#free computer training centre | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

canmom · 1 year

Text

Das Abenteuer der Canmom in Köln (zur Gamescom)

It's time for canmom to have another adventure! What will that wacky lil porygon do next?

[you may be wondering, whatever happened to the plan to transfer l'aventure de canmom à Annecy to the main site for easier reading? that's still planned to happen, hopefully pretty soon! I've just been very busy.]

So: I work for a small VR games company called Holonautic. I've been working for them for around four months now (time flies)! This week some of us were in Cologne, Germany, attending Gamescom. Until this trip I hadn't met any of them in person, and indeed only had a vague idea what they looked like, because the modern world is wacky that way.

What's Gamescom? It's a major industry expo where game devs show off their games to the public and journalists, and otherwise have various industrial sorts of chats. The event fills a massive convention centre (the Kölnmesse), similar to the Excel Centre in London. Thousands and thousands of gamers enter in massive queues, and once inside, they queue up some more to get a chance to play some work in progress games at massive display booths.

Or maybe they go to the indie room, where there are hundreds of tiny desks just wide enough for a dev to set up a computer with a demo... or the retro games area, where various old consoles were set up for people to play... or one of the zones set up for laser tag or something like that. There was a lot going on!

Even Cthulhu came down to check out the games.

My own experience of Gamescom involved very little of that. With my Trade Visitor badge I could skip the queues, but most of my time was spent in a corner of the Business Area demoing our game to influencers, other devs and members of Meta and Unity, and then heading out to restaurants to have dinner with other VR devs in the evening. I had a good time though! It was great to meet the rest of Holonautic in person, and get to see the sights of Köln a tiny bit. And it was a very rewarding feeling to see other people enjoy the game I'd been working so hard on.

So in this post I'm going to talk about my trip, do a bit of amateur sociology, think about the place of videogames in the world and all that - and also talk a little about how the game sausage gets made - at least as far as I can without breaking NDA. Sadly, the game I spent most of the weekend demonstrating remains under wraps, so I'll have to tell you about that another day. I didn't get to see a ton of games but I'll also talk about the handful of indies I did see!

This time I travelled by train (non-transport nerds, feel free to skip this paragraph), taking the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Brussels, and then the ICE 19 to Cologne. Although it was slower and a bit more expensive than flying, once you factor in the time it takes to travel out to the airport, and the security generally being much more straightforward, I think I much prefer the trains. I spent my journeys drawing other passengers (coming soon to @canmom-art) and reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako (which will be its own post). It was all told very straightforward and comfortable.

[minutiae: I thought I was clever by getting an Interrail pass instead of just buying tickets the usual way, but I didn't realise that you also have to pay for seat reservations, so in the end the Interrail probably cost about as much for a 'there and back again' type of trip.]

By far the most expensive part of the trip was the hotel room. We stayed in a hotel pretty close to the centre of Cologne, but it turned out that its proximity to be about 15 minutes walk from public transport, so we didn't end up saving that much travel time. Since I ultimately spent almost no time in my hotel room, I think if I go next year, the call will be to stay at a hostel. But anyway, let's talk games.

How a game gets released on the Quest

So, Holonautic specialises in VR games. I wrote about our previous games in this very nerdy post, but in brief, there are broadly two major types of VR game: PC VR and standalone VR. For PC VR, the game runs on a computer, and the headset just contains a screen and something that can be tracked. For standalone VR, the headset is essentially a powerful Android smartphone with a custom OS; it uses the headset's cameras for tracking and does all the computing on the headset.

With the success of the Oculus/Meta Quest series, standalone VR became really, really popular - much more so than PCVR ever was. It makes sense: for native games you don't need a powerful gaming PC and there are no cables to trip over or expensive base stations, but you can still play PCVR games if you want to. Almost all of Holonautic's games are Quest-native.

For PCVR games, you can use one of various APIs, such as OpenXR, to wire up your game to VR tracking and input. Moreover, Valve built pretty good VR support into Steam, and since Steam is pretty much anything-goes, it's pretty easy to release a PCVR game in a way people can get it - but marketing is all on you, as with any Steam game.

The Quest is a different story. Compared to other consoles, Meta (which absorbed Oculus a few years ago) occupies a bit of a strange position in this industry, simultaneously the hardware manufacturer, the only publisher, and also a developer of first-party titles.

I don't have any good pictures for this part so here's me in a massive cathedral. Metaphors? No no. It's just a holiday photo...

There are two ways that games can get released on the Quest. There's the store, which is heavily curated: here, Meta acts as a publisher, releasing only games they think will sell, but they also put games through months of QA and handle all the marketing for you (i.e. putting it in front of people when they boot up the Quest). To get on the store, you basically need to have an in at Meta - there's a whole process, I'll talk about that in a moment. There's also 'App Lab', which is much less heavily vetted - but also it's a lot harder to get an audience on App Lab. If a game is particularly successful on App Lab, Meta may end up promoting it to the store. But a lot of games just languish there.

Of course, just because you have a liaison at Meta does not mean you have a free pass onto the store. There's a whole series of stages you have to go through: first you write up a detailed pitch, then if approved (based on what else may be in the works, Meta won't approve two overly similar games), you have a few months to make a 'Minimum Viable Product' prototype of your game and show it to Meta. I joined the company about a month before the MVP was due on our game.

Assuming your contact at Meta likes the MVP, you get a few more months to make a 'Vertical Slice', which is essentially a small portion of your game that's more or less complete. (For example, a single level.) Then, you show this to Meta again. If you make a good impression, they'll give you the go-ahead to finish the game and release it on the store.

Here's another random picture of Köln from the famous Hohenzollern Bridge. Are you saying this wall covered in padlocks is symbolic of something? Overactive imagination, I tell you.

So if yo uwere wondering, the last few weeks of intense work were all about making that vertical slice be as good as possible (and it got pretty clutch at the end). Since we were all going to be at Gamescom, we agreed with our guy at Meta that we'd demo the game in person.

The upshot of all this is that selling a VR game is heavily heavily shaped by Meta, and specifically the individual at Meta who makes the call. Holonautic has a longstanding contact with a laid-back American guy I'll call W.; he has in the past championed some of our games like Hand Physics Lab that left other Meta staff unconvinced. (As it turns out, W. was right and Hand Physics Lab was successful.) But he's not shy about saying that a game doesn't make the cut and should go to AppLab instead. Our game would live or die based on W.'s opinion.

But not just W.; Meta itself as an organisation is also looking for certain things, shaped by its internal politics. They have new features they want to tout - so if you can come up with a game that uses mixed reality, hand tracking and shared anchors that's probably going to count in your favour. And they have certain directions they are keen to push: sporty exercise games are in favour at the moment.

What does this mean for the evolution of the medium? Well, of course people will make the games they want to make, and just because Meta likes an idea doesn't mean it will sell. But Meta does have a lot of power to dictate the general direction of VR games - and if the Apple Vision Pro takes off in a few years, Apple will no doubt end up with a similar role.

It's been interesting to see the forces that shape a game up close: our ideological desire to make things that are new and different and meet our personal tastes, balanced against the need to have successful games to keep the company afloat (good old M-C-M'), and the need to satisfy Meta; all of this leaves its fingerprints on the game.

To not keep you in suspense, I think the demo to W. went pretty well; I can't really say more than that. It was also a good chance to tell the Meta guys about the parts of their APIs that are jank and hard to use - and to their credit they were apparently rather desperate to get feedback and I feel hopeful that they'll make it better.

It's hard to talk about Meta, because it's just such a massive organisation. We can talk about massive erosion of privacy, enabling genocide in Myanmar, and so on - but we're dealing with a small sub-corner of this huge beast, which is less a social media company and more of a games publisher and console manufacturer. But I definitely understand why someone wouldn't want to let a Facebook device loaded with cameras into their house! I could go more into privacy and the Quest 2 but it would be way too long a tangent. Ultimately this is probably a 'no ethical consumption'/'we live in a society' type of deal - one day Meta's domination will erode and we'll have to deal with a different superpower.

Whatever happens, we can continue to explore what's possible in this medium! I think of all the ethical bargains that must be made with the tech industry, I have done OK.

What Cologne is like

On Tuesday, I arrived in Cologne Central Station (Köln Hauptbahnhof) and walked over to my hotel, where I met my colleagues. Most of them looked fairly similar to how they'd set up their VR avatars... but none of them had realised I'm super tall. surprise, bitches ;p

We went out to an Indian restaurant where we all ended up ordering biryani. This being Germany, the portions were massive, so I asked for mine to be in a box to finish later, forgetting that my hotel room had no fridge or microwave and I'd have zero time to eat it (rip). Overall I think I hit it off pretty well, and we chatted for a while about games we liked, the mess that happened at Za/um, movies and the like - it was good to get a chance to interact more casually in person instead of only ever talking about work stuff. Everyone was exhausted from travel so we turned in pretty early, though probably not as early as the restaurant would have liked...

The thing that surprised me most about Cologne is how much it didn't feel strange or unfamiliar. If not for all the signs in German and cars driving on the right, you could drop me in an area of Cologne and tell me it's an unfamiliar part of London and I'd easily believe you. The parts of the city that are filled with business parks and glass-fronted chain stores could exist almost anywhere on Earth.

That said, there are some ways the Germans do things differently! One is restaurants. I visited three different restaurants and two of them worked on a 'self-service' model. Essentially, you order your food at the bar, and they give you a little buzzer device. When it buzzes, you go back up to the bar and collect your food. Nobody would wait tables, there would just be one person behind the bar taking orders and such (though someone would still have to clean your table).

Restaurants also close very early in Cologne. I think a couple of times we put staff in an awkward position of wanting to go home but having to sit around until our party was done. That said, at one point I walked through a riverside area with a few dozen steakhouses, and that seemed to stay open a lot later.

Köln has a decent amount of graffiti, a surprisingly large portion of it in English. Under most bridges there's usually a good number of tags. I didn't manage to get any good photos but shout out to the person who wrote something like 'this world is too damn loud', which is a big mood for autistic girl walking away from a convention centre lmao.

