John Carmack's new AI computer is based on an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X

Within the processor market there are a large number of different solutions depending on the needs. Among them we find the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 Series, intended for Workstation. These processors are focused on heavy tasks that have the ability to take advantage of a large number of cores. And this is why DOOM developer John Carmack has switched his team to a system based on the Threadripper 3990X.

Carmack is a very important figure in the video game industry and one of the founders of id Software. This studio is one of the most prestigious in the industry, developing brutal sagas such as DOOM, Quake or Wolfenstein. He left the studio long ago to focus on the development of virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

John Carmack gets a Threadripper 3990X processor

As he said on Twitter, he has changed his system based on an Intel processor to be based on a Threadripper. The choice of the Threadripper 3990X is not accidental, since this processor has 64 cores and 128 threads, in addition to supporting PCIe 4.0. To take advantage of the PCIe 4.0 interface, Carmack has installed a Patriot Viper VPN4100 drive in M.2 format. As highlighted in his Twitter account, this unit reaches 4330MB / s.

Carmack's new system, as highlighted, is focused on research in the field of artificial intelligence. Normally these types of tasks are usually done with NVIDIA graphics because most of the libraries are for CUDA, in addition to having the new Quadro with Tensor Cores for AI. It seems that Carmack works in C ++, where a processor is more optimal.

The choice in this case this case has a really simple explanation: cores. The Threadripper 3990X is a powerful processor with unique computing power. Although its price of over 4000 euros is high, for certain tasks it can be even economical.

Source: benchmarking