Behind the Scenes at Puget Systems (Custom Computer Builders) - Smarter Every Day 2

- Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to the second channel. For years I've thought that when I order a

computer

or something, if I buy the most expensive

computer

, it's obviously going to be the fastest and best for me, right? In one particular case right now, editing 4K footage, this is a 4K video, it takes me forever to render the footage, I lose sleep and I'm not with my family as much as I would like. It's a problem. It is an operational deficiency that I have in my life. So in an effort to solve this problem, I decided to go to a

custom

computer company in Seattle called Puget Systems.

They are the only people who have a website dedicated to specific application hardware. That is, if I go to edit in Adobe Premiere, I click the Adobe Premiere button and they show me the exact computer I need. If I'm doing 3D CAD, they show me the computer I need. Twitch streaming, a gaming box that uses Unity, whatever it is, they have a dedicated computer in terms of setup for that specific process. I found this fascinating. They have specific hardware solutions for specific software needs. It's cool, so I asked them if I could go there and do a little behind-the-

scenes

tour, maybe talk about Moore's Law and stuff like that, if we could do a trade where I'd make a video about it in exchange for something. hardware.

So they hooked me up and I really enjoyed it. You know, you don't have to buy things from Puget Systems, but I found the way they do business to be really interesting. I hope you enjoy this look behind the

scenes

at Puget Systems. These guys are not marketers, they are simply computer

builders

and testers. It's really interesting. Let's check it out. Then I flew to Seattle. There's a guy named John about to pick me up. He owns a company called Puget Systems and makes specialized computers for certain applications. We will go meet them. What's up man?

How are you? Can I throw things back? - Yes. - Impressive. Are you OK? So you own the company? - Yes. - Okay, so this is John. He owns a company called Puget Systems and you're basically the answer to

every

one's computer problems, right? - Well, not all problems. (laughs) - So what is the purpose of the company? You make special computers for specific applications, right? - Yes, we need to understand how our computers are used to understand both the software and hardware so we can make the right computers for the job. - Oh yeah? So editing is a nightmare for me.

Are you going to connect me? - Yes Yes. I mean, that's pretty common for us. With people working on high speed footage or 4K, 6K, it takes a lot and so we have to understand exactly what you're doing so we can build the right hardware for it. - So what's your story? How did you start a company like this? This sounds like a company you would start because you are frustrated about something. - Yeah, well, you know I started it in college and, frankly, it started out like we were trying to generate cash flow in college.

But as I got into it, I saw that there were many needs that could be met. Many people wanted to just sell you hardware and not solve the problem. And so where we found our way was, yeah, solving the problem. What are we really trying to do? The computer is a tool to do a job. - Good. Yes, that makes sense because in the past, it was Dell, Gateway and Apple, that was it. When did you start the company? - I started in 2000. - Well, yes, that was around that time period. Where this is how you bought the computers.

So now it has changed. Still, you know, you open a magazine and there's an option. You know, you can build a computer on many websites but you do something totally different than I can understand. - Yes, because we don't really ask what hardware you want. We ask you what you are trying to do and then we can tell you what hardware you want. - Oh my God. When you test from a rocket, you don't ask if you want a high-speed camera or radar, you ask what data you're trying to get. - Well, what is your goal? - What is your goal?

So you start from there and then build the hardware based on what they say. - Well well. - Why is that so revolutionary? - I don't know, it shouldn't be like that. No. - That makes a lot of sense. It's good, awesome. Where did you go to school? You said you went to the University of Washington? - Yes, I went to U-Dub. I was studying physics there and I started this company, I think it was my third year of university and this company took over my life at that time. - Oh, so you didn't finish. - No, I didn't finish. - You did a Bill Gates. - I did

every

thing except the laboratories, that's what I have left.

But I don't think I can go back at this point and finish my labs. - Oh man. Surely they could leave you. Is it like a computer lab? What was it? - They were physics laboratories. And then we were studying, oh, I don't know. We were doing computer design and it was actually one of my favorite labs. We were integrating components together, making computers from scratch. We were doing tests to check the speed of light and things like that with lasers that pass through mirrors. It was a lot of fun, but the company took me a lot of time at the time, building it, and yeah.

