I agree, it is questionable, which is why I said ‘arguably’.
You make a good point about the amount of money being thrown at AI. However the money being thrown at AI in the US is tactical with what seem to be short-term return expectations. They’re after a quick buck, and the overall strategies don’t seem cogent. They are just as likely to pull the funding if there’s no short-term return and this is not the basis for a solid AI strategy that will lead to ‘leader’ status.
Secondly, if you compare what China is doing (different populations, different time scales, different target areas), then I see that the east and west are working to different cost functions. I think China is possibly leading now.
Thirdly, AI is now almost democratised. Anyone and everyone can pick up the basics, and implement something quite impressive on a $20 piece of hardware using open source frameworks. The US as a body historically led when the world was more ignorant of technology. The delta between the bleeding-edge and good-enough is not really substantial enough these days.
The US does a good job of supporting that democratisation of AI specifically because of its business model and if the east were to lead, then I don’t see the world following along as it’s not an eastern model to spread the technological know-how as it has been done in the west. The West isn’t altruistic. That model just supports a capitalist and entrepreneurial practise. Whether that helps bring the US back to a predominantly leading model is interesting, and I hope it does. However, to compare current US investment to AI leadership is too simplistic a metric in my view.
Thanks for the detailed post and also the enlightening discussions. I have prepared two builds which I am sharing below. Can you please provide your suggestions. I have some specific questions regarding the builds which I am providing with the build configs. But, before that let me provide my requirements/type of ML works I intend to do.
I have already bought 2 1080Ti GPUs and a Samsung 860 EVO 500 gb around 3 months back. So, they are sitting idle now. Now that I have some more money, I want to buy the other parts of a DL machine. My budget is around Rs. 100,000 [Rs is the Indian currency].
The machine will be in the server room of my institute. So, the cheapest cooler [whatever noise level] and cabinet is what I would prefer.
I shall mostly run RL codes [both training and inference] on images. Later, I might do some classification work on videos [but this is a distant possibility at this moment].
I don’t plan to expand this machine beyond 2 GPUs.
My builds provide some prices which does not have web links. This is from https://mdcomputers.in – a local but reputable vendor. I could not find how to link their product pages to pcpartpicker. Otherwise, I would have done that. So, you have to believe my words about the price.
My first build uses core i5 9600K and a compatible motherboard. As my budget allows me to spend some more money, should I go for i7 8700K? This change along with a change of motherboard costs me Rs. 6000 more [still remaining inside the budget]. Core i7 processor supports hyperthreading. From time to time, I plan to use multiple threads for preprocessing in Tensorflow. Or, instead of upgrading the processor, should I just go for RAM upgrade to say a total 48 GB [and stick to core i5 9600K]? This will cost me around Rs. 12,000 more [and so I am remaining within the budget]. And later, I can pull out one memory to be used in some other machine.
Build with core i5 9600K – https://in.pcpartpicker.com/user/dasabir/saved/fgQ299
Build with core i7 8700K – https://in.pcpartpicker.com/user/dasabir/saved/bD7J8d
While looking for the option of core i7 8700K, I came across core i7+ 8700 [https://mdcomputers.in/intel-core-i7-8700-bo80684i78700.html]. I see that this will cost me Rs. 11,000 more over my core i5 9600K build. I am not sure what is the difference between an i7 8700K and i7+ 8700 (other than the frequency/speed). Here is the comaprison link – https://ark.intel.com/compare/126684,140642 . Will i7+ 8700 require different motherboard? It says the box includes NVME 3.0 x 2, does it help me? Also the i7+ processor includes a 16 GB optane memory. Will it be of any help (e.g., keeping the OS there)? Also does optane memory occupy PCIe lanes? Any suggestion on this would be great to have.
My second build is with AMD processors. I tried with AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. The price is coming around the same as the core i5 9600K build. It does have 8 cores compared to 6 cores for the intel processors, but does AMD have hyperthreading? I am not sure. Also it does not have MKL, is intel MKL going to be crucial for deep learning?
Build with AMD Ryzen 7 2700X – https://in.pcpartpicker.com/user/dasabir/saved/3ddTBm
Though people say number of PCIe lanes are not that important especially with 2 GPUs, I just tried my luck with an AMD threadripper processor. As expected, it is overbudget. But, if you say, it is worth spending this much money, I might also go for it.
Build with AMD Threadripper 1900X – https://in.pcpartpicker.com/user/dasabir/saved/73mhyc