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I have been skeptical after a lot of Microsoft misses but the Surface Book Pro might just put Microsoft on the high road. Splitting up the hardware breaks new g

by aleem 11y ago

I have been skeptical after a lot of Microsoft misses but the Surface Book Pro might just put Microsoft on the high road. Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground. If I understood it correctly, the GPU is in the keyboard which you can attach to get more power. In detached mode the screen itself has an i7 processor that's plenty powerful. So they managed to let you hot-plug the GPU while the OS is running?

cwyers 11y ago
> So they managed to let you hot-plug the GPU while the OS is running? Yes. And I think they said that with DirectX 12 it'll split the load between GPUs when both are connected.
- Splines 11y ago
  I'm curious how this works in practice? I have a laptop with AMD integrated + dedicated graphics, and AMD's implementation with dual-graphics resulted in herky-jerky framerates (it seemed to alternate between the GPUs, so frames rendered with the integrated one took slightly longer than the dedicated one). I ended up telling the driver not to do that and just use the dedicated GPU (and splitting the work didn't really result in observable improvements anyway).
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    It's a DirectX 12 feature that software developers have to opt-in to, and it is up to the software developer to figure out how they plan to spread the workload across the GPUs, but they can program against any and every GPU on a device regardless of manufacturer now. (The fun thing here will be to see software handle hot drops as GPUs get attached/reattached with the Surface Book.)
- Narishma 11y ago
  Only if the application supports it.
creshal 11y ago
> So they managed to let you hot-plug the GPU while the OS is running? Is that news? I think I've seen similar setup with ExpressCard-based PCIe adapters for desktop graphics cards for a few years now. Thunderbolt also has had hotplug PCIe connections from the beginning. (Less elegant, of course, but the same engineering challenge.)
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The seamless part is new, very new once a GPU is initiated it's locked, the fact that they can turn it on and off without a full reboot is quite amazing. If you run a hypervisor setup with multiple GPU's you need to make sure that the UEFI and the hypervisor/main OS do not initialize them until they are passed through to the guest VM and after that you can't recycle them easily and usually need to reboot the host if you want to pass them through to another guest.
  - bcoates 11y ago
    Is that any different from how Windows has restarted the GPU and reloaded the driver whenever a the video driver crashes since Windows 7? I think the new part might just be userland software being able to take advantage.
    - dangrossman 11y ago
      Even that's not new. I had a circa-2010 HP Envy laptop would switch from discrete to integrated graphics when you unplugged, and had a tray icon to manually switch between them without rebooting. http://i.imgur.com/47z9U46.png http://i.imgur.com/47z9U46.png
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        It's not the same as disconnecting the GPU, it would go into low power mode but not disconnect the GPU completely. You have had that feature for quite a while, but it's not the same as reinitating the GPU completely from scratch.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Someone1234 11y ago
> I have been skeptical after a lot of Microsoft misses The Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 weren't misses. They were extremely well received and fairly successful products.
- scholia 11y ago
  Indeed, nobody makes knock-offs of unsuccessful products....
npongratz 11y ago
> Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground. I'm not saying you're incorrect (I think the Surface Book indeed appears innovative and useful), I just wanted to share the history of at least one product class -- Panda Project's Archistrat workstations and servers - that separates CPU, memory, and I/O into allegedly independent and upgradable subsystems connected by a passive backplane. BYTE wrote about it, and the Internet Archive luckily saved the interesting preview: https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.com/art/9510/sec6/art7.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.c... As I searched for this article, I happened across Panda Project's patent for their backplane, published almost 17 years to the day: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html It's probably just coincidence (I'm guessing MS wasn't waiting for this patent to expire before releasing the Surface Book), but it was a fun find. Edit: "Pics or it didn't happen", courtesy Infoworld via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&ots=kvXMSZTwc4&pg=PA59-IA3#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&...

by aleem 11y ago

cwyers 11y ago

> So they managed to let you hot-plug the GPU while the OS is running? Yes. And I think they said that with DirectX 12 it'll split the load between GPUs when both are connected.

Splines 11y ago
I'm curious how this works in practice? I have a laptop with AMD integrated + dedicated graphics, and AMD's implementation with dual-graphics resulted in herky-jerky framerates (it seemed to alternate between the GPUs, so frames rendered with the integrated one took slightly longer than the dedicated one). I ended up telling the driver not to do that and just use the dedicated GPU (and splitting the work didn't really result in observable improvements anyway).
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  It's a DirectX 12 feature that software developers have to opt-in to, and it is up to the software developer to figure out how they plan to spread the workload across the GPUs, but they can program against any and every GPU on a device regardless of manufacturer now. (The fun thing here will be to see software handle hot drops as GPUs get attached/reattached with the Surface Book.)
Narishma 11y ago
Only if the application supports it.

creshal 11y ago

> So they managed to let you hot-plug the GPU while the OS is running? Is that news? I think I've seen similar setup with ExpressCard-based PCIe adapters for desktop graphics cards for a few years now. Thunderbolt also has had hotplug PCIe connections from the beginning. (Less elegant, of course, but the same engineering challenge.)

dogma1138 11y ago
The seamless part is new, very new once a GPU is initiated it's locked, the fact that they can turn it on and off without a full reboot is quite amazing. If you run a hypervisor setup with multiple GPU's you need to make sure that the UEFI and the hypervisor/main OS do not initialize them until they are passed through to the guest VM and after that you can't recycle them easily and usually need to reboot the host if you want to pass them through to another guest.
- bcoates 11y ago
  Is that any different from how Windows has restarted the GPU and reloaded the driver whenever a the video driver crashes since Windows 7? I think the new part might just be userland software being able to take advantage.
  - dangrossman 11y ago
    Even that's not new. I had a circa-2010 HP Envy laptop would switch from discrete to integrated graphics when you unplugged, and had a tray icon to manually switch between them without rebooting. http://i.imgur.com/47z9U46.png http://i.imgur.com/47z9U46.png
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      It's not the same as disconnecting the GPU, it would go into low power mode but not disconnect the GPU completely. You have had that feature for quite a while, but it's not the same as reinitating the GPU completely from scratch.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Someone1234 11y ago

> I have been skeptical after a lot of Microsoft misses The Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 weren't misses. They were extremely well received and fairly successful products.

scholia 11y ago
Indeed, nobody makes knock-offs of unsuccessful products....

npongratz 11y ago

> Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground. I'm not saying you're incorrect (I think the Surface Book indeed appears innovative and useful), I just wanted to share the history of at least one product class -- Panda Project's Archistrat workstations and servers - that separates CPU, memory, and I/O into allegedly independent and upgradable subsystems connected by a passive backplane. BYTE wrote about it, and the Internet Archive luckily saved the interesting preview: https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.com/art/9510/sec6/art7.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.c... As I searched for this article, I happened across Panda Project's patent for their backplane, published almost 17 years to the day: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html It's probably just coincidence (I'm guessing MS wasn't waiting for this patent to expire before releasing the Surface Book), but it was a fun find. Edit: "Pics or it didn't happen", courtesy Infoworld via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&ots=kvXMSZTwc4&pg=PA59-IA3#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&...