jjlinux

Let's get this out of the way. Not a single consumer grade board has more than 16 lanes on 1 PCI slot. With the exception of 2 or 3 very expensive new boards out there, you'll be hard pressed to find a board with 3 slots giving you a total mas of 28 lanes (16+8+4). So, regardless of TPU or GPU that's going to be your limit. GPUs are designed as general purpose processors that have to support millions of different applications and software. So while a GPU can run multiple functions at once, in order to do so, it must access registers or shared memory to read and store the intermediate calculation results. And since the GPU performs tons of parallel calculations on its thousands of ALUs, it also expends large amounts of energy in order to access memory, which in turn increases the footprint of the GPU. TPUs are application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) designed specifically to handle the computational demands of machine learning and accelerate AI calculations and algorithms. They are created as a domain-specific architecture. What that means is that instead of designing a general purpose processor like a GPU or CPU, they were designed as a matrix processor that was specialized for neural network work loads. Since the TPU is a matrix processor instead of a general purpose processor, it removes the memory access problem that slows down GPUs and CPUs and requires them to use more processing power. Get your facts straight and read more before you try to send others on wild goose chases. As I said, the OP already works this field, it shouldn't be hard for him to find the information and make an educated decision.

Simple, the difference in cost is negligible in terms of keeping the CPU at way lower temperatures, extending the life of the CPU and better avoiding throttling. And they are not louder than a regular fan with heatsink, since the fans spin at lower RPMs most of the time because they don't need to increase it since the CPU is already running cooler. And if you add a high end GPU, that's way louder and will drown the noise of any other fan in the rig when it kicks in.

By all means, unless I wanted to play some AAA games, I wouldn't get any dedicated GPU. AMD and Intel's integrated cards are more than adequate for most usecases of daily computer use, and work great in any Linux distros. For example, my work PC runs on a Ryzen 7 7735HS with the integrated 680m iGPU. I usually have 3 or 4 workspaces open at once, each running a different browser (Vivaldi, Brave, Librewolf and Mullvad) with anywhere between 4 to 20+ tabs open on each, OnlyOffice on one workspace and LibreOffuce Calc on another one, a Flatpak of Teams for work, freetube, and a bunch of different dashboards, and an instance of Sins of a Solar Empire (I play while I work). I still have to see my CPU go past 20%. Now, for more powerful needs, I have a laptop running on an Intel 11th gen I7 with a 3070TI Nvidia card. Great laptop (System76 Gazelle16), but I barely ever use it, since I don't really need that much power anyways. The days of forcibly having a dedicated GPU to avoid CPU lag on daily use computing are long gone. Unless you're going to push things to the limit with heavy video rendering, AAA gaming or AI, any integrated GPU will suffice.

I agree that I could be wrong on the comparison. Maybe they are not that far behind, but guaranteed not at the same level when comparing apples to apples. I wish that wasn't the case, but it still is.

Same reply. And you can add as many TPUs as you want to push it to whatever level you want. At 59 bucks a piece, they'll blow any 4070 out of the water for the same or less cost. But to the OP, you don't have to believe any of us. You're in that field, I'm sure you can find the jnfo on if these would fit your needs or not.

That.

Most new boards will have at least a display port and an HDMI port. Add that most also have Thunderbolt4, plug in an HDMI or Display Port dongle. The sky is the limit man. On the VM panorama, VMWare is now all fucked with their forced subscription model, Virrualbox is still a thing, but GPU passthrough (I've heard, can't really confirm) seems to have turned into a real shitshow. KVM / Qemu seems to be the only alternative that makes sense right now.

Name one example in which an Nvidia card from the same gen of an AMD GPU performed equal or worse, regardless of the driver. Why do you think that even manufacturers focused on hardware for Linux choose Nvidia over AMD GPUs? Cost? Unlikely, since Nvidia is usually more expensive.

I have to agree here. I use PopOS mostly, but most Ubuntu derivative nowadays beat the living crap out of Ubuntu. PopOS, Zorin, Mint, etc. Like many others, Ubuntu was my gateway to Linux, but I lived out of that in less than a year. Started spinning Mandriva (damn I'm old), Debian itself, and I've tried Ubuntu a few times over the years, mostly on VMs now, since now I hold no hope that it'll ever go back to what it was.

This is the reason why most of us have lived to NVMe. Speed, when compared to SATA, is ludicrous. But SATA is not going anywhere any time soon.

I have nothing to add here. Your assessment is spot on.