Last Minute Telegrams: Level1Techs Wendell

Do Linux people hate games, or is it that Game Devs hate Linux?

Ottobon

What are the challenges Nvidia is going to have to face knowing next gen games are going to be optimized for AMD and their consoles and also do you think there is a chance for AMD to utilize what they have learned from the rnd in the consoles and use it in future mobo chipsets?

Eric Ritchie

Any news about RDNA 2 possibly supporting SR-IOV on the consumer cards? @Wendell - can the Linux community get around the SR-IOV limitation on the RTX 3080 like we did with error 43 for VFIO?

With Apple possibly using ASICs for apps like final cut, do you see Adobe and others jumping in? Any future for FPGAs being a common thing in computers moving forward being used for specific software suites?

Nils

What do you think the future of small form factor PCs and laptops will be in regards to ease of use and power? The smallest SFF PCs and laptops seem to be getting more similar in size and power but have vastly different targeted markets, and the recent advancements in APUs with both Intel's Tiger Lake and AMD's Renoir seem to indicate a shift away from discrete GPUs, which Tom has mentioned in the past. Would love to hear Wendell's thoughts about this!

Tinfoil hat time, did Nvidia let the bots have all the 3080s on purpose to try and make demand appear larger? My fiancé works for an online retailer and has done software development related to bot mitigation. Bot mitigation is a constant battle, but most major E-commerce platforms can do it. From the looks of the 3080 launch Nvidia did literally nothing to stop bots. You also need to prepare for the traffic. It's kind of hard to believe Nvidia is incompetent enough to not know this would be a problem. So is it malice or indifference?

Durmij

Any idea if the next generation of Thread Ripper CPU's will support the current TR40 platform?

CarryTrainer.Editor

Wendell, What are you hoping for when it comes to EPYC Milan. What was EPYC Rome lacking compared to the current (and next-gen) Xeons that you hope is going to be addressed with Milan?

Which processor ip (like x86, ARM, Risc V, Power and or other) will have the future for consumers and business? Now nVidia has bought ARM, Risc V is getting momentum and Power from IBM is still going strong, But x86 is still dominating the larger part of consumer and business markets.

Dragonetti 031

Hi guys Would you hold on to an rx 5700 xt and wait for rdna3/Hopper or get Big Navi (if they hit the performance target 2x 5700 xt) for around 700 dollars? The 3080 isn't an option for me because its 1440p performance uplift is rather disappointing. Greetings from switzerland :)

What Linux distro is best, and why is it SuSE? Also, what is the best Linux desktop environment, and why is it GNOME?

KarbinCry

Ask if he has looked into Windows Storage Spaces, and maybe tried some tiered arrays and compared to StoreMI. I know it's not ZFS, but it's always worked pretty well for me.

I plan to get a new Ampere or RDNA 2 graphics card (3080 or equivalent). However my current monitor situation complicates things slightly... I have a 1440p / 144hz G-Sync (non-Freesync) monitor which has kept me on Nvidia the past few years (Predator XB271HU). I'd like to wait to upgrade the panel until OLEDs break into the market for obvious reasons. Trying to decide whether I am best sticking with Nvidia and G-Sync or if I can explore RDNA 2 without ruining the gaming experience. With the current Nvidia fiasco and high-memory cards still MIA, I'd prefer to go AMD assuming the specs hold up. But, that would mean foregoing display synchronization for a year or two until OLED hits and leaning on raw FPS in the meantime. Is this a good idea or will I be kicking myself for not getting something G-sync compatible?

CMW

Jeeeeeez so little time for questions to such an amazing guest! I shan't spam you with questions tho! So here I go: 1. Since we may never see ZFS in the Linux kernel, do you think more Distros will offer out of box support like Ubuntu has started? Alternatively will we ever see a kernel license compatible filesystem that truly rivals ZFS' features and data safety ? 2. With Nvidia looking to purchase ARM (and Apple going custom ARM), in your opinion will ARM continue its adoption trajectory in DCs and HPC or plateau soon-ish with e.g. RISC-V or POWER stepping up ? 3. From your perspective how is AMDs acceptance developing among enterprise customers compared to the Intel status quo ? And one for fun to you both: With the Microsoft Hypervisor looking to run off of the Linux kernel (recent kernel patches show this) how long until Windows switches to the Linux kernel? ;) Thanks a lot, this might be my favorite broken silicon episode already!

dj5k

what do you two think about nvidia buying ARM? is there a chance for high end ARM desktops? is arm now an even bigger threat to amd and intel, and do you think nvidia may lock some companies out of using arm later on despite them stating they have no incentive to do so?

