Maximum PC - UK (2019-12)

maximumpc.com DEC 2019 MAXIMUMPC 95

For Science
I have a couple of
suggestions for articles
that I would find useful in
MaximumPC.
I know that the
MaximumPC readership
includes a lot of gamers
and overclockers;
however, there must be
a group of readers who
would be interested in
the kinds of hardware
that would be good for
scientific computing. You
could have an article on
floating-point arithmetic
and how the CPUs handle
it, which would be useful.
Floating-point arithmetic
is important for efficient
running of statistical/
analytical/engineering
software. Even users
who don’t need scientific
workstations may still
want good floating-
point performance from
their CPUs for running
SETI@home or Folding@
home. It’s difficult to find
information comparing
CPU floating-point
performance (floating point
operations per second,
or FLOPS), but I found
this article on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/FLOPS that
describes FLOPS, and
compares various AMD and
Intel CPUs with regard to
floating-point performance.
It appears that Intel,
especially Skylake-X and
Xeon, are way ahead of AMD
Ryzen and Threadripper
on FLOPS. Ryzen might be
starting to catch up with
Ryzen 3, however.
Video cards also vary
greatly in their ability to
perform floating-point
math, and that could be
another feature of the
article. Video card floating-
point capability brings
up another suggestion
for an article. Most
Maximum PC articles
on video cards focus on
gaming cards. However,
many users run CAD and
scientific software, so it
would be useful to discuss
workstation video cards,

such as Nvidia Quadro and

AMD Firepro cards, and

how they are different from

gaming and mainstream

cards (ECC memory, higher

FLOPS, and higher price,

unfortunately). Because

true workstation cards are

so overpriced, it would be

good to know which gaming

cards also have decent

workstation performance.

Some do and some don’t.

This information is very

difficult to find.

Finally, the first two

items can be tied together

in a discussion of how

computer systems offload

some of the CPU computing

load on to the GPU. My

understanding is that GPUs

are good to use if your

computing task can take

advantage of thousands of

simple redundant cores

(CUDA cores, for example),

as in video rendering (I

think). How are GPUs used

in scientific computing?

I think that SETI@home

benefits greatly from a GPU

with a high FLOPS rating,

such as a Quadro.

These issues are

peripheral to gaming, but

on the Asus motherboard

forum, I noticed that a lot

of the participants who

build their own systems

and game and overclock

also appear to come from

scientific and engineering

backgrounds. So, I think

these areas of interest may

overlap among a portion of

your readers.

–Paul Gargiullo

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ALAN

DEXTER, RESPONDS: Good

suggestion. It’s been a

while since we’ve looked

at something along these

lines, but with the general

improvements we’ve seen

from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia

of late (and importantly a

drop in prices), it’s worth

visiting again.

GitHub Blocking Iran

I think Alex Campbell's

article called “GitHub Shuts

the Gates for Sanctioned

Countries” (October

THE POWER OF SHELL

[READER SPOTLIGHT]

In the October 2019, Vol, 24, No. 10 issue of my

subscription, Alex Cox provided text for PowerShell on

page 25, in the paragraph headed “Key Information”

When attempting to run the command, I receive the

error message:

Select-Object : A positional parameter cannot be

found that accepts argument ‘I’.

At line:1 char:93

+ ... install\* | Select-Object DisplayName,

Displayversion, Publisher, Ins ...

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Select-

Object], ParameterBindingException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParamete

rNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.

SlectObjectCommand

Can Alex please check to see whether his command

text is correct? –Jerry Bell

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ALAN DEXTER, RESPONDS: The

actual text has a tricky space and hyphen in it—

there’s a space after “Table” before the “-AutoSize”

argument. So it should read:

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\

Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* |

Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher,

Hopefully this resolves your problem.

2019 issue) misses who

this will really hurt. The

government of Iran has

no intention of placing its

code on US servers, but

Iranians have been involved

in open-source projects for

decades; their work can

be most obviously seen in

the translations of many

open-source projects to

Persian. Blocking Iranians

from working on GitHub

does little to hurt the

Iranian government, but

hurts Iranian computer

programmers and regular

Iranian computer users,

and indirectly the rest of

us who could benefit from

their work on open-source

projects. –David Starner

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ALAN

DEXTER, RESPONDS:

Actually, Alex made a big

thing in the article about

it not really affecting the

Iranian government, but

rather the everyday guys

and gals who use GitHub.

This does include those

translating code to other

languages, though.