I went to do the computer thing. - Alright. I'm excited to see your real lab now that you got kicked out of the lab or left the school lab, I'm ready to see your real lab. You're kind of hidden here. It is a small and pleasant area. - Yes, we like it. We spent a lot of time looking for this place. - That's great. We believe it should be a pleasure to buy and own computers. They should do their job and not be an obstacle. I think I'm in the right place, friend. (laughs) Holy cow. - That's where I thought you'd be most interested.

So we are prepared to be there for much of the day. - Oh, so he's trying things out? - Yes Yes. Hardware or software. - All? - This is due to the general approach that you have to do that job. That room is where those questions are answered. - Okay, I want to go to that room. - Well. (keys jingling) - Okay, here we go, tour time. So let's start with just an overview of what you do? - Yes, we will go through the entire process at a high level. - It's good, awesome. - In general, our mission is to know which hardware is suitable for each application, so we have to start with testing.

And the laboratories are where all that begins. - Is this William? - It's William. - Okay, yeah. I interacted with William. Sounds good. - Matt on the right. - What's happening? Hey, I'm Destin, yeah. What's wrong, William? How are you? - Good. - Yes, it was a pleasure working with you via email. So when we were talking, were you in a lab like this the whole time? - Yes, I was sitting right here. - Actually? - Yes. - So what are you doing? These are... - We are trying to play with Nvidia's NVLink. - These are things that no one knows if they work or not and no one has an answer, so I try to find the answer.

It's really difficult to find an answer. - Is it a new card? - These aren't particularly new cards, but NVLink has been around for a couple of generations on Quadro cards as a way to link cards and allow them to communicate and even share memories. So if you have two 16 gig cards, they would have 32 gigs together. If it's set up correctly in the supported apps and now on the latest RTX cards you saw out there, they switched to using NV Link on the conventional G-force cards, but... - You're saying a lot of words. and I'm sure they are important.

I am sure that all these words are important. (laughs) So break it down for an idiot from Alabama. - So-- - It's a way to link multiple video cards and turn them into one more powerful video card. - Are you basically taking these video cards and putting them in parallel or series? - Parallel. - Parallel? - More like in parallel. - But it's parallel in a way where the software doesn't have to be specifically coded, which is a big problem because a lot of software isn't very well coded to take advantage of multiple elements. - Well, and what's strange about NVLink, the original implementation had to be application specific and had all kinds of strange warnings and we just followed a series of steps to configure it.

But they are supposedly rolling it out on the new main cards and everyone is excited that this is something new and awesome, but we think from everything we've been able to see so far, they're not actually rolling out the full version. They're just using it as an easy way to get out of the whole deal. They won't share memory, it won't have all these cool features that the Quadro version has, it will only be used for gaming. - And then they'll probably go ahead and charge more for another version. - Well, they want you to pay for the Quadro cards, that's what they want.

Nvidia, for professional uses like this where you need a ton of video memory or multiple cards to work well together, they want you to pay thousands of dollars for the Quadro instead of hundreds of dollars for a GeForce. - Am I understanding this correctly? So you guys get the hardware and then you test it. Like they were basically test engineers. You find out how everything works and then whatever the manufacturer says they're giving people, you can tell if it's real or not. Is that your business? - Yes, we can say what it will be for. So here we have to do it, obviously we have all the hardware.

We have all this new hardware. Then we also have to pair it with the software and then we can see, okay, is this technology for pairing video cards? Will it help video editors? Will it help scientists, will it help engineers? And then we can look at all these different software packages that people run, then we'll know what hardware will optimize their work. - Actually. So do you just buy the shares on the website or do you have agreements with these companies to give you a card? - Oh, it depends. Yes, many times you will have to go off the shelf and buy it.

