[TriLUG] video processing and ML on Linux

[John Franklin via TriLUG]

On Nov 15, 2020, at 00:30, Greg Brown via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> 
> If anyone has thoughts on specifications I'm all ears.  Budget is not
> unlimited by any stretch but as of right now I could safely drop $2500.00
> or so on the machine itself and more if I had to (but that might take some
> massaging).  I'd like to stick under $2500 if possible.  Cutting edge is
> not required, as much as I'd like to have two threadrippers.
> 
> When not doing video production it would like be used for ML tasks
> (classification of sounds from mp3 files) or inferred direction of motion
> in videos as well as seamless stitching of photos together of many
> geotagged photos into a single, humongous photo.. things like that.


Independent of OS, the NVIDIA Quadro line of GPUs are what I generally consider for video production.  They’re basically the same silicon as their GeForce siblings, with different features enabled.  The Quadro firmware is geared toward higher accuracy, the GeForce towards higher speed and therefore higher frame rates.

The Quadro P-series were released in early 2017.  The next generation, the Quadro RTX series, were released in late 2018.  Both have workstation and mobile variants, so be careful when looking at specs online. Easy comparisons are at Wikipedia [1][2]. I wouldn’t poo-poo the P-series just because they’re a bit older than the RTX.  They’re still solid video cards.  You may be able to find/build a more budget-friendly machine with a P-series.

From time to time, Microcenter has Dell workstations with a Quadro.  Rockville has one now with the “entry”-level RTX. [3]  Fairfax is out of stock.  That has a Xeon W-2133, a 6C/12T Skylake workstation chip from 2017 [4], superseded by the Cascade Lake W-22xx released in Oct 2019.  To meet your specs, you’ll need to add some extra ECC memory, easily doable with your budget.  No matter how you look at it, that’s a massive leap from a 2012 Mac Mini.

All that said, NVIDIA drivers under Linux have been painful.  It’s been a while since I tried to get them working, and I can only hope they’ve cleaned things up.  Just sayin’, I’d want to do some research on Linux Quadro support before dropping a couple grand on a new system.

Another serious option for consideration is waiting for the Ryzen 5000 series chips to be in-stock again, and building a dream machine with a Quadro or a Radeon Pro WX.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro#Quadro_RTX_2. (Scroll up to see the P-series.)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#Quadro_Pxxx_series
[3] https://www.microcenter.com/product/617236/dell-precision-5820-desktop-computer
[4] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_W-21xx_(uniprocessor)

jf

p.s. - just before hitting “send” on this, I noticed this is on the TriLUG list, not the NoVaLUG list.  (I subscribe to both.) The Microcenter link isn’t going to be as useful for you, unless you travel north frequently or have friends/family up there willing to pick it up for you.
-- 
John Franklin
franklin at elfie.org