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    mdrohn
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Does Intel i7-8550u meet nomad specs?

Hello,

I'm shopping for a new win 10 laptop to run nomad.  The current crop of medium-spec laptops mostly carry intel’s 8th-gen i7-8550u chip, which is clocked at 1.8 GHz on 4 cores/8 threads.  This chip apparently has the same basic architecture as the dual-core/4-thread 7th-gen i7-7500u, which was clocked at 2.7 GHz.  From what I’m reading, they downgraded the individual core speeds to fit a quad core on the same die without increasing power consumption.  The specs indicate the 8550u has a turbo rating of 4 GHz for intermittent single-core performance boosts.  Benchmarks and reviews indicate the 8550u outperforms the 7500u.

The official nomad specs look like they haven’t been updated in a little while–will this chip run nomad?  Or should I be looking for a dual-core machine with higher individual core speeds?

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  • 0

    As far as I understood it after having a more in-depth talk about the Nomad specs, it seems to be most important that the clock,speeds are according to the specs. As I imagine it, it has something to with the real-time part of the software- the calculation of the actual DMX output values. Remember, this happens 44 times per second for each channel of each universe..... (or at least for the patched ones). 

    However, a 'better' (more than two core, higher clock ....) processor will give you more 'reserve' for non time critical stuff (might save faster to disc, be better in updating screens ....).  If your processor doesn't match the specs, even only in one aspect, Nomad might run very nice and smooth. Or might not run so smooth. ETC -as I understand it- will not guarantee or even tell it would work other than the specs.

    given ETC's focus on absolute stability and reliability, I would guess that a powerful processor that *just* doesn't meet the criteria would run well. But that's just my two cents. Also, I do have a feeling (or let's say a guess) that it also pretty much depends on how many parameter you actually want to control, or if you are 'only' running a client (time critical calculations are done on the master, remember). Buta again, that's no ETC info, it's just a guess.

  • 0 in reply to johannes

    Thanks for the thoughtful comment.  My concerns were also along those lines, but I suppose it boils down to how threading is implemented, and whether the turbo function is sufficient to keep up.  The chip has very impressive single-thread benchmarks, outperforming some earlier-gen chips with 2.5GHz-plus base clocks, but it's hard to know how well those tests model what happens in Eos when it's pushing a lot of parameters.

  • 0 in reply to mdrohn

    You probably need to get this in perspective.

    Nomads is the same software that will be running on the legacy etc ION desks some of which are windows XP so that gives you some idea of how old some of the PCs that are inside ION desks are. 

    So realistically you are not going to find a processor today that's slower than what was around 10 to 15 years ago.

    As a quick test on overall CPU load, I fired up a show with 470 dmx addresses in use and ran colour chase and spin effects across all the fixtures and my macbook showed 6% CPU usage overall.    (CPU is 4 core i7 @2.9GHz). 

    DMX is only 44 frames of 512 bytes a second,  so thats a 22Kbs  - compare how fast you internet connection is, and how much data your computer is processing watching youtube.

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  • 0 in reply to mdrohn

    You probably need to get this in perspective.

    Nomads is the same software that will be running on the legacy etc ION desks some of which are windows XP so that gives you some idea of how old some of the PCs that are inside ION desks are. 

    So realistically you are not going to find a processor today that's slower than what was around 10 to 15 years ago.

    As a quick test on overall CPU load, I fired up a show with 470 dmx addresses in use and ran colour chase and spin effects across all the fixtures and my macbook showed 6% CPU usage overall.    (CPU is 4 core i7 @2.9GHz). 

    DMX is only 44 frames of 512 bytes a second,  so thats a 22Kbs  - compare how fast you internet connection is, and how much data your computer is processing watching youtube.

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  • 0 in reply to Mike A

    Actually it was much more common 10 years ago to find dual- or quad-core chips with speeds over 2.5GHz, especially for use in mobile devices, than it is today.  Shrinking process sizes, cache improvements, etc. have made chips more efficient overall, but individual core speeds are generally lower.

  • 0 in reply to mdrohn

    Agree on clock speed but bigger cache, pipelining of the cpu and ram speed mean you've got a lot more even single core straight line speed than 15 years ago.  And the actual data rate of DMX is so slow you could probably send it over one of those old squawking modems that we used to have 20 years ago.

    Plus as an practical test it was showing 6% usage on my mac  (25% of one of the cores), so a single core clocked at 800MHz would probably be sufficient ;)

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