Consider the three Dell machines described in the following table.
| Model | Latitude 3440 | Precision Mobile 7780 | Precision 7960 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Laptop | Laptop/Workstation | Workstation |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-1335U | Intel Core i9-13950HX | Intel Xeon w9-3495X |
| Memory (RAM) | 8GB - 3 200 MT/s - DDR4 (1 × 8GB) | 32GB - 5 600 MHz - DDR5 (1 × 32GB) | 512 GB - 4 800 MHz - GDDR6 (8 × 64 GB) |
| GPU | Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs (integrated) | NVIDIA RTX 3500 | NVIDIA RTX A6000 |
| Storage | SSD 256 GB | SSD 1 TB | RAID 5 : 4 × SSD 4To |
| Dimensions | 14" - 1920 × 1080 | 15.6" - 3840 × 2160 | -- |
| Weight | 1.5 kg | 2.5 kg | -- |
| Price | 900 € | 4 600 € | 32 100 € |
| Specs | click here | click here | click here |
The first computer is a light laptop suitable for personal and/or office use. The second is a laptop workstation that can support applications requiring computing and graphics. The third is a powerful server capable of working on massive calculations, such as deep learning.
Discuss the fundamental concepts related to the main components of a computer: processor, memory (RAM), and storage.
Look at the specification of the first two computers (link in the last row of the table). How many screens can be simultaneously used with these laptops, regardless of the characteristics of the GPU?
What are the data transfer rates on the available connections of the two laptops?
We now compare the processors of the three computers. The following table summarizes the key points. An official and exhaustive comparison is available here.
| Intel Core i5-1335U | Intel Core i9-13950HX | Intel Xeon w9-3495X | |
| Number of cores | 2 + 8 | 8 + 16 | 56 |
| Base frequency | 1.7 GHz | 2.20 GHz | 1.90 Ghz |
| Turbo frequency | 4.60 GHz | 5.50 Ghz | 4.80 Ghz |
| Cache | 12 MB | 36 MB | 105 MB |
| Power | 15W | 55W | 350W |
| Max. memory size | 64 GB | 128 GB | 4 TB |
| Max. memory channels | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Recommended price | $340.00 | $590.00 | $5889.00 |
| Geekbench 5 single-core score (cpu-monkey) | 1628 | 2108 | 1734 |
| Geekbench 5 multi-core score (cpu-monkey) | 7240 | 19759 | 56911 |
- Discuss the differences between the three processors. Can you guess what the different features listed in the table mean?
- Look at the CPU limitations with memory. Are these limitations respected in the hardware configuration of the three computers? Can we still add memory to the three configurations?
The size of a memory block of the Intel Core i5-1335U is 64 bytes. How many blocks can the L3 cache store?
We now look at the graphics processing unit (GPU). The following table describes the features of the GPUs in the three computers.
| Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs (integrated) | NVIDIA RTX 3500 | NVIDIA RTX A6000 | |
| Number of cores (CUDA) | 640 | 5 120 | 10 752 |
| Clock speed | 1 100 MHz | 1 545 MHz | 1 800 MHz |
| Memory | 8 GB (shared) | 12 GB | 48 GB |
| FP16 performance | 2.816 TFLOPS | 15.82 TFLOPS | 38.71 TFLOPS |
| FP32 performance | 1 408.0 GFLOPS | 15.82 TFLOPS | 38.71 TFLOPS |
| FP64 performance | 352 GFLOPS | 247.2 GFLOPS | 604.8 GFLOPS |
| Tensor cores (Deep learning) | -- | 160 | 336 |
| Max power consumption | < 15W | 100W | 300 W |
Compare the features of the three GPUs. Can you understand the meaning of each feature listed in the table?