Wednesday: in which our heroine finds out what an influencer is

The next morning we all went down to a German bakery (pictured above). According to my colleagues, the thing to get is a Bienenstich, or 'Bee Sting', a kind of cake with crispy honeyed almond flakes on top and cream in the middle. Here's a really bad photo:

It was pretty tasty!

We scooted over to the convention centre on the metro, and made our way in. I started getting used to navigating the Messe. Our company didn't get our own booth this year, but XR game devs are pretty tight-knit, and Niantic, creators of Ingress and Pokémon Go, there to promote their new phone-based AR Monster Hunter game - lent us some space in their booth to do a demo to the popular VR influencers Cas and Chary.

We headed over to Hall 8 and none of us could find the Niantic booth. Eventually we figured out why: the Niantic booth was outdoors. On a very bright summer day.

The Quest 2 has a bit of a finicky relationship to light. If it's too dark, the cameras can't pick up anything and tracking can fail - hand tracking is especially susceptible. But bright sunlight is also a problem. Essentially, the controllers on the Quest 2 contain small infrared LEDs, which are tracked by the headset's cameras. This works very well, in general - but in the sun, the background infrared radiation can completely overwhelm these LEDs and the controllers become essentially unusable. You also have to be very careful never to let the sun shine through the lenses inside the headset when you take it off, or the focused sunlight can destroy the screen.

So, an outdoor demo was a problem. Luckily, Niantic had an air-conditioned tent in their little zone. We all filed into the tent and started testing the headsets. Even inside a tent, it was too bright for the Quest 2 hand tracking... but we managed to figure out the Quest Pro still worked (since it uses cameras in the controllers for tracking), and rushed to test everything would work. Before long, Cas and Chary arrived, and we demoed the game. Look mum, I'm in a tweet:

Before this convention I had very little knowledge of the whole world of VR influencers, and honestly I still don't, but it seems to be a big thing - a good word from an influencer is a massive boost to a game's chances. I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between an influencer and a journalist; both are in the business of reviewing new tech and games and rely on a reputation of unbiased analysis for credibility, and both are courted by devs hoping to promote their games. I guess an influencer is like a fully independent journalist? In any case, Cas and Chary were really sweet in our extremely brief meeting, and it was amazing to see the first people from outside the company having fun with our game.

We got word that bHaptics, a Korean company which makes haptic suits and gloves for use with VR devices, had some space in their booth and were willing to let us do some demos there. So we set off back down the entire length of the convention centre to go into the secret Business Area.

Wednesday at Gamescom is restricted to trade visitors, meaning it's much less crowded than the later days. On those later days, that restriction only applies to the three halls designated as the Business Area. Like regular Gamescom, these halls are divided into flashy booths trying to sell you stuff, but in this case it's mostly companies trying to sell services and tools to developers: backend services, special 3D pens, anti-cheat... also a bunch of stands selling merch and figurines for some reason (maybe because they want to manufacture tie-in merch for your game), as well a bunch of national organisations promoting the game development scene in xyz country.

The Belgian stand functioned as a meeting spot, and they were also handing out vouchers for free beer. A strategy that seemed to be quite effective, judging by how crowded their booth became that evening.

We tested our headsets in the bHaptics zone, and discovered DOTS Netcode's prediction/rollback is good enough to make the game feel smooth even on public convention centre wifi, which was rather satisfying - so you know, good job Unity! Unfortunately the Shared Anchors continued to be a pain. We briefly ran into the head of DOTS at Unity and arranged a demo, scooted off to meet W. from Meta who bought us drinks, scooted over to Niantic again to meet some members of XR Bootcamp (a training course in XR game dev, whose cofounders Ferhan and Rahel seem to be the glue that holds the whole XR dev scene together), and at last wandered back to the Belgian zone...

...and then I went back to bHaptics to have a go at their gear. I didn't take a photo (rip) so here's a photo by CNet showing the full bHaptics getup, which in combination looks... kind of like you're the member of the SWAT team on washing up detail...

(source: Scott Stein/CNet)

I had never gotten to try any sort of haptic suit before this, so it was quite novel. Essentially the vest contains 40 (or 16) vibration motors; the gloves contain further motors on the tips of each finger, and there's another motorised ring between you and the headset. There are also motorised wrist bands, motorised ankle bands...

The first demo was designed to showcase the features of the suit and wristbands, so you could try out various actions like shooting guns or putting stuff in a backpack with and without haptics. A second demo focused on manipulating objects: no wristbands, just the glove and hand tracking.

Of the various devices, the most convincing was probably shooting with the haptic suit. Vibration motors are well-suited for brief, intense pulses, and firing guns definitely felt more impactful with the suit on - not a perfect simulation of impact, but a strong effect. The backpack demo was especially impressive: it really felt like dropping heavy objects into a backpack. You also got to shoot at your own mirror image and feel the bullet/laser impacts, which felt like a rather roundabout way to give myself a back massage, but I could see it being effective in the right game.

The hand demo convinced me less. The problem is that vibration is a poor simulacrum of pressing against a solid surface, so it just felt distracting to have a vibration pulse when i grabbed an object - and you still had the usual physics jank associated with manipulating objects in VR using hand tracking. The final section of the hand tracking demo was social interaction: you were faced with rotated clone avatar, and you could shake your hand, punch or slap yourself, or give yourself a hug. As someone who lives half a world away from most people I love, I think giving someone a hug in VR would be a fantastic use of the technology, but sadly this hug was... not entirely convincing. It is very hard to simulate a steady touch with vibration motors.

Ultimately I think the best use for this haptic gear may not be simulation fidelity, but more abstract: similar to the haptic suit used in certain public demos of Rez Infinite, pulsing in time to music. Such uses are mentioned on the bHaptics site, and I'd love to have been able to try that kind of demo. (And yeah, I'm sure you could hook it up to the other kind of remote-controlled vibrating devices if you so desired, though you'd probably have to do a bit of work to wire everything up.)

It was really cool to finally get to experience haptics, and I was very grateful to the bHaptics members for taking the time to show me their gear.

After I'd satisfied myself, I caught up with the gang; we went out to dinner with other XR devs at a Turkish restaurant called Bona'me near the river. (The food was tasty and had a decent amount of vege options, once again in huge portions but this time we split them between the table. ...and once again we were the last table to leave by a long way, and I feel bad for the staff who had to sit around waiting for us.)

There, I met a solo dev called Ben Outram, who's spent the last three years working on a game called Squingle, a fascinating psychedelic game about manipulating bubbles in a world of DMT-core abstract visuals. (Honestly, check this game out, it's nuts. Meta are sleeping on it, it should absolutely have a full store release.)

Thursday: chaos reigns

On Thursday it somehow ended up that in the space of an hour, we would be demoing our game to the head of DOTS development at Unity (whose name I somehow never managed to catch), demoing our other game Cybrix to Cas and Chary, and then doing the big important demo for meta. Then it turned out that our metro line was blocked by an accident up ahead. We hurried out to get an Uber, and our driver gave us a rather... exciting ride; he rolled down the window to argue with another driver and dropped us off in the middle of the road while we waited in traffic. Rather harried, we arrived back at the bHaptics corner and set up for the demos in an unused area of floor nearby.

I'm not sure if I can say too much about how our demos went, but unfortunately we ran into some versioning issues and were not able to show Cybrix to Cas and Chary before they had to rush off (we weren't the only one to face transport issues that morning). Lesson learned: test everything, not just the part you're worried about. It's not the end of the world, though, and we all headed over to W.'s hotel, into a swanky suite with a nicely laid table for the most important demo of the week. We had the room for maybe 20 minutes, then we were out the door again to the lobby of another hotel to talk it over.

After that... suddenly the afternoon was free, ish. We went back into Gamescom and ate some very expensive ramen. Then, word came that some more influencers wanted to try out our games, so it was back to bHaptics and well, the story gets a little repetitive at this point :p I can't say much more than that without talking about our game, so I will just have to say that the demos went well.

This was my view for most of Gamescom.

At the end of the day, I had a couple of free hours to scoot over to the indie games area and try out some games before everyone went home. At this point my social batteries had run very dry indeed so I was glad to get some time to just play games.

The indie zone was divided into lots and lots of small booths, typically just wide enough for one computer. And even late in the evening, it was very, very busy...

This is just one small corner of the indie area.

Not really knowing almost any of these games, my 1337 MLG Pro Gamescom strat was to wander around until I spotted an empty chair and then play whatever game was going and chat with the dev if they were around. This worked out pretty well! I'll write up the games I played in a moment, but first I'm overdue to wax philosophical.

What was really striking about walking around the indie area is just how many games there are. Wandering around you can pretty quickly spot patterns and influences just by glimpsing at screens (here's a combat tutorial, there's a crafting/survival game, and yonder a narrative game that's borrowed the entire interface of Disco Elysium).

I've seen, up close and personal now, just how much fiddly effort and dedication it takes to make a game. There's something kind of strange and alienating to me about encountering all this creative output in a massive aggregate, where you can only give it maybe half an hour in a noisy room, surrounded by a dozen more or less similar games, in a way that kind of demands you rapidly assign it into a broad, combinatoric category: x art style, y core mechanic, z emotional register. Presenting this game this way really seems to file them all down to Content, which can be boxed and tagged and matched to a consumer with the appropriate set of subculture flags.

One thing that is distinctive about games as a medium to me is the very strong separation between 'mechanics' and 'presentation'. To produce a game you don't just need a system to manipulate, but also associate it with a narrative to make it comprehensible and lend it some sort of affective impact.

So you could theoretically make a game with the exact same mechanics as, say, Half-Life 2 - the same movement, the same enemy hitboxes, the same collision geometry and shooting mechanics and progression - but a completely different presentation style and telling a completely different story. Indeed, a typical early stage of game development has placeholder 'programmer art' and 'greybox' levels.

