Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Mr. Scram]

This could be interesting. Dual NIC too, Intel in some cases even. Too bad no one seems to actually sell them.

One seems to be actually selling but it ends up at 700 to 800 quid for what's essentially a NUC. That's a bit silly, but I guess these are aimed at industrial customers.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15197/amd-ucff-pcs-with-ryzen-embedded-available

[bd139]

I’ve come to the conclusion that avoiding owning such projects is a better outcome 

As for power, bring on apples ARM boxes. My iPad packs the same as an i7-7700k (!) and uses a whole lot less juice doing it and doesn’t bake my balls.

[Neomys Sapiens]

Now, non-germanic/scandinavian speakers might need a hand with the translation, so, this is a WAR / PEACE switch. 

Electronics deciding the state of a nation. 

Or, more prosaically, the "battle short" (to borrow a US Navy term) allowing a coastal artillery gun (10,5 cm Tornautomatpjäs M/50) the full, unrestricted field of fire and some other relaxations, among others ignoring the need for a range safety officer pressing the OK button on the surface. In "peace" it was only allowed to fire in small predetermined directions and angles.

The battery is the last remaining of three, and only half of the last has been kept. It is a museum now, and we went there today. Feels good and eerie at the same time to one minute be standing in a postcard archipelago environment, and then instantly walk into a completely man-made techno-world full of blast doors, concrete and oiled machinery under 20 meters of bedrock.

One more item on the bucket list, then. And a nice day out (and in!)

ObTEA: Spotted at least two peices of TE, an Oltronix LF generator and a Tek 400 series scope in the electronics workshop.

Ok, that is the first time I hear Oltronix has done anything besides power supplies. Interesting.

[Mr. Scram]

I’ve come to the conclusion that avoiding owning such projects is a better outcome 

As for power, bring on apples ARM boxes. My iPad packs the same as an i7-7700k (!) and uses a whole lot less juice doing it and doesn’t bake my balls.

Hopefully not one of those i7-7700K which throttles after 20 seconds? I'll believe ARM can provide an equivalent desktop experience when I see it. I fear it'll just be a desktopised version of the much more limited mobile environment, including all the limitations of the Store. It's the perfect opportunity to increase control over what was the x86 side of things. Besides, an i7-7700K is old hat. Show me they can compete with a modern Ryzen without the endless compromises their current kit suffers from and they may be onto something.

[Neomys Sapiens]

@bd139: have you considered a used PLC?

[SilverSolder]

I’ve come to the conclusion that avoiding owning such projects is a better outcome 

As for power, bring on apples ARM boxes. My iPad packs the same as an i7-7700k (!) and uses a whole lot less juice doing it and doesn’t bake my balls.

Hopefully not one of those i7-7700K which throttles after 20 seconds? I'll believe ARM can provide an equivalent desktop experience when I see it. I fear it'll just be a desktopised version of the much more limited mobile environment, including all the limitations of the Store. It's the perfect opportunity to increase control over what was the x86 side of things. Besides, an i7-7700K is old hat. Show me they can compete with a modern Ryzen without the endless compromises their current kit suffers from and they may be onto something.

I kind of see where you are coming from with your suspicion about ARM power...   but they might still make an impact at the lower end of the spectrum, even if they are unlikely to catch up with AMD (Ryzen and successors) in the medium term.  But it could also end with Intel / AMD lowering prices and shutting ARM out.  - interesting times.

[Mr. Scram]

I kind of see where you are coming from with your suspicion about ARM power...   but they might still make an impact at the lower end of the spectrum, even if they are unlikely to catch up with AMD (Ryzen and successors) in the medium term.  But it could also end with Intel / AMD lowering prices and shutting ARM out.  - interesting times.

It's not ARM I distrust. Well, maybe ARM the company but not ARM the platform.

[bd139]

It’s performance per watt and scalability that concerns me. ARM far outpaces everything on both. Intel runs out of steam around 24 cores a partition meaning you have to go NUMA. ARM is flat to 128 cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)

Yes that’s ARM. Right at the top of the top 100 supercomputer list.