Many times with Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Gigabyte, Corsair, we will have very good relationships where they will support the work that we are doing by providing us with the hardware. - This is like the old Consumer Reports model, only modern and for nerds. - Yes, yes, I suppose so. - That's pretty much what it is, right? - Yes, yes, and it's about, it's not about whether this is reliable or not or that. It's about the work that needs to be done. So it applies if we're running a Photoshop benchmark or if we're running a DaVinci Resolve benchmark or if William might be running SolidWorks or Autotask. - Then explain to me a reference point.

So I guess it means that there is a task that we will perform over and over again with different pieces of hardware and see which one works best. - Yes, for that specific task. So you need to design your benchmark very carefully because it's easy to fall into the trap of saying this benchmark is going to be the one-size-fits-all measure of everyone's work and that's simply not true. You may apply different filters to your videos than another creator would apply to their videos, so we have to compare all these different facets of the software and develop this profile.

So if you go to our website and look at the things we post, they're just torrents of charts and graphs and you should know which ones apply to your specific job. We have to speak their language because it's not about frequency, gigahertz and cores, it's about a blending effect on a Premiere timeline, how does that compare to certain hardware? - Yes, you have a YouTube channel and I visited it and my problem is setting up my Adobe Premiere workflow, so it says you need to have your application on this hard drive and you need to have a solid state drive.

Drive over here where you are rendering. So do you optimize the workflow and then apply different graphics cards? - It's a two-way street. I mean, we have to know what hardware is capable of providing this better speed, but we also have to work with end users to educate them on how to get the most out of the hardware they have. - So I guess this is what you do, that you are becoming more and more popular among the YouTuber community, people who make very hard edits but are at home. That's right? - Yes, well, and since everything goes from 1080P to 4K, 6K, 8k, everyone is in the same boat where they are suffering due to computing power and performance.

And it's not just about YouTubers. There are a lot of independent movie studios right now that in the past had to be Pixar to make something cool, right? You had to have these huge render farms, there had to be a huge organization. And with the progress we've seen in hardware, it's open to the masses. Now you have these small independent film studios, five people, 10 people, that are doing incredible work but they don't have that huge infrastructure. They need an advocate to tell them to do this, touse this hardware, use it this way. Here's how to set up your schedules. - So, do you feel like you're like a training wheel for people like me?

You can help. You know, I don't know anything about graphics cards, right, other than a 1080 TI is better than a 980. - We think it's a disservice to people like you to have to do it, they shouldn't have to figure out the technology. , how computers work to do their work. And so we see ourselves as a bridge between your world and the world of technology, where we have to understand hardware and software to be able to talk to you in your language, have a conversation with Intel in your language, and then We can put together something that meets both needs. -So, lest this sound like a commercial for your company, who else is doing this in the space?

Because I asked you if I could come talk to you about all this and you agreed to build me a computer, so let's be clear about that. An exchange is taking place here. But who else is doing this or is it just you? - Well, I mean, I can't say that there isn't anyone else doing this, but the reason we focus so much on this is that we see that there is a void, that not many people are doing that. You'll see companies that will take on large data center workloads and you'll see a lot of places that will make gaming machines and consumer machines, but this workstation world is like the place where the server meets the consumer and it's kind of combination. in the middle.

And we don't see a lot of people going after it and that's why we do it. - So who are the most difficult people to serve: video creators, engineers or scientists? And the answer is not engineers. (laughs) - I think actually the scientific end is both the most challenging and the most rewarding because these are people who basically write their own code or are at the forefront of researching use cases that they We haven't even realized it yet. And with that, it's not just about pulling software off the shelf and optimizing it, but it's actually about working with scientists with their code, their writing, and seeing how their application works.

So it's very difficult. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, it's about working with each person one at a time, but it's really cool work. - Actually? - Yeah. - So how, I mean, in the past you were going to, like we're talking about before, you were going to Dell or Gateway or Mac and just picking your computer and doing it, but you're tailoring the hardware for the application. That's what you're doing. -And well, I'm sure we'll talk about this a little later with what happened with Moore's law. One-size-fits-all computing, those days are long gone. And now it's

custom

hardware for the application.