Equally, you could lift the iconography of a game and drape it over a completely different mechanical substrate - and indeed, it isn't at all uncommon for major franchises to launch spinoffs in different genres.

So games as a medium consist of all these different pieces which you can attach in various ways to define a game which you can name. And once this is done, that game becomes in a sense 'concrete': we act as if Half-Life 2 is an object with a distinct existence. It's a powerful social construct. Then, a successful game is then one which manages to unify all these disparate elements into some sort of whole that feels coherent. Game development sees all the possible elements of a game gradually collapse into whatever gets released. It's highly stochastic: an arbitrary decision by a tired dev, or even a glitch, might later become fixed as one of the core icons of the great 'Franchise'.

When there were less games around, and it was a lot harder for people to get their hands on dev tools, it made sense to think of games as solid, discrete things. Whatever you got on the cartridge or disc was pretty much immutable. Now, though, most major games operate as a 'service' that is constantly modified, and it is not uncommon either for players to mod a game, on a continuum from small changes like injecting shaders or changing music, to total conversion mods that are a 'whole new game'.

And indie games, then... you've got a subculture which heavily emphasise sharing techniques, and it's just as beholden to genre as AAA games. The existence of all these games side by side, even though each one has its own name and identity, seems to further break up "games" into combinations of pieces. When I encounter a new third-person action game, it's as a variation on a kind of broader, abstracted super-game. My first task is to discover the particular quirks of this manifestation of the third person action game. The days when we had a shared culture of 'games everyone has played' are basically already gone, but we still have a certain degree of shared context, because each game is a probe into that constantly evolving game-space, which someone has gone to the trouble to fish out and decorate...

I suppose this is all coming back around to the otaku database thing, isn't it? Or just semiotics in general...

Anyway, here's what I found on Thursday:

I played an FPS called Serum, in which the core conceit is that you inject big syringes into your arm to give yourself powerups. Otherwise, it seems to be a game about gathering and crafting. Sadly the demo computer didn't have headphones, so I was missing sound, and seemed to be a bit underpowered for the game. Nevertheless, I walked around a bit, manufactured a healing serum, and shot some wolf and rabbit monsters with a bow and arrow.

I feel like I was rather ruder than I intended to be, because in talking to the dev afterwards, the first thing I mentioned was the performance issues and he had to apologise like, yeah, we're running it on a laptop (it sounded like he said with a 3070? but I must have misheard him, unless he has very high standards for underpowered), it does run better on a proper computer. The environment design in this game was definitely really strong. Not quite sure how the serum mechanic would work in practice - it sounds quite like Bioshock's plasmids, but the demo didn't really give the opportunity to try out the different options.

I played Dead Pets Unleashed, an adventure game about a demon girl in a struggling punk band. One of the devs was hanging out with this one and generally had a great vibe, joking about how almost nobody picked a certain option and suggesting the route that would get the most out of the demo.

The game uses a sidescrolling perspective with hand-drawn sprites. The art style is very consciously flat, its population of monster people allowing an impressive variety of colours. It broadly alternates between conversations with choices that adjust stats (e.g. +punk, -social) and a variety of minigames - there was a music minigame of course (the conceit being chasing away intrusive thoughts), but I also washed a dildo, constructed a hot dog, and waited tables. Generally it oozed style, absolutely nailing the punk vibe, and had a bunch of cute features like changing your character's outfit. You can play the same demo on Steam. I think this is one I might well get when the full release comes.

And then I played... a game I can't even find now! I really should have made a note or taken a picture or something. It was a kind of Amanita-like point and click game in which you play a tin can person, manipulating objects as you try to rescue your can dog, descending into a city made of cardboard boxes. The puzzles were occasionally a bit obtuse, but the cute style really carried it. The devs weren't on hand for this one, but they did have a wall where you could leave postit notes with your comments on the game, including one with a fairly essential hint for the first puzzle. It was called something like 'can world' or 'box world', but at this point, I can't find it anywhere. It's a shame because I thought it was neat.

That was all I had time for on Thursday: I zoomed off to another restaurant by the river to eat some more falafels. Someone let off some fireworks for some reason.

We started to make our way back, across the famous Hohenzollern Bridge, which is one of those bridges with a tradition that lovers will attach a padlock to the fence to symbolise how long their relationship will last.

At this point the padlocks have started to resemble kudzu, hanging down in strands of linked padlocks, or even growing up onto the superstructure of the bridge on chains. Questionable symbolism or not, it all makes for a fantastic textural effect, especially since it maintains the sheer density of padlocks for the entire length of the bridge.

While we were crossing, a boat passed under the bridge carrying some kind of a party. From a distance, all you could really see was a mass of glowsticks, and all you could hear was the ghost of the beat. It was a cool sight.

At this point I was pretty much completely exhausted so while there was some kind of industry party I definitely could not handle the crowds and walked home past the cathedral for an early night, eager to head in early to Gamescom tomorrow with a good night's sleep...

Friday: just like in my Bloodbornes, amirite gamers?

Predictably I overslept. Since I'd only get a few hours at Gamescom, I decided to visit the famous cathedral. I took that photo that I posted earlier, where somehow my little phone camera absolutely nailed the lighting, even if the cathedral is severely out of focus...

I headed inside the building too.

Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is a bit of an oddball, historically. While it wasn't uncommon for cathedral-building projects to last a century, after working on this thing from 1248–1560 they downed tools, leaving the city with a half-finished cathedral for about 300 years.

They had the front and back of a cathedral, with a big crane on the front part.

In the 1800s, the middle ages were in and the state decided it would be a good idea to have a big cathedral - both to make their new Catholic subjects happy and a symbol of THE NATION. After raising a stonking amount of money with one of the world's first NGOs, they built the rest of this thing, which briefly became the tallest building in the world. Hooray, said Emperor Wilhelm I. I love being a big strong nation with a big cathedral dick.

The cathedral survived the first world war, but got hit by a lot of bombs in the second - though the towers remained standing. After the war, they put it back up again. Now, it's a tourist attraction. Transsexual atheists can walk in and turn their phone to funny angles to try and capture the ceiling...

You can call this a Deutsch angle, because... ok whatever guys they can't all be winners.

They've got some old school Christian-style guro in here.

The interior is pretty cool: huge vaulted ceiling, massive stained glass. The stained glass unfortunately photographs really poorly on a phone, the colours washed out pretty much no matter what. They did have this funky ladder contraption, which I assume is probably used for maintaining/washing the windows...

After a little while in there I decided this was pretty neat but I'd go to Gamescom, to say goodbye to everyone and maybe get a glance at some of the mainstream game zones. As it turned out we had another demo lined up, so we went back to The Corner Near BHaptics and did the routine. This time the audience was mostly other VR devs so I got to have some nice technical discussion.

At last, I had about an hour before my train. I thought about exploring the indie game zone some more, but decided I should really at least take a glance through the other halls. What I discovered was... queues! Many many queues. And various elaborate dioramas.

Sometimes they had actors to go with them. I decided to include the people taking the photo because... I don't even know what I was going for with this one to be honest, it seems kind of banal.

Here's a queue of people waiting to play Rogue Trader, which boldly tells you it's the first(!) CRPG in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, hopefully not also the last. 'Warhammer CRPG' is a concept that 16-year-old Bryn would have gone completely insane about. 31-year-old Bryn was still a bit curious, but not enough to wait for a sitting down queue with less than an hour left at the con.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the Extremely Gamer Shit, but for a taster, this lady was DJing a set on something called the 'Leet Desk', which appears to be a desk with built in RGB lighting, billed as 'the desk for gamers', because we can no longer contain the rainbow puke. When I walked past, she was playing an EDM remix of a tune that I vaguely recognised from a movie or a game but couldn't place specifically, which felt about right. Maybe it was Skyrim?

A lot of people walked around with the Hoyoverse bag, Hoyoverse being the collective term for the games of Chinese developer miHoYo such as Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact. Their slogan was 'tech otakus save the world', which thanks to their cunning move of handing out large bags, was soon paraded all over the convention. I feel like the jury is still out on the impact (ha ha) of tech otakus on the world...

In the end, the last hour was spent briefly walking around to see the halls and then I left to say my goodbyes and hop back on the train. The journey back was totally straightforward. I finished reading my manga and drew some more train passengers, who were generally pretty happy to be drawn.

Cosplay

It's a con, there's gotta be cosplayers right? Sure enough, the crowd was peppered with stormtroopers, kitsune, army men, luffies and various spooky skull guys... I didn't get many photos but here's a couple.

Obligatory stormtroopers. Luckily, the inside of the con was airconditioned, those suits look toasty.

These three kindly stopped to pose for me. I don't know what game they're doing, Dead by Daylight maybe? DbD girls, tell me ^^'

This robot-girl cosplayer's costume is neat: when you look close you see it's made of old PC parts. Or at least the casings of them. I spotted a graphics card and an old VR headset. She also has built-in stilts so she towered over everyone, big respect. She was hanging out in the hall on Wednesday, so she might have been there in an official capacity, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

Observations of demographics and stuff

It's been a good long while since I've been to any sort of nerd convention. Mostly I've been to scifi/media fandom cons like Nine Worlds and Worldcon, or general nerd-shit cons like MCM Expo, and in the old old days, Warhammer cons like Game Day. But this event being specifically a gaming expo was pretty new to me.

Predictably the demographics skewed male (but not overwhelmingly) and white/East Asian (almost without exception). The various national organisations present were primarily European (which tracks for an event in Germany) but there were large stands e.g. promoting Korean game dev or the Guangzhao region of China. In the indie zone, there were a good handful of Japanese devs, and I spotted one game that was fully in JP. Here and there, you'd spot banners promoted other gaming expos - a lot in Europe, but also there is apparently a Gamescom Asia in Singapore, and a Tokyo Indie Games Summit which sounds pretty fun. By contrast, while I don't have any real stats to substantiate, I would say I saw very few organisations were promoting game devs from South America, Africa or Oceania.

