Cheap memory?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Scott T. Jensen
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Scott T. Jensen

I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a good chunk of
RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a good cheap way to get a lot of
both? The more, the better.

Scott Jensen
 
Scott T. Jensen said:
I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a good chunk of
RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a good cheap way to get a lot of
both? The more, the better.

Scott Jensen
Click to expand...

search ebay for wholesale lots. -Dave
 
Scott said:
I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a good chunk of
RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a good cheap way to get a lot of
both? The more, the better.

Scott Jensen
Click to expand...

How much RAM are you thinking of?

Before you spend your money, consider how you are going to access the
RAM and how many processor cycles are required. The cost of RAM may turn
out to be a relatively small part of the overall cost.

Have you tested your concept on a smaller scale?
 
Scott T. Jensen said:
I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a good chunk of
RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a good cheap way to get a lot of
both? The more, the better.

Scott Jensen
Click to expand...

I think current operating systems have limits on how much ram they
can utilize. So perhaps you should choose Linux because you can
rewrite the core to utilize more memory. Also some algorithms
have to be optimized for massive parallel computing if they were
originally created for single systems and it is easier to find volunteer
help within the Linux community in order to rewrite them.

What is a Cluster?
In the most basic sense, a cluster is a system comprised of two or more
individual computers or systems (often called "nodes") which work in
conjunction with each other to execute applications or perform other work.
Common end-goals for building and running a cluster include a desired
increase in reliability, load distribution or performance.

Distributed Processing or Parallel Processing clusters can increase both
availability and performance for applications, particularly large
computational tasks. A large processing task is broken down into many
smaller tasks and worked on by many small systems (the nodes) instead
of a single large system. The most common kind of Distributed/Parallel
Processing cluster is a Beowulf cluster. These clusters are often used for
scientific or financial analysis.

SH: You can share the total memory of all units, or assign portions of
memory to individual cpus. This should be just the ticket! BTW, you
have read about the memory demands in scaling up from a toy model;
this is where people seem to run into bad luck?!

Good Luck,
Stephen
 
Joe Legris said:
How much RAM are you thinking of?

Before you spend your money, consider how you are going to
access the RAM and how many processor cycles are required.
The cost of RAM may turn out to be a relatively small part of
the overall cost.

Have you tested your concept on a smaller scale?
Click to expand...

To quote the reply that one of the programmers that is helping me with this
project sent back to me when I forwarded this post to him:

"That's just it. We have no idea how much would be needed. It's something
that's never been done, so we can't compare it to that. It hasn't been
modeled or built on a smaller scale so we can't extrapolate from that.
We're just stabbing wildly in the dark."

Scott Jensen
 
Scott said:
To quote the reply that one of the programmers that is helping me with this
project sent back to me when I forwarded this post to him:

"That's just it. We have no idea how much would be needed. It's something
that's never been done, so we can't compare it to that. It hasn't been
modeled or built on a smaller scale so we can't extrapolate from that.
We're just stabbing wildly in the dark."

Scott Jensen
Click to expand...

And how much is the programmer charging? With stupid answers like that
he sounds like the biggest part of your financial risk.
 
Scott T. Jensen said:
I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a
good chunk of RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a
good cheap way to get a lot of both? The more, the better.
Click to expand...

Become a hardware reseller so you can get parts at wholesale.
Anyway, it sounds like you guys don't know what you're doing,
so I'm not sure why you're eager to drop some cash on hardware.
Obviously, the cheapest way to get RAM is to find the best price/
capacity ratio, which probably means something like 1 GB
PC2100 DDR according to PriceWatch.com (didn't look at any
actual ads, so you will have to do more research yourself). At
$100/stick, you could get 8 GB of RAM for < $1,000. How much
bank can you drop, anyway? Given OS and mainboard
limitations, you might have to put that in more than one box. Two
or three, probably.

As far as mass storage, it looks like the sweet spot is 50c/GB,
which looks like the 160 GB or possibly the 200 GB, depending
on whether you want to minimize the number of drives, or get
the absolute best price/GB. So for another $800-1,000, you
could get about 1600-2000 TB of data. Not too shabby. With a
decent RAID controller or two, you could put all those in one box,
even. Prolly would be better to split it into two, though.