So by just going to Dell and buying something off-the-shelf, you might get the right thing, but you don't know. You have to have an expert who can really tell you what is right. - If I tell you a story about something, won't you think less of me? - Really sure. - So I bought a Bitcoin miner because I wanted to understand it, okay, and then ASICs came along. - Yes, exactly, a perfect example. - Specific Application Integrated Circuits. So I bought an ASIC. I know I will never get my money back in this particular scenario, but I wanted to understand the difference in hardware.

So what you're saying is that as we get more complicated with our calculations for scientific research or modeling for SolidWorks or whatever, you need application-specific hardware like the ASIC. - And the ASIC is like the complete realization of the work we are doing because with an ASIC for Bitcoin mining, it was a very defined problem and then hardware could be designed that the only thing it does is extract those coins. and it's exceptionally fast because of that. On the contrary, when you have a general purpose computer available on the market, it can do it, but not very fast because it was not designed specifically for that.

Now, where we live is somewhere in between video editing, CAD design or scientific simulations, it's a diverse enough problem that we can't create an ASIC because it's too expensive hardware for something that's a too diverse problem. . So we have to make this hardware available but make it more like an ASIC in the sense that we are designing it for a specific purpose. - So in a normal, out-of-the-box solution, the processor will bounce between the CPU and the graphics card and on the workload and where things happen. That's right? - Yeah, well, you have to know... - I'm really trying hard here, does that make sense? - I guess, in the most basic sense, these are bottlenecks.

Knowing where your bottleneck is and then getting more out of your budget to buy a PC wherever that bottleneck is, yes. But all of that is conditioned by how your software works and how you use it. - Wow. So this changes monthly, right? So, like William, you just received these cards, right? - Yes, in the 20s and 80s, the GeForce RTX series cards are brand new and actually, speaking of purpose-built stuff, it's the first time that, to my knowledge, Nvidia has started including purpose-built hardware in your video cards. They have some cores that are dedicated only to ray tracing, whose objective is video games, being able to make reflections, lights and shadows with greater precision.

But we hope that in the next releases of ray tracing software like Octane and V-ray and that kind of thing, that hardware can be used there as well. We'll have to wait and see if that happens, but that's the expectation. That's one of the things we'll be testing. So we've run tests now on the versions that don't support them. New versions come out, we test them again and see, oh, there's a huge increase in performance. They must be using those cores now or that kind of thing. We can write about it. And one of the interesting things that John mentioned, I'm sure other companies are doing these tests, but we're one of the few that I know of that actually publishes this information.

Because it would be very easy if you're Dell or HP to do all this kind of testing and then keep it secret so that, in theory, you can design good computers. - Manipulate the market too. Like you say oh, I will. I've seen it in the ASIC market for example, right? The ASIC guys are making these circuits for mining and then maintaining them themselves, using them, and then only releasing certain things at certain times and in limited quantities. I know you guys don't like manipulating markets or anything, but you want to decrease the likelihood that other people can do that. - Well, that and we just want to share the information. - Actually, what we want is to be free.

So, of all the tests that are being done now in this room, the results will be published on the Internet. Anyone can come and read it. - How do you make money doing that? As if he was looking at William. William breathes words like ray tracing and Octane, so how do you pay William and then make this profitable? - Certainly, there is a contingency of people who love to read all the articles we publish and become technology experts. But there are also a lot of people who don't want to have it, you shouldn't have to become a tech expert reading dozens and dozens of articles to decide what thing to pull off the shelf and buy.

So the service that we provide is that if you get it from us, all of that is integrated. Or if you don't want to buy from us, that's great too. You can go to our website, read all the articles, and come to the same conclusions we came to, but you would have to become an expert like us. -So you basically have black magic computer ninja warriors to hire, right? And people buy from you and have access to your brain. - Exactly, yes. And there is nothing secret or exclusive about what we do. We simply do the work and we are passionate about sharing it. - And it also allows us to show people that they don't have to come to us and take our word that we are selling them the right thing.