Beyond that... this is very definitely a place for nerds, but there's a lot of different varieties of nerd you can be now. So sure, T-shirts with slogans and cargo shorts for many, but equally you could dress super goth, you could show off all your tattoos, you could go in your colourful coordinated kitsune cosplay or just wear some bright hair die. I'm confident I saw a few other girls from the isle of 🏳️‍⚧️, but 'hello I clocked you let's be friends' is not the best introduction even from another trans girl lmao - in general I didn't really talk to people besides the group I had arrived with. I think if I'd gone alone, it would not be the sort of con where you make a lot of friends, but who knows?

All in all, a solid adventure. I'll probably go again next year, if I can find somewhere cheaper to stay. I never did get to see the chocolate museum.

ok, story over - thanks for reading, nerd ;p

#gamescom #computer games #adventures of canmom

10 notes · View notes

infantisimo · 2 years

Text

Night schools have a long history in Maharashtra. The first night school for labourers and agricultural workers was opened in Pune city in 1855, in the face of opposition from people who believed so-called lower castes should receive only vocational training. Later in Mumbai, night schools thrived as learning centres for its mill workers.

Today, in Bombay and across India, especially in its industrial centres, night schools are a vital resource that allow the poor and working class a chance of literacy and a new future.

Pinky found out about the night school from her husband, who had studied there himself before they were married seven years ago. He is now a gardener on contract with Mumbai’s municipal corporation.

Her days are packed. Every weekday morning, she takes her daughter to kindergarten and cleans her tiny one-room house in a warren of makeshift homes that abut a freight railway track. In the afternoon, she looks after her daughter and then takes the bus – if she has the money for it – or walks to the night school. She does her homework after her husband and child are asleep.

Pinky tries not to miss any lessons, but computer classes are a priority. Every Friday, a bus converted into an ad hoc classroom parks outside the night school. With laptops, chargers, and benches to seat two students at each of the ten devices, computer nights always see the highest attendance rates.

On days Pinky does not attend class, she may get a nudging call from Santosh Yadav, the school’s headteacher. He has taught there for 32 years and knows the circumstances of every student – who has lost a parent and who had to drop out of day school for work or a sudden crisis.

The Covid pandemic was a major setback, he said: around 50 students did not return to class after schools reopened. The school now has 140 students, but only around 15 to 20 attend daily; the rest come in depending on when they can get free from their work. It is Yadav who coaxes them to attend and helps them to catch up on the parts of the syllabus they miss. “If even we give up on our students, who will believe in them?” he asks.

#night schools #bombay

15 notes · View notes

bjsmall · 1 year

Photo

01.05.23 We watched Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022). IMDb link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3915174/ Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is a 2022 computer animated adventure film produced by DreamWork's Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to the 2011 film Puss In Boots. It is directed by Joel Crawford and co-directed by Januel Mercado. Based on the character from Shrek 2 (2004) and inspired by the fairytale, the films screenplay was written by Paul Fisher and Tommy Swerdlow, with a story by Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler. The voice cast of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish includes Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek reprising their respective roles as Puss In Boots and Kitty Softpaws. In Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, Puss In Boots and Kitty Softpaws team up with Perrito (Harvey Guillén) to find the mystical wishing star to obtain the last wish in order to restore the first eight of his nine lives. Also hunting the star are Goldilocks and her three bears crime family (Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Samson Kayo) as well as Big Jack Horner (John Mulaney). At the same time Puss In Boots tries to avoid a mysterious hooded wolf (Wagner Moura). For the action packed plot, see wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puss_in_Boots:_The_Last_Wish Work on the first draft began in 2012 and by 2014 the working title was Puss In Boots 2: Nine Lives and 40 Thieves. In August 2020, DreamWorks trademarked Puss In Boots: The Last Wish as the new title. The voice cast members were announced in March 2022. The director Joel Crawford wanted the film to retain the adult humour from previous films and also for the film to have a darker tone with the film focusing on Puss' mortality and fear of death. The story uses the concept of Puss being in the last of his nine lives in order to tell a story about how to enjoy life. He drew inspiration from fairytales by the Brothers Grimm, ''Cautionary tales that took you somewhere dark to make you appreciate the light.'' They also depicted Death as a wolf, just as wolves in Brothers Grimm stories were depicted as ''The personification of fear''. Other influences include Spaghetti Western films like 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'. As with DreamWork's previous film 'The Bad Guys (2022)' it was decided to make the Last Wish look more like storybook illustrations than previous Shrek movies. Using new technology provided by Lenovo, DreamWorks made the film look like a painted fairytale world quite different from that of Shrek and the original Puss In Boots. Puss In Boots Lenovo hardware links: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/servers-storage/infrastructure-dreamworks/?orgRef=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/preferred-workstation-innovation-partner-for-dreamworks-animation/ Puss In Boots: The Last Wish was animated with Premo and rendered using MoonRay, DreamWork's Production Renderer. MoonRay was first used in How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) and continues to be used today in many of their recent productions. In February 2023, DreamWorks released MoonRay as free, open-source software under the Apache License 2.0. https://openmoonray.org/index Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is shown in the 2.39:1 (Cinema-scope) aspect ratio. The musical score was composed by Heitor Pereira, replacing Henry Jackman from the first Puss In Boots. Additionally three original songs were composed specially for the film: 1. La Vida es Una performed by Karol G and co-written by Karol G and Daniel Ovledo. 2. Fearless Hero performed by Antonio Banderas and co-written by Dan Navarro and Paul Fisher. 3. Por Que Te Vas performed by Gaby Moreno and co-written by Gaby Moreno and Heitor Pereira. Some of the music from Shrek 2 which had been composed by Harry Gregson-Williams was used in the film. The soundtrack was released in December 16th 2022 by Black Lot Music. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish premiered at the Lincoln Centre in New York City on December 13th 2022 and was theatrically released on December 21st 2022. The film debuted a new logo opening for DreamWorks Animation showcasing characters from The Bad Guys, How To Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, The Boss Baby, Trolls and Shrek with a remastered fanfare composed by Harry Gregson-Williams, mixed with several notes from the 2019 fanfare composed by John Powell.

View the new DreamWork’s logo opening in 4K UHD here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm6LCMdEHJw Puss In Boots: The Last Wish grossed $484.4 Million worldwide as of May 26 2023 and was a box office success. It is the 10th highest grossing animated film of 2022. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish was critically well received with an approval rating of 95% and an average rating of 7.6/10. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish was released digitally on January 6th 2023 for streaming and home media. Then a collectors edition was released on February 21st 2023, including a 4 minute CGI animated short film called Puss In Boots: The Trident. This was released on UHD Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray and DVD. As I've watched the first Puss In Boots and done a recent review on it I decided to checkout the sequel. Link to Puss In Boots (2011) review: https://www.tumblr.com/bjsmall/715865254211584000/100423-we-watched-dreamworks-puss-in-boots?source=share I think that the computer generated visuals are really impressive compared with the first Puss In Boots. I liked the way it is styled like picture book paintings and the movements of the characters appeared jerky like in a classic cartoon. The story is Definity darker perhaps appealing to more adult audiences while retaining much of the adult humour of its predecessors. My favourite character in 'The Last Wish' is Perrito, a chihuahua pretending to be a cat! Character wiki page: https://theadventuresofpussinboots.fandom.com/wiki/Perrito I like Perrito's friendly and caring nature towards Puss In Boots.

10 notes · View notes

informatikerin-freyja · 1 year

Text

The chill winter air was biting at my face as I walked down the streets of that suburb, though this minor discomfort was far from my mind. Instead I was focussed on my apprehension. I had been training for many decades to get to this point. The first time I could be called upon in my duty as a hunter-gardener. No supervisor. No simulation. I was finally licensed, and expected, to perform the duties of my station without oversight or hinderance.

Fortunately, my feet had enough situational awareness to deliver me, step by step, toward the address which had called on my services a few days prior. I knocked on the door, and a few moments later it swung open and I was staring into the concerned eyes of an elderly woman. I explained to her that I had been dispatched from the hunter-gardener guild in response to her call. Though my prompting only seemed to further her sense of disquiet.

She hesitated for a moment before explaining that she wanted to plant around twenty or so tulips in her front garden, but she didn't want to commit to that until I could quote the cost. I pulled out my tablet and input the request into the guild calculator. Tulips in this climate, and twenty of them. This would be a big job. The cost could be substantial. Planting that many tulips would certainly require a significant amount of hunting in order to balance the gardening.

We both waited with some tension for the tablet to compute the final requirement. In order to free up enough space in the ecosystem for those tulips it would be required for me to kill around three elephants. I told her and I saw her expression drop. She started to mutter about forgetting it, but I reminded her that she was not under any obligation to sacrifice her quality of life for the protection of animals. It took some persuading, but she eventually agreed to sign off on the order, and accept moral responsibility for the killing of the elephants.

As per requirements, the gardening came first. I am insufficiently humble to deny that I was truly an artisan when it came to gardening, as all hunter gardeners must be. It would be wrong to suggest that I dug in the ground to make trenches for the tulip bulbs. Rather, I communicated with the dirt. I reassured it. I encouraged it. I inspired it. Until eventually the earth itself was enticed to simply part open and receive the tulip bulbs as one would new and most assuredly welcome houseguests. Though it would be a while for the bulbs to sprout, I could already tell that no finer row of tulips has ever been planted into the earth. It was unnecessary to wash dirt from my hands as an ordinary gardener would, for I made no mess in carrying out my work. It would be obscene to displace even a single grain of dirt whose relocation was not necessitated for this process, and my skill was above making such obscenities.

Returning to my vehicle, it was time to pay the debt that my craft had just created. I proceeded for some time until I found myself at the old city centre. Prior to the great shift this place would have been bustling with thousands upon thousands of tourists eager to pay their tribute at the great temples of capital around us. The now empty streets were overrun with all sorts of animals. The great temples of capital had long since degraded to reveal in form their true, wretched, soul. Hollow, empty, disposable, and ultimately destined to be disposed.