Edit: just to point out the amount of grunt these things have, this iPad will transcode 4K down to 1080p HEVC video 2x faster than my ryzen 3700x did with ffmpeg. It’ll also record that video which the ryzen couldn’t do because there wasn’t a camera in the package 

[Mr. Scram]

It’s performance per watt and scalability that concerns me. ARM far outpaces everything on both. Intel runs out of steam around 24 cores a partition meaning you have to go NUMA. ARM is flat to 128 cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)

Yes that’s ARM. Right at the top of the top 100 supercomputer list.

I know. I'd like to see it work and not suck in an application I care about first. I'm getting too old to ride the hype cycle. It's also all for naught if Apple decides to use the opportunity to stick a second fist into each customer which honestly seems more likely than not. It could be great but most of the things that could have been turned into perverted versions of the great thing they were supposed to be.

[SilverSolder]

It’s performance per watt and scalability that concerns me. ARM far outpaces everything on both. Intel runs out of steam around 24 cores a partition meaning you have to go NUMA. ARM is flat to 128 cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)

Yes that’s ARM. Right at the top of the top 100 supercomputer list.

Edit: just to point out the amount of grunt these things have, this iPad will transcode 4K down to 1080p HEVC video 2x faster than my ryzen 3700x did with ffmpeg. It’ll also record that video which the ryzen couldn’t do because there wasn’t a camera in the package 

Wouldn't a dedicated processor be even faster (e.g. Nvidia)?

[bd139]

Yes exactly which is why it has domain specific architecture extensions, something which intel has jumped the shark on for a decade.

It has codec acceleration, ML and crypto processing off core.

But to optimise for that you need control over the platform. So bring on an iMac with 24 ARM cores, ML coprocessing and dedicated codec processors that drinks 50 watts while intel tries to sell you an i9 125W TDP turd that can’t even get half way there without chucking a GPU and another 130 watts in the box too.

[Mr. Scram]

Wouldn't a dedicated processor be even faster (e.g. Nvidia)?

A large part of the ARM trick is to do hard things in hardware. It's a relatively simple core with loads of peripherals. It may up falling into the same trap as x86 with all its extra instructions tacked on. x86 has more trouble doing the same trick as you need tight hardware and software integration.

Damn you bd. 

[Mr. Scram]

Of course, when technology moves on depending on hardware could suck. x86 isn't great at most jobs but can also do most jobs without falling apart. Hardware acceleration is great, until you need something else. Intel might fight back by sticking FPGA fabric onto CPUs, allowing for hardware yet flexible acceleration. They're already doing this in server chips. Not sure whether AMD can do FPGAs yet. They supposedly made some for a customer but I'm not sure it's Altera level yet.

[bd139]

FPGA is interesting. Perhaps. But then again it’s difficult to configure for workloads and the core density and power consumption isn’t that great either. ASICs are still way cheaper if you constrain and classify workloads.

One thing that is true is x86 is a dead end for sure at this point. If you look at some of the ARM vs x86-64 compiler optimisations possible it’s pretty scary what ARM can do per cycle. I was throwing stuff in godbolt (thanks Cerebus) and it was flattening one of my loops to a one liner on ARM but 14 instructions on x86. I looked at the clock timings and ARM did it in 8 clocks as well. X86 I gave up on working it out as the damn thing has different cycle counts per address mode per instruction. Ugh. Kill me.

Edit: anyway it’s 2am. I’m going to bed 

[Specmaster]

Well it's not strictly true that ARM sit at the top of the supercomputer CPU list as that A64FX CPU was a collaboration between Fujitsu and ARM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujitsu_A64FX

I have a pretty powerful iPad but find that whole user experience is still somewhat lacking in comparison to my AMD 8350FX powered desktop PC. IMO there is still much to be done before a tablet regardless of who makes it and what the CPU is that powers it, can really rival a proper decent desktop.

[Mr. Scram]

FPGA is interesting. Perhaps. But then again it’s difficult to configure for workloads and the core density and power consumption isn’t that great either. ASICs are still way cheaper if you constrain and classify workloads.

One thing that is true is x86 is a dead end for sure at this point. If you look at some of the ARM vs x86-64 compiler optimisations possible it’s pretty scary what ARM can do per cycle. I was throwing stuff in godbolt (thanks Cerebus) and it was flattening one of my loops to a one liner on ARM but 14 instructions on x86. I looked at the clock timings and ARM did it in 8 clocks as well. X86 I gave up on working it out as the damn thing has different cycle counts per address mode per instruction. Ugh. Kill me.

