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Intel "Skulltrail" -- Potential application for RED?

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sbroock

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From today's Wall Street Journal, discussing Intel's forthcoming "Skulltrail" ...

Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., is expected to discuss Skulltrail at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. But the machine may initially be most popular for jobs such as rendering photographs and video. For those tasks, where time is big money, software companies have been among the first to adapt their products to take advantage of multiple microprocessors.

Boxx Technologies Inc., a company that specializes in workstations used to make visual effects in movies, is developing Skulltrail-based systems to allow directors immediately to play back images shot with the highest-resolution digital cameras. Those cameras usually produce too much data to be quickly reviewed at a quality level that approximates a film's finished images.

"It is a first step toward a world where you can almost instantly have a view of what you are doing," said Francois Wolf, Boxx's director of marketing. "It's an extraordinarily big deal."
 
The board certainly has potential for a RED workstation (despite the fact that it's a gaming platform) though I'm very confused right now as to what is what with this board because I've heard there are specific Xeons and Quad core gaming CPUs that Intel is putting out just for use with Skulltrail that have some sort of prefetch enhancement. I need to get a straight answer from someone at Intel about this.
 
What's next friday? Too bad I'm 1200 miles away.
 
Hi All,

I've been "lurking" REDUSER for about 6 months and thought I might "chime in" and say hello.

As this is still a prototype platform, I may not be able to answer specific questions about features or specs because these may (and likely will) change when the production systems are released.

There are a few things we CAN say that probably won't change -

Scratch and REDcine (and pretty much all other software apps) LOVE to run on this system -and early (but vigorous) testing shows that as part of a RED ONE pipeline, it may be an ideal platform if you need realtime "1/2 res -high" playback from your .r3d footage.

Realtime 10-bit or 12-bit HDSDI out will allow for further workflow enhancements anytime you might want to generate a 1080p or 2K/24p 10bit stream (Scratch anybody??!?!!!).

Regarding REDcode & transcoding -this is the fastest platform we know of for squeezing .r3d files into your desired file format. (of course, no Apple PROres support -again, sorry).

We are very excited to learn and grow along with the RED community and look forward to the continued prospect of providing tools & solutions that are useful for leading-edge filmmakers and motion media artists.

Cheers,

Adam
BOXXlabs




Lexicon said:
The board certainly has potential for a RED workstation (despite the fact that it's a gaming platform) though I'm very confused right now as to what is what with this board because I've heard there are specific Xeons and Quad core gaming CPUs that Intel is putting out just for use with Skulltrail that have some sort of prefetch enhancement. I need to get a straight answer from someone at Intel about this.
Click to expand...

So, the system can take either 54xx-series Xeons or special Core2 CPU's -the QX9775. QX9775's are essentially Xeon 5482's that have had some minor voltage/current regulation & cache coherency tweaks and have been "unlocked" for manipulation of the core multiplier and vcore voltages.

Only the QX9775's are overclockable. The pre-fetch doesn't seem to have much to do with the fact that these are basically "unlocked' Xeons

AS for the memory and FSB frequencies and voltages, these can be manipulated as well.

good times.

;)

(edited for spelling)
 
Okay, I got my clarification, the "optimized" quad-core CPUs are technically Xeons but they are being released under the Core 2 Extreme line with a Skulltrail designation because they are not intended for use in regular Xeon workstations and Skulltrail is a gaming platform. These CPUs have prefetchers optimized for desktop usage so they will (in theory) perform differently than their workstation optimized siblings. I'm not sure what that translates to in benchmarks but the board and chip combos have been clocked as high as 5.0 GHZ and turned in AMD ass raping and record breaking performance numbers with current benchmark programs including Cinebench. :ohmy:
 
Hey Mark, not to swing our non-limb appendages, but the sucker is clocking 4.4 GHz on 8 cores, not 4.0 ...
 
BOXXLabs said:
Only the QX9775's are overclockable. The pre-fetch doesn't seem to have much to do with the fact that these are basically "unlocked' Xeons

AS for the memory and FSB frequencies and voltages, these can be manipulated as well.

good times.
Click to expand...

Good times indeed. So I could still slap a cheaper 54xx chip (any Socket 771, right?) and OC the FSB and RAM, right? (Most CPUs, as I understand it, are locked down and that doesn't slow down the overclockers of the world.)

And who is naming these systems? Taiwanese fans of Skandinavian Nu-Metal? I think Intel forgot a few umlauts.
 
pliny said:
And who is naming these systems? Taiwanese fans of Skandinavian Nu-Metal? I think Intel forgot a few umlauts.
Click to expand...
Hey! umlauts are for germany/austria/switzerland!

But i will be nice and offer you some:
äöüÜÄÖ and as bonus an ß!
 
laguun said:
Hey! umlauts are for germany/austria/switzerland!

But i will be nice and offer you some:
äöüÜÄÖ and as bonus an ß!
Click to expand...

Lagun, I thought the language police abolished Das Ess-Zett back in the mid-90s. But never mind -- ever since the advent of hair metal, umlauts have belonged to the world.
 
Intel 2x Quad-Core Skulltrail CPU Platform

Intel 2x Quad-Core Skulltrail CPU Platform

Looks like Silverado already has a Skulltrail system with SCRATCH for lease. I got a newsletter this morning with the following:

Lease an Assimilate SCRATCH 4k system
For about $4250 per month, you can lease a fully-rigged Assimilate SCRATCH system with the following specs:

  • Assimilate SCRATCH 4k Finishing System Software
  • Assimilate SCRATCH Annual Maintenance & Support Plan
  • Assimilate SCRATCH On-site three day training package
  • Dulce Pro DQ 8.0Tb RAID
  • Intel 2x Quad-Core Skulltrail CPU Platform w/Nvidia 5600SDI card
  • Tangent Devices CP200 Control Surface (trackerball, transport, knobs, and selection panel)
  • eCinema 24" DPX Class CRT-Replacement Color Grading LCD
 
I dunno the specifics of Intel's demo setup but with the phase cooling they have used, you can get 5.0 GHZ per CPU out of one of the boards.
 
I have to wonder if Silverado actually has one and if they do if they can actually lease / rent it out. After all, these guys had a RED package on their site listed as for rental a few months before RED shipped any cameras. ;)
 
Review (largely negative) of Skulltrail here: [link]

It's interesting that it does most poorly in gaming benchmarks, but best in 3D rendering, given the supposed "gaming system" focus. Lucky for us 3D folks, I guess.

(YMMV, grain of salt, benchmarksaremeaninless, etc. etc.)
 
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