Fortunately my work would go swiftly today. I could see a pack of elephants gathered around a fallen industrial air conditioning unit, suckling the vital life sustaining refrigerant from its rust addled shell. I could see these beasts were no novices to life in the new world, they had clearly warped and conformed to their environment. Their trunks sprouted beak like calcifications, allowing them to smash into the air conditioner as if they were seagulls breaking into the soft flesh of a crab. I contemplated firing a round into the air conditioner to ease its misery, but it was unclear whether it had gained sentience and I did not want to waste ammunition on needless acts of mercy.

In my deft hands my weapon was less an instrument of brutality but something more akin to a paint brush with which I could paint new fates for the animals I was ordered to dispatch. I knew there were some real sadists in this line of work, people who became hunter gardeners out of a love for hunting. I was different. I became a hunter-gardener because it was now the only legal route to being a gardener. Were it possible to discard the hunting from the profession I would in a moment, but the new world did not allow us such luxuries. In any case, I took seriously my charge, vowing to retire if ever an animal should suffer an instance of pain due to my failure. I painted new fates for two of the elephants that day, and the fates I painted for them were swift and graceful.

Having completed my task, I returned to that chill suburb. Though it was now nearing the end of the day, and some heat from the day lingered amongst the still houses and cars. I knocked on the door and soon encountered the same lady. I informed her that the order was complete. Twenty tulips, at the cost of two elephants. Who could say whether this was a fair trade. In any case, she paid my fee, and I departed into the evening, my first order completed without issue. Now I was truly a hunter-gardener.

#short fiction #gardening #cw violence #cw animal death

4 notes · View notes

nvrcmplt · 2 years

Text

Sunflower Community Centre

Sunflower Centre: What they do --- what the social centre provides for those within its walls, is the chance to learn and how to adapt. Depending on the age they are; the workers can and will help with any and every day tasks. Below are some of the services the workers provide without any outside help.

Household - for teenagers / young adults

Cleaning with the correct bleaches and chemical solutions.

Laundry / Tumble drying machine usage.

Scheduling their days with various activities and acts they wish to do

Medication Schedules - a lot easier for those with multiple types.

Verbal Communication skills & Written Communication skills.

Technology lessons eg; Computers, Phones, Tablets - anything electronic. ( This also includes Safety on the Internet. )

Taxes and Money Keeping / Saving / Spending tips and tricks.

Mental Illness discussions. ( They can do their best to listen; but to give advice or if asked to bring in help; they are 110% on your side for calling someone in to talk to. )

Interview techniques, CV writing, Job applications, Benefits Applications.

Household - for children

Basics of Math, English and Arts & Crafts

Homework help.

Technology ( Including Safety on the internet. )

Chore help. ( With small reward systems to keep them going. )

Playtime scheduling / Chore scheduling.

Bargaining nap times and sleeping curfews.

Daily Tasks - Outside etiquette

Using bus, train, taxi and/or any other public transport with confidence.

Shopping etiquette, money handling in stores / in public eye, using card instead of cash.

Exercise overall. ( Walks, charity runs, car boot sales. )

Panic attack self-help ( A worker will always be at their side; however, they aren’t going to be forever, so in order to ween them from relying on someone 24/7. The worker will give them ten-fifteen minutes to sit in a café on their own, to shop on their own, and to brave a few minutes of their own time and self. If a panic attack occurs, they are to try and practice methods of breathing, seeking a moment of their self and explaining their condition the best they can without the Worker stepping on in. However, the worker will know instantly if their person is finding it too hard and will step in to help them out instantly. )

Social Anxiety trials ( Walking / shopping / going to eat with their worker in public areas. During, mornings, afternoons and evenings. Attending small social events and leading up to bigger and bolder events. Slowly again weening off the 24/7 worker. )

--- another service the centre provide is a free of charge aid to those who need a professional to come and talk too. the centre is more than happy to bring someone in or recommend someone to visit in a doctors or gp office. all sessions can be within a group or one-to-one, and will be confidential unless you don’t want that. some services are listed below:

With professional help - aka outsourced - for all ages.

Diet balancing - a nutritionist will visit every few months to help with those with either eating disorders, questions and the obese / anorexic.

Understanding the human body. ( Important talks about Puberty and Changes to the body. These talks can be separated by sex and taught by a Male or Female worker, or can be in one group with two teachers. It is wholeheartedly up to the children that want to know what’s going on with their bodies and they can ask questions. These sessions will always have a Doctor on hand, however. )

Street and Online safety talks with Police Officers.

Emergency talks with Fire and Ambulance staff members.

Ambulance staff will also teach them how to help fellow friends in the centre; in any case; slipping in the shower, hitting one's head, an epileptic fit, disassociating — how to move them into recovery positions, how to keep one's head still, how to check for a pulse - etc etc.

Muses that work here : Julian ( Inherited Owner of SCC ) Shane ( Employee, Qualified Home Nurse ) Noah ( Employee, Front Desk Secretary ) Hanazaki ( Employee, Fitness Group ) Fleur ( Employee, Nursery Teacher ) Toby ( Employee, Nursery Teacher )

#« ( Shane ) » HC.#« ( Noah ) » HC.#« ( Julian ) » HC.#« ( Hanazaki ) » HC.#« ( Fleur ) » HC.

6 notes · View notes

gigastar · 2 years

Text

Ram Gobinda Malakar founder and CEO of Gigastar.in

Gigastar.in is a leading online store for computer components, offering a wide range of products at affordable prices. With a vast selection of high-quality Intel processors, RAM, SSDs, motherboards, and more, Gigastar.in is the ultimate destination for tech enthusiasts and professionals alike. Whether you're looking to build a new computer from scratch or upgrade your existing system, Gigastar.in has everything you need to get the job done. The website offers a convenient online shopping experience, making it easy to browse and purchase components from the comfort of your own home. Customers can expect fast shipping and reliable customer service, ensuring a hassle-free shopping experience. With its commitment to quality, affordability, and customer satisfaction, Gigastar.in is the go-to choice for anyone looking to enhance their computer's performance.

Ram Gobinda Malakar is a highly skilled and experienced software developer and entrepreneur based in India. He is the founder and CEO of Gigastar.in, a company that provides comprehensive computer hardware and software services to clients across India. The company, formerly known as Om Tech, Gigastar.in has become a popular website where people can purchase computer components at a low price, including Intel processors, RAM, SSDs, motherboards, and more.

In addition to his work with Gigastar.in, Ram Gobinda Malakar has developed several software solutions in various domains. He has created a hallmarking management software that has gained popularity among jewelry manufacturers and sellers in India. His medical management software has helped healthcare organizations manage their operations more efficiently, while his college and school management software has helped educational institutions streamline their processes.

Ram Gobinda Malakar is also an accomplished e-commerce website developer and has created various types of e-commerce websites. He has also established himself as a popular YouTube content creator, where he shares videos about various computer-related topics to help people gain a better understanding of technology.

In addition to his entrepreneurial work, Ram Gobinda Malakar is a philanthropist who has made significant contributions to the field of education. He founded the National Computer Training Centre (NCTC), a computer center for underprivileged children, to promote computer education and technology in the community.

Ram Gobinda Malakar's expertise in computer hardware and management has been recognized by Beldanga Sewnarayan Rameswar Fatepuria College (SRF College), where he has been working in the Computer Department since 2007. In his role at the college, he has advised on various computer-related issues, including hardware upgrades, software installations, and network management.

Overall, Ram Gobinda Malakar is a highly respected figure in the Indian computer technology industry. His dedication to delivering high-quality services, his philanthropic work, and his passion for promoting computer education have made him an inspiration to many

#purple #outer banks #old bollywood #nostalgia #nature #miette #kareena kapoor #katrina kaif #kawaii #1950s #founder

2 notes · View notes

aicsm-franchise · 2 years

Text

https://www.aicsm.com

#omputer education Franchisee call 9667555300aicsm #best computer franchise #best computer education #Indias no. 1 franchise #Govt Authorized certification #Govt Authorized Computer Courses #all india saksharta mission #all india computer saksharta mission certificate #aicsm logo #aicsm courses #computer saksharta mission franchise #computer saksharta #computer course by government of india #sarkari computer centre #free computer training centre #computer institute registration form #computer institute registration #govt registere #Contact For- Computer Education Franchise-9667555300 #computer education franchisee #Govt Job Oriented certificate #helpfull For govt job #Job me sahayak #Saksharta mission IT course #Saksharta mission IT progrme #best computer education in india #govt affiliation for computer institute #govt computer courses #online computer courses india #trusted Skill Education

0 notes

mohalicareerpoint12 · 1 day

Text

Best Institute in Mohali for basic Computer training

If you're seeking the best institute in Mohali for basic computer training, there are several reputable options known for providing quality education, hands-on learning experiences, and industry-recognized certifications. Here are some of the top choices:

1. Mohali Career Point (MCP)

Mohali Career Point (MCP) is a well-known institute for offering comprehensive and practical basic computer training. They cater to beginners who want to build foundational computer skills, and their course content is up-to-date with industry requirements.

Courses Offered:Basic Computer Training (MS Office, Internet Basics, File Management)

Advanced Microsoft Office

Introduction to Operating Systems (Windows)

Tally ERP-9 with GST

Internet and Email Usage

Key Features:Experienced Trainers: Trainers with years of experience in IT and computer science education.

Flexible Class Timings: Offering regular, weekend, and online batches.

Practical Approach: Emphasis on real-time practical applications of computer skills.

Affordable Fees: Economical course fees for students and professionals alike.

Certification: Recognized certificates to enhance job prospects.

Location: SC-130 Top Floor, Phase 7, Mohali, 160059

Contact: +91 7696 2050 51 / +91 7906 6891 91

2. Jetking Mohali

Jetking is a well-known brand in IT training and offers basic computer courses alongside more advanced options. They focus on hardware and networking, but their basic computer training covers essential skills for beginners.

