[FFmpeg-devel] Hardware purchase request

[Lynne]

Apr 3, 2021, 20:12 by michael at niedermayer.cc:

> On Sat, Apr 03, 2021 at 03:01:16PM +0200, Lynne wrote:
>
>> Apr 2, 2021, 23:28 by michael at niedermayer.cc:
>>
>> > On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 11:03:16PM +0300, Jan Ekström wrote:
>> >
>> > IMO some of this list is quite reasonable like a 1TB NVME, then iam not
>> > sure why you need a 2nd one. That can be needed of course but its not clear
>> > from just the list. But really i dont want to "critique" the list, it just
>> > overall feels like there was a misunderstanding and iam happy to approve
>> > a machiene in the 2-3k range or also higher if its explained why its needed
>> > for FFmpeg
>> >
>> > and sorry for my late reply
>> >
>>
>> By removing the screen (could borrow one for now), half the RAM, the second SSD,
>> and changing the motherboard, I can get this down to 4400 EUR.
>> Unfortunately, the CPU and GPU constitute a large amount of the sum and not
>> even downgrading them to a 6800 and a 5900 helps, in fact both of those are
>> completely out of stock wherever I checked, since they used to be cheaper.
>> So now there's mostly only the higher end options left, if at all.
>> I could probably change the RAM to save on an additional 100 EUR, but
>> I don't see this going below 4000 EUR.
>> In the past you could probably have gotten away with much less, but like I said,
>> there's a chip shortage going on where everything is much more expensive
>> than it otherwise should have been, if it's even available in stock.
>>
>
> do we have some idea about when the shortage will be resolved ? 
>

I expect it to end a few months after the pandemic ends.
And I wish I knew when that would happen, if it will even happen at all.

I searched some more and swapped for a Rocket Lake chip, which I managed
to find, which also allowed me to swap the motherboard for one cheaper still,
so I managed to bring the price down to 3900EUR.

The main bulk of the cost is still the GPU, which goes for nearly
twice the price of its release. Sadly, coin miners are keeping demand
and therefore cost up. It's been like this for many years, or so I hear.

If someone from AMD is listening and wants to help out like what
happened some years ago, it would be most welcome.
But as far as I know, no one in the FFmpeg + VLC community has any
contacts in AMD at all these days.


> and what the cost difference is ?
> and also what impact that has on your work, if we wait, could you
> work on something else that you enjoy and that is useful in the meantime ?
>

I cannot really optimize our Vulkan code at all, nor get important features like
Vulkan API interoperability working (because my Intel GPU does not support
the necessary extensions), nor work on improving AV1 VAAPI decoding,
or for that matter, work on much involving video on my weak old laptop.
And if our Vulkan code breaks, which has happened, I cannot test it at all,
since I can't use it. And if AMD finally release the video decoding extension,
I wouldn't be able to write support for it or help out with driver development.

I'd also like to write some AVX512 assembly beyond the most basic
extra vector register usage.
Finally, I can sort of optimize my assembly for modern machines, but
nothing really beats optimizing for the actual machine you're running on.

In the meanwhile I'm working on rewriting our AAC and Opus encoders,
as well as writing assembly for lavu/tx, which can't keep me busy for more
than a few months if I can keep up the pace.