Josh Law (adn)

Wendell, will you Ryan and Krista be doing your weekly news podcasts in the same room this year? Or will Krista just be a monitor from now on?

Brian Steiner

My questions for Wendell would really about where does he see Epyc getting to in market share in the Data Center over the next 12-24 months? Is Intel going to meet its delivery targets for the Aurora Supercomputer? Finally does ARM’s acquisition by nVidia result in an acceleration of ARM customers and licensees switching to something open like RISC-V?How will this effect the future of Apple Silicon?

Ian Clifford

Wendell, have you gotten the opportunity to work with any of the new silicon photonics network switches from Intel? Where do you see this tech going in the next few years? How can we get the transition of electrons -> photons even closer to where the computing is happening?

Andrew S

Question regarding hardware vulnerabilities and their impacts on the industry: Do you think the hardware security is in any way malicious, or just negligent? Do you think the security is brushed over too much in the consumer space and should be taken more into consideration when end users are making hardware purchasing decisions?

Trogdor

Would the gaming industry face any unique challenges in moving away from Intel x86-64 if it is eventually outpaced by ARM or RISC-V? Is gaming on Mac dead in the water with the transition to Apple silicon?

Viglius

Got two long questions for both of yah! 1. (Wendell) Does different Linux distros affect gaming and other uses much? Along with running Linux on either AMD or Intel CPUs? And maybe even Apple's ARM chips, who knows, even NVIDIA in the future! Haven't really seen any videos covering this topic. 2. (Tom) On Ampere/RDNA 2 now, maybe the reason why there hasn't been a lot of Real-time Ray Tracing (RT RT) games out there is because that game engines didn't include them as an "easy" toggle-able feature at Turing's launch. Now that both UE4/5 and Unity has made the process a easier, along with game dev timelines lasting 2-3 years for big titles. Is it fair to say we won't see an influx of RT RT games until Hopper comes along? Thanks!

Treble Sketch

With the unveiling of the specifications of the Xbox series s and the genius bit of marketing putting 1440p and 120fps next to each other, what are your expectations for the true performance of the console in anything that doesn't have the word doom in it?

Alex Smith

What are your thoughts on Ampere, the architecture? (so not about the "pricing" or gaming performance) And as a second question: How long do you think will x86_64 still be the main consumer desktop platform?

Meritorius

Again more for Wendell: how do you see the future of operating systems? Things like WSL and some independent efforts (I can cite example if needed) seem to imply a seamlessly fully virtualized desktop, with a light hypervisor core and then apps running on cut-down kernels of various operating systems, thus having fully interoperable apps from Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MacOS X (who are we kidding, Apple would never go for that :P).

KarbinCry

Hello Y'all, this is Cheesecake16 from the Moore's Law is Talking Discord and I guess I have 3 questions really: 1) Do y'all think that RDNA 3 and CDNA 2 is going to be chiplet based using 3D stacking, 2) What innerconnect will Nvidia use for their MCM GPU and, 3) Do you think we are doing to see Server "APUs" where we have CPU and GPU chiplets on the same die using stacked HBM.

When will you think lower end Ampere and RDNA 2 cards will be out, and what do you think the price/ performance will be?Also, do you think that they will finally beat Polaris as far as price to performance in the low end, as that has been the my issue with low end cards from amd and nvidia in the past two years.

What is your take on Apple Silicon from both a consumer perspective and a business analyst perspective? How do you think will it affect the industry (if at all) in the coming years?

Given that RDNA 2 is going to have AMD’s first gen of ray tracing, what are your thoughts/predictions/insights/rumors on how it will perform against Nvidia’s second gen, and will the performance hit be similar to what we see with Ampere? I’d imagine AMD’s RT tech will need to be top tier since it is also in the consoles, and will be both the consoles first time having RT, and it will be what they have to work with for the next 5-8 years.

Erik-Anders Nielsen

Any news on the new threadripper ?

Valko Milev

Hey Tom, Do you think with the complete unavailability of both the consoles and Nvidia's RTX cards that AMD (by virtue of just having stock) could make a sizeable cut into the market share of either, or both, int he coming months? Since we don't know just how powerful the RDNA 2 cards will be but will at least have some level of price competitiveness to make it enticing to gamers. Also, Microsoft bought Bethesda... Competition is indeed good for all in my opinion.

This is a question more to Wendell, but how does he see POWER going forward? And is he planning an interview with Raptor about possible POWER10 workstations?

KarbinCry

When do you think rasterization will be completely dead?

Edward Huff