Build Advice Building a PC that's more powerful than Skynet?

[Genralkidd]

Just for fun, I was reading some Terminator lore today and I came across some of the specs of Skynet's core revealed in older media. Apparently Skynet has about 90 TFLOPS of processing power which in 2019 is actually not unobtainable with modern consumer hardware. So I was wondering what kind of components I'd need to hypothetically build a PC that's more powerful than Skynet today?

I say hypothetical because some initial research of mine basically showed that I'd need crazy expensive GPU's like the Quadro RTX 8000 which has about 16.3 TFLOPS of performance and I don't believe any other GPU out there has a higher SP floating point performance.

So obviously just for a fun discussion, here's the specs I have so far, if anyone wants to help improve or add to it feel free to:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1280 v5
RAM: 1x 16GB DDR4 SODIMM (any brand)
GPU: 6x SLI nVidia Quadro RTX 8000 (any OEM)
Motherboard: Colorful C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20
Storage: 1 TB MSATA SSD (any brand)
PSU: ???
Cooling: ???
Case: ???

Pretty sure the cost of those specs so far would already be enough to buy a high end luxury car lol.

 

[Darkbreeze]

High end AI computer using one single stick of laptop memory (SODIMM)? And only 16GB of memory to begin with? Yeah, that's a big time fail right from the start.

Sorry, that whole build makes no sense. There are standard builds these days for enterprise usage that likely far exceed anything Skynet might have specced out at. And that's without even factoring in custom built GPU compute AI systems.

 

[Genralkidd]

High end AI computer using one single stick of laptop memory (SODIMM)? And only 16GB of memory to begin with? Yeah, that's a big time fail right from the start.

Sorry, that whole build makes no sense. There are standard builds these days for enterprise usage that likely far exceed anything Skynet might have specced out at. And that's without even factoring in custom built GPU compute AI systems.

I was really going more for a build with components that are more accessible to consumers than enterprises. I couldn't find any modern motherboards with 6+ PCIe slots that are spaced out enough to support 6 Quadro RTX 8000's. The most popular ones that came up were crypto mining boards, of which that particular one only supports a single SODIMM slot. If there is a more modern consumer motherboard that can support 6 GPU's of that size and more desktop RAM then of course I'd definitely add that to the build list.

Unfortunately achieving a 90+ TFLOPS build isn't exactly common yet in the consumer or even enthusiast markets yet so I don't see there being much demand for consumer grade motherboards that support that many GPU's. I'm also not so much going for an AI optimized build there, but rather just simply matching or exceeding the known specs of Skynet.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Skynet is fiction, however, it was still AI.

Good luck with your project. Sounds, silly, but fun.

 

[Genralkidd]

Skynet is fiction, however, it was still AI.

Good luck with your project. Sounds, silly, but fun.

Thanks lol, yeah it's definitely not meant to be a serious build since the GPU's alone are way out of my budget. I just always love how far off technology predictions from the 80's were like with how they only gave Skynet 90 TFLOPS of performance, something which in the server and super computing world is easily surpassed today, and in the consumer world, somewhat achievable based on the specs I'm attempting to put together.

Edit: Plus since the 90 TFLOPS is the only spec we have to go off of for Skynet, I can only choose PC components that can match that single spec.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Most of Skynet's AI capabilities would have been a result of the software anyhow, and really not determined by the performance of a single computer or even a couple of mainframes, since it was in reality a sort of mesh network with a computer cluster configuration that shared the compute capabilities of all connected computers. So in reality, it would not need to be a single computer with 90 TF of compute, which was really a grossly inaccurate use of the terminology anyhow, but could be the result of an entire network of computers working together much as you'd find in a folding at home network or computer cluster that shares resources with the primary system.

 

[Genralkidd]

Most of Skynet's AI capabilities would have been a result of the software anyhow, and really not determined by the performance of a single computer or even a couple of mainframes, since it was in reality a sort of mesh network with a computer cluster configuration that shared the compute capabilities of all connected computers. So in reality, it would not need to be a single computer with 90 TF of compute, which was really a grossly inaccurate use of the terminology anyhow, but could be the result of an entire network of computers working together much as you'd find in a folding at home network or computer cluster that shares resources with the primary system.

I don't remember which movie they confirmed the 90 TFLOPS figure but I know the whole mesh network/botnet aspect of Skynet wasn't introduced until Terminator 3 which was an alternate timeline where Skynet was created through different means. In the previous 2 movies, I'm quite positive Skynet had a central computing core at the time which I suspect was when the 90 TFLOPS figure was mentioned since a global botnet in T3, even during the mid 2000's, should've easily exceeded 90 TFLOPS still. I'm not sure though, I'd have to rewatch that movie again. But yeah I know TFLOPS is not the most accurate measure of overall system performance to begin with.