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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Intel "Skulltrail" -- Potential application for RED?

The biggest problem with Skull Trail is the memory subsystem.

The board is only going to give half the memory performance of most bigger workstation and server class i5400 based boards. With only 4 RAM sockets and utilizing only two of the four available memory channels, that was really a bone-head move on Intel's part.

In operations that are more heavily dependent on memory bandwidth than RAW CPU performance, Skull Trail is going to come up short against cheaper gaming boards that can use dual-channel DDR3 and i5400 based mainboards that have full quad-channel implementations.

The system from Silverado may not be from Boxx... Either way, it's not like I can go out and buy a Skull Trail motherboard right now. So it's a little odd for them to be offering one up for lease.
 
Hi All,

In our extensive testing of this new intel platform, we see virtually no difference in memory performance when tested against standard quad-channel Xeon systems such as our 3DBOXX 8400 workstations and MAC Pro's.

Our internal benchmarks for "Skulltrail" consistently yield memory performance of around 8000MB/s in aggregate bandwidth. This is almost exactly the same as currently shipping 8-core Xeon-based workstations. While it's not as fast as some DDR3-based "gaming" systems, actual in-application performance for most pro graphics applications will likely NOT be hampered much by memory bottlenecks. This is primarily a result of intel having pro-actively engineered these chips with such a large L2 cache.

For multi-threaded pro applications that scale well to 8 cores, we see nearly linear performance gains (about 20%-25%) going from 3.2Ghz up to 4Ghz (on the Skulltrail mainboard). This includes REDcine and Scratch -as well as virtually ALL raytrace rendering engines and other programs that rely heavily on floating point math.

The review sites are "panning" Skulltrail as an underwhelming extreme gaming system -and rightfully so...
But what they fail to fully realize because of their traditional focus on consumer applications & gaming -is that this is a KILLER platform for professional artists who need maximum desktop performance for their multithreaded software tools.

Bottom line is that if somebody needs to consistently get realtime 2K/high frames out of .r3d footage using Redcine or Scratch_Rednode, they can't do it without this new platform.

Cheers,

Adam

BOXXlabs

(edited for clarity and spehlingh)
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
The biggest problem with Skull Trail is the memory subsystem.

The board is only going to give half the memory performance of most bigger workstation and server class i5400 based boards. With only 4 RAM sockets and utilizing only two of the four available memory channels, that was really a bone-head move on Intel's part.

In operations that are more heavily dependent on memory bandwidth than RAW CPU performance, Skull Trail is going to come up short against cheaper gaming boards that can use dual-channel DDR3 and i5400 based mainboards that have full quad-channel implementations.

The system from Silverado may not be from Boxx... Either way, it's not like I can go out and buy a Skull Trail motherboard right now. So it's a little odd for them to be offering one up for lease.
Click to expand...

It's available right now. Just not really "out there" yet. A few online vendors are currently selling the Intel board as a "special order" item with no return allowed. Very hefty price too. It's not unheard of for some vendors to sell the samples provided by Intel so I'm thinking that's what is happening right now. Asus also has a Skulltrail board they are about to put on the market.
 
BOXXLabs said:
In our extensive testing of this new intel platform, we see virtually no difference in memory performance when tested against standard quad-channel Xeon systems such as our 3DBOXX 8400 workstations and MAC Pro's.
Click to expand...

Adam,

thanks for the input. Even though I've been a bit harsh on Skull Trail for the memory implementation, I still remain hopeful for the platform. There really isn't anything else coming up that will provide all of these features on one board. I'm anxious to see what the official offering from BOXX will be.
 
always an easy way to spend money...i'm stickin with my quad xeon box for now.....yawn....
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I have to wonder if Silverado actually has one and if they do if they can actually lease / rent it out. ;)
Click to expand...

Jeff,

On August 31st 2007 we walked out of RED with the first two commercially released cams when I caught a plane with #20 and 21.

Days later, we shot, edited, and delivered Paranoid in less than 96 hours.

And just last week, production wrapped on Sacramento's first indie feature film shot on RED.

We might be a little bleeding edge, but we keep our promises. If you need a Skulltrail-based SCRATCH system, we can deliver it.

The systems aren't for rent--the lease is structured as a $1 buyout. When your lease is up, you keep the gear.

Torrey
-----------------------------------------------
Torrey Loomis
President & CEO - Silverado Systems, Inc.
Outfitter to the World's Foremost Apple Professionals
2600 East Bidwell Street, Suite 280
Folsom, CA 95630
(916) 760-0032 • FAX (916) 404-5258
tloomis@silverado.cc
http://www.Silverado.cc

Check out our Insider blog at http://silveradosys.blogspot.com
 
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