Courses Offered:Basic Computer Literacy

Microsoft Office Training

Internet and Email Skills

Key Features:Practical Training: They offer a strong hands-on learning approach.

Industry-Recognized Certifications: Jetking certifications are widely recognized across the IT industry.

Job Placement Assistance: They have a strong placement network for students.

Location: SCO 535, Top Floor, Sector 70, Mohali

Contact: +91 98764 57771

3. Chandigarh Computer Centre (CCC)

Although based in Chandigarh, CCC offers excellent training for students from Mohali as well. It is well-regarded for basic and advanced computer courses, tailored to both students and working professionals.

Courses Offered:Basic Computer Training (Windows, Internet, Email, MS Office)

Tally ERP-9

Advanced Excel

Key Features:Flexible Timings: Classes scheduled according to student convenience.

Certification: Certificates are issued after course completion.

Experienced Faculty: Knowledgeable instructors who cater to different learning paces.

Location: Sector 15, Chandigarh (Easily accessible from Mohali)

Contact: +91 98157 56722

4. ThinkNEXT Technologies Private Limited

ThinkNEXT is another top training institute in the Mohali area, known for providing practical and job-oriented computer training courses.

Courses Offered:Basic Computer Skills

MS Office

Internet Basics

Key Features:Highly Experienced Faculty: Industry professionals teaching the courses.

Job Placement: They offer placement assistance for students after course completion.

Free Demo Classes: Offers students a preview of their teaching methods before enrolling.

Location: S.C.F. 113, Sector-65, Mohali

Contact: +91 78374 01000

5. CBitss Technologies

CBitss Technologies is also a great option for basic computer courses, especially for those who are new to computing and want to quickly gain essential skills.

Courses Offered:Basic Computer Course

Tally with GST

MS Office

Key Features:Affordable Fees: Suitable for students and beginners.

Experienced Trainers: Skilled faculty to guide you through.

Small Batch Size: Personalized attention to each student.

Location: Sector 34, Chandigarh

Contact: +91 99887 23201

How to Choose the Right Institute?

When selecting the best institute for basic computer training in Mohali, consider the following factors:

Curriculum: Ensure the course covers everything you need to learn, such as MS Office, Windows basics, and internet usage.

Faculty: Look for experienced trainers who can guide you through both theory and practical applications.

Infrastructure: Choose an institute with modern computer labs and updated software.

Flexibility: Opt for institutes offering flexible timings, including weekend or evening batches if you have other commitments.

Certification: Make sure the institute provides industry-recognized certification after course completion.

Placement Assistance: Some institutes offer job placement assistance after the course, which can be beneficial if you’re looking to start a career.

Conclusion

When it comes to basic computer training in Mohali, Mohali Career Point (MCP) stands out as one of the best options for its affordable fees, experienced trainers, and comprehensive curriculum. However, Jetking, ThinkNEXT, and other institutes like CBitss Technologies also offer excellent alternatives, depending on your specific needs and goals. Be sure to visit the institute and ask for demo classes to make an informed decision.

#best institute in mohali for basic computer training #best institute #basic computer training

0 notes

drmikewatts · 4 days

Text

Weekly Review 20 September 2024

Some interesting links that I Tweeted about in the last week (I also post these on Mastodon, Threads, Newsmast, and Bluesky):

Do web browsers really need AI embedded in them? https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/web_browsers_ai_holdout_vivaldi/

An AI scientist that performs at the level of an early PhD student-a few good ideas, a lot of bad ones, and poor ethics: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-for-science-2

But will the government AI be able to put you on hold for three hours? https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350411368/government-launch-ai-chatbot-called-gov-gpt

What executives need to do to successfully implement AI in business: https://www.informationweek.com/machine-learning-ai/forrester-ceo-lessons-for-executives-to-implement-ai-successfully

Cloning handwriting using AI: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/my-dead-father-is-writing-me-notes-again/

Jobs in IT are going to be impacted by AI, especially entry-level helpdesk positions: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3507029/will-genai-kill-the-help-desk-and-other-it-jobs.html

The Digital Divide include access to AI technologies: https://thespinoff.co.nz/partner/11-09-2024/how-can-everyone-be-part-of-the-ai-revolution

Don't fall for the hard sell over AI: https://www.informationweek.com/machine-learning-ai/cios-resist-ai-hard-sell-as-adoption-tactics-shift

Remember folks, conspiracy theories are what stupid people talk about when they want to sound smart. So let an AI talk them out of it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-conspiracy-theories

How AI can contribute to marketing: https://www.datasciencecentral.com/how-ai-is-transforming-marketing-strategies/

Oracle is building nuclear reactors to produce carbon-free electricity to power its data centres for AI computing: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/oracle-will-use-three-small-nuclear-reactors-to-power-new-1-gigawatt-ai-data-center

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were brilliant for their time, but they are flawed in that they assumed that an AI would have a physical presence. They are a good start, though: https://www.datanami.com/2024/09/11/the-three-laws-of-robotics-and-the-future/

A guide to the proper way to converse with an AI: https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/11/delvish_llm_language/

AI can help to improve sustainability of business operations, but AI themselves have an environmental cost: https://www.informationweek.com/sustainability/how-ai-impacts-sustainability-opportunities-and-risks

Some numbers around the adoption of AI: https://blocksandfiles.com/2024/09/11/weka-genai-report/

Biased data will result in biased AI models. And businesses have a lot of biases: https://www.informationweek.com/machine-learning-ai/how-bias-influences-outcomes

This new AI can at least count: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/openais-new-reasoning-ai-models-are-here-o1-preview-and-o1-mini/

A voluntary commitment to combat deepfake nudes isn't very helpful, regulation is needed: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/12/white-house-extracts-voluntary-commitments-from-ai-vendors-to-combat-deepfake-nudes/

California continues to move towards regulation of AI, and tech companies continue to over-state the impact of it: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/11/24226251/california-sb-1047-ai-industry-regulation-backlash

Using one AI to design molecules, and another to explain the outputs of the first: https://spectrum.ieee.org/organic-solar-cells

Of course people are using AI to produce election propaganda, they don't have any real facts to attack their opponents with: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24243021/springfield-ohio-haitians-ai-generated-misinformation-trump

Using AI to debunk conspiracy theories: https://www.popsci.com/technology/conspiracy-debunk-ai-bot/

European Union takes legal action against Google over the data it uses to train AI: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3518073/google-faces-eu-investigation-over-ai-data-compliance.html

A generative AI app for making music: https://dataconomy.com/2024/09/09/how-to-create-music-jamboss-ai-2024/

#artificial intelligence #ai

0 notes

tumbleversed · 16 days

Text

"Essential Graphic Design Hacks for Faster and Better Results"

Are you a student looking to kickstart a career in computers? Graphic design might be the perfect choice for you! It’s a blend of creativity and technology that can open doors to numerous opportunities. Here’s a beginner’s guide to get you started with graphic design:

1. Understand What Graphic Design Is

Graphic design involves creating visual content using software tools.

It’s used in advertising, branding, web design, and more.

2. Identify Your Interest

Are you more interested in digital illustrations, branding, or web design?

Knowing your focus can help you choose the right path and resources.

3. Learn the Basics

Start with fundamental concepts like color theory, typography, and layout.

Many online resources and tutorials can help you get started.

4. Choose the Right Software

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are industry standards.

There are also free options like GIMP and Inkscape.

5. Take a Course

Enroll in a graphic design course to gain structured knowledge.

Graphic Designing Classes in Yamuna Vihar offer great options for students.

6. Practice Regularly

The more you practice, the better you get.

Try redesigning existing posters or creating new ones.

7. Build a Portfolio

Collect your best work and showcase it in a portfolio.

This is essential when applying for jobs or internships.

8. Seek Feedback

Share your work with others to get constructive criticism.

Join online forums or local design groups for support.

9. Stay Updated

Graphic design trends and tools evolve constantly.

Follow design blogs, watch tutorials, and keep learning.

10. Join a Community

Engage with other designers for inspiration and advice.

Consider joining a Graphic Designing Centre in Uttam Nagar to connect with like-minded individuals.

11. Work on Real Projects

Start with small freelance projects or internships.

Real-world experience is invaluable and can significantly enhance your skills.

12. Specialize in a Niche

Once you have a good grasp of general graphic design, consider specializing.

Whether it’s web design, animation, or branding, specialization can make you stand out.

13. Network Professionally

Attend design meetups, workshops, and seminars.

Networking can open up job opportunities and collaborations.

14. Understand the Business Side

Learn about pricing, contracts, and client management.

This is crucial if you plan to freelance or run your own design business.

15. Get Certified

Certifications can boost your resume and credibility.

Look for certification programs offered by Graphic Designing training Institute in yamuna vihar and other reputable institutions.

16. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

Always aim for high-quality work rather than churning out multiple mediocre designs.

Quality work will leave a lasting impression on potential clients and employers.

17. Explore Different Styles

Experiment with various design styles to find your unique voice.

This can make your work more versatile and appealing.

18. Use Social Media

Share your designs on platforms like Instagram, Behance, and Dribbble.

Social media can be a powerful tool for showcasing your work and attracting clients.

19. Be Patient and Persistent

Becoming proficient in graphic design takes time and effort.

Stay committed and patient with your learning process.

20. Enjoy the Journey

Have fun with your designs and enjoy the creative process.

Passion and enthusiasm will reflect in your work and help you succeed.

By following these steps and utilizing resources like Graphic Designing Training in Uttam Nagar, you can build a strong foundation in graphic design and embark on an exciting career in computers. Happy designing!

