5 ms·

Pocket 4: Modular full-featured Handheld AI PC

32 points by nmridul 2y ago

teruakohatu 2y ago
I was skeptical of the "AI" but it has 64gb of RAM and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 37 CPU, supposedly has good LLM performance [1]. So yea, its an interesting device. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1gfr60l/ryzen_ai_300_takes_big_wins_over_intel_in_llm_ai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1gfr60l/ryzen_ai_300_t...
- wokwokwok 2y ago
  That sounds like 'running on CPU considered to be competitive to running on GPU' and my BS alarms are going off... ...buuuuut, to be fair, I don't either a) particularly care, or b) really have that much knowledge about the Ryzen AI 9 HX 37 CPU. Anyone care to point me vaguely in the direction of something meaningful that would suggest that CPU based inference would, in general, be even remotely comparable to dedicated GPU performance for AI? I remain pretty skeptical. (That reddit thread kicks off with someone saying 'LLM isn't particularly compute intensive workload', which is obviously a) false, and b) gives me no confidence in their review. If LLMs were just memory intensive, we would all just be getting machines with more RAM and no one would be going crazy with 4 parallel 24GB GPUs just to eek out the performance for inference; they'd just slap a 64GB sim in their machine and be done with it). LLM inference it is memory intensive, but it IS compute intensive too. Being able to run on a CPU at 1 token per century is not what anyone wants.
  - alphan0n 2y ago
    Seems it shares memory with the GPU. > GPD Pocket 4 uses LPDDR5x memory with a speed of 7500MT/s, available in 16GB or 32GB or 64GB capacities. It can allocate up to 16GB of memory to the GPU, allowing AI applications that require large amounts of VRAM to perform optimally. 16gb can run a few LLM’s with decent token/s https://llm.extractum.io/list/?16GB https://llm.extractum.io/list/?16GB
Animats 2y ago
It's a nice little netbook. But does anybody still want or need a netbook? Especially a rather expensive one.
- asadm 2y ago
  netbooks were insanely slow though.
danpalmer 2y ago
This looks neat, but it looks like it's trying to be everything to everyone, and while that's always tempting for a new product, I think it's usually doomed to failure. Why does it support an RS232 port, especially on such a small form factor? Why does it focus so much on local LLM support? Why has it got such a high resolution display? Why has it got swappable ports? Each one of those features makes sense in isolation for some market, but together I'm not sure there's anyone who's the target market for all of them, and because of that there are likely to be better options for each target market. Want to run an LLM? A Mac is going to do that much better with its unified memory and ML acceleration. Want to do sysadmin stuff plugged into an old switch? You probably already have an old Thinkpad for that. etc.
- rkharsan64 2y ago
  These and other related machines are super popular among people interested in handheld gaming. I agree that the AI label is just for hype, but GPD does make good machines.
- cchance 2y ago
  100% agree, someone shoved a bunch of ideas into a box and ... ya.... its a AI in your pocket, with an external gpu lol, isn't that ... every laptop lol
- wvenable 2y ago
  Doomed to failure? It's literally the 4th version of this product.
  - danpalmer 2y ago
    Thank you for the input, now you mention it I have heard of GPD many years ago, I didn't realise this was an existing product line. Sorry for jumping to conclusions here. "Doomed to failure" was too strong in hindsight, it seems GPD have found their niche. It does however sound like it is quite a niche. This product does have a bunch of tradeoffs that work for that niche, but that make it unlikely to be suitable for a mainstream audience.
esperent 2y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41249569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41249569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42241743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42241743
steele 2y ago
Regardless of the success of this crowdfunding round, I bet they still provide supporting downloads of drivers & executables via zip files served from Google drive.
decker 2y ago
This would be pretty nice to carry around during oncall shifts, albeit, probably not the most productive device to have in the event you get paged.
we0x 2y ago
It's an interesting idea. GPD makes machines that will appeal to those interested in handheld gaming and those on pager duty. I own devices from GPD, and I have had two issues -- devices are simply not reliable, in just over a year the screen showed a green verticle line, and the display died a few months later. Secondly, the keyboard is simply unusable if you plan to program on it.
- ipsum2 2y ago
  Which version of the GPD did you have? Maybe they've improved it since then.
grakker 2y ago
>Most successful businessman own a Macbook or Surface. That's some dime-store psychology going there. Freaking hilarious.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rixed 2y ago
These machines always make me think of, and sorely miss, my old companion the vaio pcg-c1. Anyone else used to use one of those?

