heard at one time, "Lenova makes good computers." Their good will has a negative balance and their geek cred is gone. Fuck 'em.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:05PM
the monitor isnt going to stay attached to the "computing device"
for very much longer now.
i predict, that soon, the monitor will be weared on the head and there
will some thin phiber optic cable connecting it to some gray non descript
(but well ventilated) mortar brick kinda thingy.
ofc there will be the wireless display option also where the brick
talks to the goggles wirelessly ... but thats not gonna fly with
the enthusiast crowd.
honestly, tho, awesome hardware too bad it doesnt reflect my current
financial situation.
if i had cash to burn, i'd get a samsung S7 and that VR GEAR so i can sit
in bed and watch the latest greatest yify movie wirelessly streaming from my
seagate wireless (samba enabled) 4 TB HDD that some other arm device has
filled up via some fiber optic internet connection ...
maybe a damn finger ring to replace the mouse would be nice.
oh also if they could enable the backside camera on the S7 when it's slided
into the VR googles, so i can overlay the camera view with the movie so i can see
the plate with food also and dont have to take off the helmet for the
next spoonfull of maceroni and cheese ... pls?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:58PM
Or... The audio/video output will be transmitted directly to your brain. Virtual reality to the max.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:38PM
If you know where to look, I picked up a Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz, 16GB Ram, 4TB of HD, DVD±RW, 7.1 channel audio, 10/100/1000 lan, etc. for under $500. Add a $150 graphics card and it's a gaming rig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:11PM
That's a desktop, not a laptop.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @07:04PM
In my experience, if you want a high end PC... it's got to be a desktop. Power supplies and batteries in laptops are not high end. What good is a laptop if you're running all cores at 100% and have to find an outlet to charge it after 20 minutes.
(Score: 2) by forkazoo on Monday February 08 2016, @01:32AM
Lots of people want a a Quad-Core 4.2GHz, 64GB laptop with a 5TB SSD RAID array. Very few people want to pay for it. In this case, you would be paying for it not just in dollars but also in tradeoffs of mass, power consumption, battery life, heat output, bulk, etc. In a few years, that sort of gear will be a downmarket netbook that costs $200 and burns 15 Watts, and a lot more people will consider it reasonable. That's pretty much how computing has always worked. We'll always want something that is faster than is reasonable with today's technology. And tomorrow we'llw ant something faster still. (See also, the form factor of the Macintosh Portable.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @01:51AM
You have nailed it.
Also that is 'top of the line parts'. Notch it down a couple of levels and you are probably in the 1200-1800 range. Not unreasonable at all.
It is also a quadro part for video. That pretty much adds a couple hundred right there for no reason other than the name. 1000 of that is memory. Drop it to a more reasonable 8-16 and the cost is not as bad.
I quoted out something similar for an MSI/DellAlienware and it was better all around for about 2700 US bucks. All SSD, top vid card, etc, etc... I am thinking Eurocom is overpriced...