0 notes

blogforsall · 20 days

Text

Digitech Computer Laptop Repair Service Center Shop in Thane

Introduction:- In today's fast-paced digital world, laptops have become an essential part of our daily lives, serving as vital tools for work, education, and entertainment. However, like any electronic device, laptops are susceptible to various issues that can disrupt their functionality. This is where the expertise of a reliable repair service comes into play. At Digitech Computer Laptop Repair Service Center in Thane, we understand the importance of a well-functioning laptop and offer comprehensive repair solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients. About Digitech Computer Laptop Repair Service Center Digitech has established itself as a trusted name in the realm of laptop repair services in Thane. With over 17 years of experience in the industry, our team of skilled technicians is dedicated to providing top-notch repair services that ensure the longevity and optimal performance of your laptop. Whether you're dealing with hardware malfunctions or software glitches, we have the expertise to diagnose and resolve a wide range of issues promptly and efficiently.

Why Choose Digitech for Laptop Repairs?

1.Expert Technicians:-

Our team of technicians is the backbone of our service centre. Each technician is highly trained and possesses extensive experience in diagnosing and repairing laptops of all makes and models. From minor software issues to complex hardware repairs, our technicians have the skills to handle any challenge that comes their way. Their expertise ensures that your laptop is in capable hands, and you can trust us to restore it to its optimal condition. 2.Comprehensive Range of Services:-

At Digitech, we offer a wide array of services to address various laptop-related issues:- Screen Replacement: Cracked or malfunctioning screens can render your laptop unusable. Our technicians specialise in screen replacements, ensuring that your display is restored to its original clarity and functionality. Keyboard Repair and Replacement: Sticky or unresponsive keys can be frustrating. We offer keyboard repair and replacement services to restore your typing experience to its full potential Battery Replacement: If your laptop's battery is draining quickly or not holding a charge, we provide battery replacement services to ensure that your laptop remains portable and functional.

Hard Drive and SSD Upgrades: Enhance your laptop's storage capacity and speed with our hard drive and SSD upgrade services. We can help you choose the right storage solution for your needs.

Data Recovery: Accidental data loss can be devastating. Our data recovery experts can help retrieve lost files and ensure the safety of your valuable information

Virus and Malware Removal: Protect your laptop from malicious software with our virus and malware removal services. We ensure that your laptop is free from threats that can compromise your data and privacy.

Software Troubleshooting: From operating system errors to application crashes, our technicians can diagnose and resolve software-related issues efficiently.

Hardware Repairs:- Whether it's a malfunctioning motherboard, faulty RAM, or damaged ports, our technicians can repair or replace hardware components to restore your laptop's functionality.

3:-Quick Turnaround Time

We understand the inconvenience of being without your laptop. That's why we prioritise quick turnaround times without compromising on the quality of our work. Our efficient repair process ensures that you get your laptop back as soon as possible, fully functional and ready to use.

4.Quality Parts and Components:- At Digitech, we believe in using only high-quality parts and components for all repairs and replacements. This commitment to quality ensures that your laptop receives the best possible care and continues to perform optimally long after the repair is complete.

5.Transparent Pricing:- We understand the importance of transparency when it comes to pricing. Our pricing structure is straightforward, with no hidden costs. We provide detailed estimates before any repair work begins, ensuring that you are fully informed and comfortable with the cost of the service.

6.Customer-Centric Approach:- Customer satisfaction is at the heart of everything we do. We strive to provide a seamless and hassle-free experience for our clients. From the moment you walk into our service centre, our friendly staff is ready to assist you with any questions or concerns you may have. We keep you informed throughout the repair process, ensuring that you are always in the loop.

Understanding Common Laptop Issues:-

While laptops are designed for durability, they are not immune to issues that can arise over time. Here are some common laptop problems that our service centre frequently addresses

Overheating:- Overheating is a prevalent issue that can lead to performance slowdowns and even hardware damage. Dust accumulation in the cooling system, a malfunctioning fan, or improper ventilation can cause your laptop to overheat. Our technicians can clean and repair the cooling system to prevent further issues. Slow Performance:- A slow laptop can be frustrating and hinder productivity. This issue can be caused by various factors, including insufficient RAM, a cluttered hard drive, or malware infections. Our team can optimise your laptop's performance by addressing these underlying issues.

Battery Problems:- If your laptop's battery is not holding a charge or draining quickly, it may need replacement. Our technicians can diagnose battery issues and replace the battery with a high-quality one to ensure longer battery life.

Screen Issues:- Cracked screens, flickering displays, or dead pixels can affect your laptop's usability. Our screen replacement services ensure that you can enjoy a clear and vibrant display once again. Keyboard Malfunctions:- Sticky or unresponsive keys can disrupt your typing experience. Our keyboard repair and replacement services ensure that your keyboard functions smoothly.

Data Loss:- Accidental data loss can occur due to hardware failures or software issues. Our data recovery experts can help retrieve lost files and ensure that your important data is safe and accessible.

The Repair Process at Digitech Our repair process is designed to be efficient and customer-friendly Step 1: Diagnosis:- When you bring your laptop to our service centre, our technicians conduct a thorough diagnosis to identify the root cause of the issue. We use advanced diagnostic tools to ensure accurate assessments .

Step 2: Consultation:- Once the issue is diagnosed, we consult with you to explain the problem and discuss the available repair options. We provide detailed information about the necessary repairs, estimated costs, and expected turnaround time.

Step 3: Repair and Testing:- With your approval, our technicians proceed with the repair work using high-quality parts and components. After the repairs are completed, we conduct rigorous testing to ensure that your laptop is functioning optimally. Step 4: Quality Check and Delivery:- Before returning your laptop, we perform a final quality check to ensure that all issues have been resolved. We then notify you for pickup, and our friendly staff will assist you in collecting your fully repaired laptop.

Tips for Maintaining Your Laptop:-

While professional repair services are essential for addressing laptop issues, regular maintenance can help prolong your laptop's lifespan and prevent common problems. Here are some tips to keep your laptop in top condition

1. Keep Your Laptop Clean:- Dust and debris can accumulate in your laptop's vents and keyboard, leading to overheating and performance issues. Regularly clean your laptop using compressed air to remove dust from the vents and a microfiber cloth to wipe down the keyboard and screen.

2. Use a Cooling Pad:- If you use your laptop for extended periods, consider investing in a cooling pad to prevent overheating. Cooling pads provide additional ventilation and help maintain optimal temperatures. 3. Update Software Regularly:- Keeping your operating system and software up to date is crucial for security and performance. Enable automatic updates to ensure that your laptop is always running the latest versions. 4. Avoid Overcharging:- Overcharging your laptop's battery can lead to reduced battery life. Unplug your laptop once it's fully charged to prevent overcharging and extend the battery's lifespan. 5. Use Antivirus Software;- Protect your laptop from malware and viruses by installing reputable antivirus software. Regularly scan your laptop for threats and keep the antivirus software up to date.

6. Handle with Care:- Be gentle when handling your laptop to prevent physical damage. Avoid placing heavy objects on it, and use a protective case when transporting it.

Our Commitment to Sustainability At Digitech, we are committed to sustainability and environmental responsibility. We strive to minimise electronic waste by repairing and refurbishing laptops, reducing the need for new device purchases. Our eco-friendly practices extend to recycling electronic components and promoting energy-efficient repair solutions.

Customer Testimonials Our clients' satisfaction speaks volumes about the quality of our services. Here are some testimonials from satisfied customers:- 1. Jagmohan D.;- "I had an amazing experience at Digitech! They quickly repaired my laptop's screen, and it now looks brand new. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable, making the whole process smooth and enjoyable. I highly recommend their services!"

2. Priya S.:- "Digitech saved my data after my laptop crashed unexpectedly. Their data recovery service is top-notch, and I am grateful for their quick and efficient work."

3. Ravi K:- "I've been coming to Digitech for all my laptop repairs, and they never disappoint. Their technicians are skilled, and their prices are reasonable. I trust them completely with my devices."

Conclusion:- When it comes to laptop repair services in Thane, Digitech Computer Laptop Repair Service Center stands out as a trusted and reliable choice. With a team of expert technicians, a comprehensive range of services, and a commitment to customer satisfaction, we are dedicated to ensuring that your laptop functions seamlessly. Whether you're dealing with a minor glitch or a major hardware issue, you can count on us to provide efficient and effective solutions. Visit Digitech today and experience the difference of professional laptop repair

#LaptopRepairThane #ComputerRepairThane #LaptopServiceThane #DigitechRepair #LaptopRepairShop #LaptopFixThane #ThaneTechSupport #ThaneRepairServices #LaptopMaintenance #LaptopCareThane #LaptopServiceCenter #ThaneLaptopShop #LaptopRepairExperts #ComputerServiceCenter #ThaneTechRepair

0 notes

perthsoftware · 2 months

Text

Expert Advice on Choosing the Right Excel Training Course in Perth

Excel is a vital tool across numerous professional fields, and mastering it can greatly enhance your productivity and career opportunities. If you're based in Perth and aiming to improve your Excel skills, this FAQ will provide valuable insights into Excel training options, the advantages they offer, and what you can anticipate from the experience.

What is Excel Training?

Excel training in Perth involves learning how to use Microsoft Excel, a powerful spreadsheet software, effectively. Training covers various aspects of Excel, from basic functions and formulas to advanced data analysis and automation using macros.

Why Should I Take Excel Training?

Benefits of Excel training include:

Improved efficiency in handling data

Enhanced ability to analyze and visualize data

Better job prospects and career advancement opportunities

Increased proficiency in creating reports and presentations

Who Should Take Excel Training?

Excel training is beneficial for:

Office professionals looking to improve their data management skills and become an Excel developer in Perth

Students preparing for careers that require data analysis

Business owners wanting to streamline operations

Anyone interested in enhancing their Excel knowledge

What Topics Are Covered in Excel Training?

Excel training courses typically cover:

Basic Excel functions and navigation

Formulas and functions

Data entry and formatting

Charts and graphs

Pivot tables and pivot charts

Advanced data analysis techniques

Macros and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)

Are There Different Levels of Excel Training?

Yes, there are different levels of Excel training:

Beginner: Covers the basics of Excel, suitable for those new to the software.

Intermediate: Builds on basic knowledge, introducing more complex functions and data analysis tools.