32 points by nmridul 2y ago

I was skeptical of the "AI" but it has 64gb of RAM and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 37 CPU, supposedly has good LLM performance [1]. So yea, its an interesting device. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1gfr60l/ryzen_ai_300_takes_big_wins_over_intel_in_llm_ai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1gfr60l/ryzen_ai_300_t...

wokwokwok 2y ago
That sounds like 'running on CPU considered to be competitive to running on GPU' and my BS alarms are going off... ...buuuuut, to be fair, I don't either a) particularly care, or b) really have that much knowledge about the Ryzen AI 9 HX 37 CPU. Anyone care to point me vaguely in the direction of something meaningful that would suggest that CPU based inference would, in general, be even remotely comparable to dedicated GPU performance for AI? I remain pretty skeptical. (That reddit thread kicks off with someone saying 'LLM isn't particularly compute intensive workload', which is obviously a) false, and b) gives me no confidence in their review. If LLMs were just memory intensive, we would all just be getting machines with more RAM and no one would be going crazy with 4 parallel 24GB GPUs just to eek out the performance for inference; they'd just slap a 64GB sim in their machine and be done with it). LLM inference it is memory intensive, but it IS compute intensive too. Being able to run on a CPU at 1 token per century is not what anyone wants.
- alphan0n 2y ago
  Seems it shares memory with the GPU. > GPD Pocket 4 uses LPDDR5x memory with a speed of 7500MT/s, available in 16GB or 32GB or 64GB capacities. It can allocate up to 16GB of memory to the GPU, allowing AI applications that require large amounts of VRAM to perform optimally. 16gb can run a few LLM’s with decent token/s https://llm.extractum.io/list/?16GB https://llm.extractum.io/list/?16GB

Animats 2y ago

It's a nice little netbook. But does anybody still want or need a netbook? Especially a rather expensive one.

asadm 2y ago
netbooks were insanely slow though.

danpalmer 2y ago

This looks neat, but it looks like it's trying to be everything to everyone, and while that's always tempting for a new product, I think it's usually doomed to failure. Why does it support an RS232 port, especially on such a small form factor? Why does it focus so much on local LLM support? Why has it got such a high resolution display? Why has it got swappable ports? Each one of those features makes sense in isolation for some market, but together I'm not sure there's anyone who's the target market for all of them, and because of that there are likely to be better options for each target market. Want to run an LLM? A Mac is going to do that much better with its unified memory and ML acceleration. Want to do sysadmin stuff plugged into an old switch? You probably already have an old Thinkpad for that. etc.

rkharsan64 2y ago
These and other related machines are super popular among people interested in handheld gaming. I agree that the AI label is just for hype, but GPD does make good machines.
cchance 2y ago
100% agree, someone shoved a bunch of ideas into a box and ... ya.... its a AI in your pocket, with an external gpu lol, isn't that ... every laptop lol
wvenable 2y ago
Doomed to failure? It's literally the 4th version of this product.
- danpalmer 2y ago
  Thank you for the input, now you mention it I have heard of GPD many years ago, I didn't realise this was an existing product line. Sorry for jumping to conclusions here. "Doomed to failure" was too strong in hindsight, it seems GPD have found their niche. It does however sound like it is quite a niche. This product does have a bunch of tradeoffs that work for that niche, but that make it unlikely to be suitable for a mainstream audience.

esperent 2y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41249569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41249569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42241743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42241743

steele 2y ago

Regardless of the success of this crowdfunding round, I bet they still provide supporting downloads of drivers & executables via zip files served from Google drive.

decker 2y ago

This would be pretty nice to carry around during oncall shifts, albeit, probably not the most productive device to have in the event you get paged.

we0x 2y ago

It's an interesting idea. GPD makes machines that will appeal to those interested in handheld gaming and those on pager duty. I own devices from GPD, and I have had two issues -- devices are simply not reliable, in just over a year the screen showed a green verticle line, and the display died a few months later. Secondly, the keyboard is simply unusable if you plan to program on it.

ipsum2 2y ago
Which version of the GPD did you have? Maybe they've improved it since then.

grakker 2y ago

>Most successful businessman own a Macbook or Surface. That's some dime-store psychology going there. Freaking hilarious.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

rixed 2y ago

These machines always make me think of, and sorely miss, my old companion the vaio pcg-c1. Anyone else used to use one of those?