Edit: anyway it’s 2am. I’m going to bed 

ASICs wil always take the cake in absolute performance but the flexibility of an FPGA isn't without merits either. Not being tied to one specific codec but the ability to accelerate whatever on a whim opens up some possibilities. You could even have games create custom hardware to do specific things. Could make for excellent malware too.

[MathWizard]

Why doesn't a company like Tekronix, also make DMMs ? (or do they ?)

If the HPAK 34401A is so good and popular, why is there "bugger all" on utube about it, or other 6.5d DMM's ?

I suppose if I looked for each brand/model I'd find a lot more videos, but overall, there's not much on utube about them in general it seems

[mnementh]

It’s performance per watt and scalability that concerns me. ARM far outpaces everything on both. Intel runs out of steam around 24 cores a partition meaning you have to go NUMA. ARM is flat to 128 cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)

Yes that’s ARM. Right at the top of the top 100 supercomputer list.

Edit: just to point out the amount of grunt these things have, this iPad will transcode 4K down to 1080p HEVC video 2x faster than my ryzen 3700x did with ffmpeg. It’ll also record that video which the ryzen couldn’t do because there wasn’t a camera in the package 

It still can't feed my VR goggles. 

mnem
I like my iPad... well enough to give it to my Dad for his birthday.

[xrunner]

Why doesn't a company like Tekronix, also make DMMs ? (or do they ?)

They did, like this one -

[Mr. Scram]

Why doesn't a company like Tekronix, also make DMMs ? (or do they ?)

If the HPAK 34401A is so good and popular, why is there "bugger all" on utube about it, or other 6.5d DMM's ?

I suppose if I looked for each brand/model I'd find a lot more videos, but overall, there's not much on utube about them in general it seems

Keithley is owned by Tektronix. The 34401A is an older model so not too much is on Youtube, although I must admit there's not a lot on the DMM6500 either. Other than Shahriar's excellent review of course.

[Mr. Scram]

It still can't feed my VR goggles. 

mnem
I like my iPad... well enough to give it to my Dad for his birthday.

The Oculus Quest is an ARM based VR headset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Quest

[Neomys Sapiens]

Why doesn't a company like Tekronix, also make DMMs ? (or do they ?)

They did, like this one those two-

Say, do you need to get a new COUNTER?

[TorinoFermic]

After some PM messages with Specmaster, I came up at my conclusion that I need make the DIY reference box of and of voltage and I must order a new DMM at least of 5.5 digits and it could come with certs to help "transfer" the standard from it to my HP 3478A. It should be good enough for hobbyists, I just don't become an voltnut when I am supposed to make projects

Thus, for hobbyists they dont need traceable certs except when starting with one used bench DMM which I believe is worth to get adjusted to any labs, otherwise a new bench DMM is enough. 
Any suggestions for 2nd New DMM ? Fluke 8805A is a bust because the damned seller did not reply to me even I did check his profile saying he sometimes logs in.

[BU508A]

After some PM messages with Specmaster, I came up at my conclusion that I need make the DIY reference box of and of voltage and I must order a new DMM at least of 5.5 digits and it could come with certs to help "transfer" the standard from it to my HP 3478A. It should be good enough for hobbyists, I just don't become an voltnut when I am supposed to make projects

Thus, for hobbyists they dont need traceable certs except when starting with one used bench DMM which I believe is worth to get adjusted to any labs, otherwise a new bench DMM is enough. 
Any suggestions for 2nd New DMM ? Fluke 8805A is a bust because the damned seller did not reply to me even I did check his profile saying he sometimes logs in.

How about a Fluke 8520A? For example this one, has been used @ the NASA:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/324196135188


Another possibility could be a Fluke 8842A:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/264785274944


The 8842A has been reviewed by Dave here:


HTH

[TorinoFermic]

BU508A, I like what you offer but the last DMM has recently suffered the EEVBlog youtube effect, sellers has raised these prices from cheap to beyond what 5.5 should cost. I have a nice source of HP 3478A from an Canadian seller for decent price and it's tempting. Also, I should think perusing each canadian seller who sells TE to find any gems they might had it like my Fluke 8502A which I can repair once I get my DE-5000 LCR meter.


Currently, I am also thinking of purchasing 34401A due their great linearity and solid retention of drift to a point it can be considered as 1-year speced meter or also Keithley. My budget for this meter is $600

And I am watching the video on this topic