Advanced: Focuses on high-level Excel skills, including advanced formulas, pivot tables, and macros.

Where Can I Find Excel Training in Perth?

Excel training in Perth can be found at:

Local colleges and universities

Professional training centers like Fast Track Computer Solutions. The contact number is 08 9275 9188

Online platforms offering virtual courses

Community centres and libraries

How Long Does Excel Training Take?

The duration of Excel training varies:

Short courses: A few hours to a couple of days

Comprehensive courses: Several weeks

Self-paced online courses: Flexible, depending on your schedule and pace

What is the Cost of Excel Training?

The cost of Excel training depends on the provider and course level:

Basic courses: $100 to $300

Intermediate and advanced courses: $300 to $600

Online courses: Often more affordable, with some free options available

Can I Get a Certification from Excel Training?

Yes, many training providers offer certifications upon completion of their Excel courses. These certifications can enhance your resume and demonstrate your proficiency to employers.

Is Online Excel Training Effective?

Online Excel training can be very effective, offering flexibility and access to high-quality resources. Look for courses with interactive elements, such as live sessions, quizzes, and practical exercises, to enhance your learning experience.

How Do I Choose the Right Excel Training Course?

To choose the right Excel training course:

Assess your current skill level and goals

Research course content and reviews

Consider the reputation of the training provider

Evaluate the cost and duration of the course

Check if the course offers a certification

By answering these common questions, we hope to provide clarity and guidance for those seeking Excel training in Perth. Investing in Excel skills can open doors to new opportunities and significantly improve your professional capabilities.

#Excel Training Perth #Excel Courses Perth #Excel Developer Perth #Project Courses Perth #Microsoft Access Training Courses Perth

0 notes

govindhtech · 2 months

Text

AMD Instinct MI210’s 2nd Gen AMD CDNA Architecture Uses AI

GigaIO

GigaIO & AMD: Facilitating increased computational effectiveness, scalability, and quicker AI workload deployments.

It always find it interesting to pick up knowledge from those that recognise the value of teamwork in invention. GigaIO CEO Alan Benjamin is one of those individuals. GigaIO is a workload-defined infrastructure provider for technical computing and artificial intelligence.

GigaIO SuperNODE

They made headlines last year when they configured 32 AMD Instinct MI210 accelerators to a single-node server known as the SuperNODE. Previously, in order to access 32 GPUs, four servers with eight GPUs each were needed, along with the additional costs and latency involved in connecting all of that additional hardware. Alan and myself had a recent conversation for the AMD EPYC TechTalk audio series, which you can listen to here. In the blog article below, They’ve shared a few highlights from the interview.

Higher-performance computing (HPC) is in greater demand because to the emergence of generative AI at a time when businesses are routinely gathering, storing, and analysing enormous volumes of data. Data centres are therefore under more pressure to implement new infrastructures that meet these rising demands for performance and storage.

However, setting up larger HPC systems is more complicated, takes longer, and can be more expensive. There’s a chance that connecting or integrating these systems will result in choke points that impede response times and solution utilisation.

A solution for scaling accelerator technology is offered by Carlsbad, California-based GigaIO, which does away with the increased expenses, power consumption, and latency associated with multi-CPU systems. GigaIO provides FabreX, the dynamic memory fabric that assembles rack-scale resources, in addition to SuperNode. Data centres can free up compute and storage resources using GigaIO and share them around a cluster by using a disaggregated composable infrastructure (DCI).

GigaIO has put a lot of effort into offering something that may be even more beneficial than superior performance, in addition to assisting businesses in getting the most out of their computer resources.

GigaIO Networks Inc

“Easy setup and administration of rapid systems may be more significant than performance “Alan said. “Many augmented-training and inferencing companies have approached us for an easy way to enhance their capabilities. But assure them that their ideas will function seamlessly. You can take use of more GPUs by simply dropping your current container onto a SuperNODE.”

In order to deliver on the “it just works” claim, GigaIO and AMD collaborated to design the TensorFlow and PyTorch libraries into the SuperNODE’s hardware and software stack. SuperNODE will function with applications that have not been modified.

“Those optimised containers that are optimised literally for servers that have four or eight GPUs, you can drop them onto a SuperNODE with 32 GPUs and they will just run,” Alan stated. “In most cases you will get either 4x or close to 4x, the performance advantage.”

The necessity for HPC in the scientific and engineering communities gave rise to GigaIO. These industries’ compute needs were initially driven by CPUs and were just now beginning to depend increasingly on GPUs. That started the race to connect bigger clusters of GPUs, which has resulted in an insatiable appetite for more GPUs.

Alan stated that there has been significant increase in the HPC business due to the use of AI and huge language models. However, GigaIO has recently witnessed growth in the augmentation space, where businesses are using AI to improve human performance.

GigaIO Networks

In order to accomplish this, businesses require foundational models in the first place, but they also want to “retrain and fine-tune” such models by adding their own data to them.

Alan looks back on his company’s accomplishment of breaking the 8-GPU server restriction, which many were doubtful could be accomplished. He believes GigaIO’s partnership with AMD proved to be a crucial component.

Alan used the example of Dr. Moritz Lehmann’s testing SuperNODE on a computational fluid dynamic program meant to replicate airflow over the Concord’s wings at landing speed last year to highlight his points. Lehmann created his model in 32 hours without changing a single line of code after gaining access to SuperNODE. Alan calculated that the task would have taken more than a year if he had relied on eight GPUs and conventional technology.

“A great example of AMD GPUs and CPUs working together “Alan said. This kind of cooperation has involved several iterations. [Both firms have] performed admirably in their efforts to recognise and address technological issues at the engineering level.”

AMD Instinct MI210 accelerator

The Exascale-Class Technologies for the Data Centre: AMD INSTINCT MI210 ACCELERATOR

With the AMD Instinct MI210 accelerator, AMD continues to lead the industry in accelerated computing for double precision (FP64) on PCIe form factors for workloads related to mainstream HPC and artificial intelligence.

The 2nd Gen AMD CDNA architecture of the AMD Instinct MI210, which is based on AMD Exascale-class technology, empowers scientists and researchers to address today’s most critical issues, such as vaccine research and climate change. By utilising the AMD ROCm software ecosystem in conjunction with MI210 accelerators, innovators can leverage the capabilities of AI and HPC data centre PCIe GPUs to expedite their scientific and discovery endeavours.

Specialised Accelerators for AI & HPC Tasks

With up to a 2.3x advantage over Nvidia Ampere A100 GPUs in FP64 performance, the AMD Instinct MI210 accelerator, powered by the 2nd Gen AMD CDNA architecture, delivers HPC performance leadership over current competitive PCIe data centre GPUs today, delivering exceptional performance for a broad range of HPC & AI applications.

With an impressive 181 teraflops peak theoretical FP16 and BF16 performance, the MI210 accelerator is designed to speed up deep learning training. It offers an extended range of mixed-precision capabilities based on the AMD Matrix Core Technology and gives users a strong platform to drive the convergence of AI and HPC.

New Ideas Bringing Performance Leadership

Through the unification of the CPU, GPU accelerator, and most significant processors in the data centre, AMD’s advances in architecture, packaging, and integration are pushing the boundaries of computing. Using AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct MI210 accelerators, AMD is delivering performance, efficiency, and overall system throughput for HPC and AI thanks to its cutting-edge double-precision Matrix Core capabilities and the 3rd Gen AMD Infinity Architecture.

2nd Gen AMD CDNA Architecture

The computing engine chosen for the first U.S. Exascale supercomputer is now available to commercial HPC & AI customers with the AMD Instinct MI210 accelerator. The 2nd Generation AMD CDNA architecture powers the MI210 accelerator, which offers exceptional performance for AI and HPC. With up to 22.6 TFLOPS peak FP64|FP32 performance, the MI210 PCIe GPU outperforms the Nvidia Ampere A100 GPU in double and single precision performance for HPC workloads.

This allows scientists and researchers worldwide to process HPC parallel codes more efficiently across several industries. For any mix of AI and machine learning tasks you need to implement, AMD’s Matrix Core technology offers a wide range of mixed precision operations that let you work with huge models and improve memory-bound operation performance.

With its optimised BF16, INT4, INT8, FP16, FP32, and FP32 Matrix capabilities, the MI210 can handle all of your AI system requirements with supercharged compute performance. For deep learning training, the AMD Instinct MI210 accelerator provides 181 teraflops of peak FP16 and bfloat16 floating-point performance, while also handling massive amounts of data with efficiency.

AMD Fabric Link Technology

AMD Instinct MI210 GPUs, with their AMD Infinity Fabric technology and PCIe Gen4 support, offer superior I/O capabilities in conventional off-the-shelf servers. Without the need of PCIe switches, the MI210 GPU provides 64 GB/s of CPU to GPU bandwidth in addition to 300 GB/s of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) bandwidth performance over three Infinity Fabric links.

The AMD Infinity Architecture provides up to 1.2 TB/s of total theoretical GPU capacity within a server design and allows platform designs with two and quad direct-connect GPU hives with high-speed P2P connectivity. By providing a quick and easy onramp for CPU codes to accelerated platforms, Infinity Fabric contributes to realising the potential of accelerated computing.

Extremely Quick HBM2e Memory

Up to 64GB of high-bandwidth HBM2e memory with ECC support can be found in AMD Instinct MI210 accelerators, which operate at 1.6 GHz. and provide an exceptionally high memory bandwidth of 1.6 TB/s to accommodate your biggest data collections and do rid of any snags when transferring data in and out of memory. Workload can be optimised when you combine this performance with the MI210’s cutting-edge Infinity Fabric I/O capabilities.

AMD Instinct MI210 Price

AMD Instinct MI210 GPU prices vary by retailer and area. It costs around $16,500 in Japan.. In the United States, Dell offers it for about $8,864.28, and CDW lists it for $9,849.99. These prices reflect its high-end specifications, including 64GB of HBM2e memory and a PCIe interface, designed for HPC and AI server applications.