So what's this brilliant idea, anyway? It can't be that profound if
you guys don't even know how to use pricewatch.com.

Dave
 
David B. Held said:
So what's this brilliant idea, anyway? It can't
be that profound if you guys don't even know
how to use pricewatch.com.
Click to expand...

I was posting for possible unconventional ideas on how to get it. The
programmers pretty much stated what you did.

Scott Jensen
 
Is he just hoping that if you have enough RAM "poof" emergent
intelligence?

Anyone claiming your can't show proof of concept without investing in
the whole enchilada is trying to sell you snake-oil. That is like the
"hard sell" tactics at a used car lot: "you gotta sign right now or
you can't ever get this price again!".

IMHO, of course.

Regards,

Ted Warring
 
David B. Held said:
As far as mass storage, it looks like the sweet spot is 50c/GB,
which looks like the 160 GB or possibly the 200 GB, depending
on whether you want to minimize the number of drives, or get
the absolute best price/GB. So for another $800-1,000, you
could get about 1600-2000 TB of data. Not too shabby.
Click to expand...

That seems off by about three orders of magnitude. That's probably
1.6 - 2 TB of data for $800-$1,000.
 
Scott, you can get RAM disc drives. I have see 4gb+. They should be up to
the 10 or 20 GB size by now if not a lot more.

So rather than program for standard memory, treat say a 20 GB file as your
ram, but load it into one of the ram drives around. These units typically
use low cost ram, but then they charge a premium for the interface (PCI).

It would probably be cheaper to get an AMD 64 FX or Opteron system tho....
run 64 bit linux.... but opterons tend to need registered memory which is
more expensive.

- Tim
 
Scott T. Jensen said:
I was posting for possible unconventional ideas on how to get it. The
programmers pretty much stated what you did.
Click to expand...

Unconventional ideas? What, like stealing it?!
 
Ted Warring said:
Is he just hoping that if you have enough RAM "poof" emergent
intelligence?
Click to expand...

No, the AI idea is mine. I've explained it to him and two other experienced
professional programmers and they all said that given my idea, the more RAM
and hard-drive, the better. It can operate on less, but for the best
performace, more is better.
Anyone claiming your can't show proof of concept without
investing in the whole enchilada is trying to sell you snake-oil.
That is like the "hard sell" tactics at a used car lot: "you gotta
sign right now or you can't ever get this price again!".
Click to expand...

I understand that. I'm just seeking suggestions for how to get a lot of RAM
and/or hard-drive on the cheap. Namely unconventional suggestions ...
saying any exist.

Scott Jensen
 
Scott T. Jensen said:
I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a good chunk of
RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a good cheap way to get a lot of
both? The more, the better.

Scott Jensen
Click to expand...
Look for an old Compaq Proliant server, the ML series would be good. You
might be lucky and get one. HP brought out Compaq so they may be badged HP
by now.

Servers are designed to take lots of RAM and multiple processors. They
usually have fast scsi drives too.

For instance the HP ML570 can take 4 processors @ 3GHz and have 32GB of ram
or
HP DL760 up to 8 Zeon processors @ 3GHz with 64GB of ram.

Not the sort of thing people tend to throw away, but maybe you could hire
one for a while?

Adam S
 
I'm wanting to test out an AI idea I have and believe I need a good chunk of
RAM and hard-drive memory for it. What is a good cheap way to get a lot of
both? The more, the better.
Click to expand...

A couple of 100 Euro's will give you more RAM than a windows computer
can handle. Make sure to use a 64 bit computer and an OS that can
handle it, like Linux. If this is experimental, I don't think
you would go through the extra hassle for using parallel processing
as suggested in an other reply, unless it comes natural to the
AI idea.
Scott Jensen
Click to expand...


--
 
A couple of 100 Euro's will give you more RAM than a windows computer
can handle.
Click to expand...

Show me an online site where I can buy 4GB of working RAM for 200 Euro's and
I'll be happy as Larry.

- Tim
 
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