We have the data to back it up, you know? Whereas, again, if you go to Dell or HP, maybe they've done testing, maybe they haven't, I don't know, but unless they can actually show you that data, you just have to take their word for anything. The best hardware is. They may be right, they may be wrong. We can try it. - So, you are a computer testing engineer? - I guess. - What is your title? - Research and development of solutions. - We have to work on that. We gotta work on that, man. We got to work on these titles, man.

I was thinking black magic computer ninja warrior was pretty cool, so... - Black Magic is the company that makes some of the software we tested, actually. - Oh, yeah, I guess so, right? - Fusion and stuff. - Okay, so it's not black magic. Like dark arts or something. - They will sue us. (laughs) - Yes, fantastic. I noticed you have some RGB stuff here. Is that so important to you? - Nowadays it is very difficult not to get high quality components. A lot of the really nice things, especially the motherboards, are actually made for gamers and they put all this RGB and stuff in there, very high quality stuff, but yeah, they make it all flashy and most of it can be turned off at least. . - What do you think about that?

So you think when people are sequencing the genome or whatever they're doing, you don't think they need the disco ball in the back? - I think it depends on the person. I think some of those scientists think that way. I mean, they grew up in the '70s and stuff. But I mean, the most important thing is that, honestly, we're kind of boring boxes because they just sit on the floor or at the desk and just do what they have to do. And yeah, we don't do a ton of RGB or even liquid cooling was big a while ago.

So no, we don't do those things as much. If it's there, great, but a lot of times we just turn it off. - Then I see Lightroom going crazy in the background. Is this a Lightroom benchmark? - Yeah, yeah, that's comparing Lightroom right now. DaVinci Resolve, that's when it comes to color grading. It's not the prettiest current project because we're just testing things like in this one the power windows and the color grading and effects and things like that. But yeah, we do a full set of... - So this automatically goes through the benchmark? - Yes, he wrote the software that automates many of these tests.

Because a lot of times, for the type of work we do, there isn't an industry benchmark, so we create one. - Yes, because... And some of these we can make public. I think our Photoshop benchmark is public, you can download it. Some of them are much more temperamental. So Premiere Pro is probably one of the most temperamental ones because... - Amen. - It's not. (Laughs) The software itself doesn't crash very often. It's just not made to be automated in the way we are automating it. So even (mumbles) our timeline. - How are you doing this now?

Do you like to record mouse movements and clicks? - Basically, yes. It's mostly hardcoded, but it's different in each app. Like Lightroom has pretty decent scripts, so we can mainly use built-in scripts. This is DaVinci Resolve. It doesn't, but we know where things are supposed to be and we have to duplicate some steps to make sure it's always consistent. And on this one, we can't actually read what the FPS is. It will start playing in a moment. We can't read the FPS, but we can take a screenshot of just that area and then log them all and then do pixel checksums to determine exactly what that value was.

That's why it's very often annoying. - You make a pixel checksum and use it. It's like a cheap way to use computer vision. That's exactly what you're doing, right? - The precursor of machine learning. It's really poor machine learning. - Oh, wow. - But if. But we couldn't do all the testing we do without this automation. I mean, some of our benchmarks, like Lightroom and Photoshop, take about 20 minutes. DaVinci Resolve takes about 40. But like some of them, Premiere Pro, I think that's a six-hour benchmark that we're at right now. - So which one are you? What is your metric then?

Is your metric time? - It depends, it depends. In many things like Lightroom, like exporting photos, yes, time. DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro is often FPS or something like that. - What do you mean by FPS? - Frames per second. So if you have... - Yeah, I get it, but how can I use it to know how well it's working? - He'll basically let you know. So like in Premiere Pro, I know you run into this, you start playing your timeline and it gets very choppy. If it is a 24 FPS media and we can play it at 24 FPS,then you will know that there are no interruptions.

But if you're only getting 12 FPS, then you're basically skipping every other frame. Basically, that's just our metric for whether your system is able to keep up with different things. And again, as John said before, it totally depends on what you're doing. So just like in Premiere, we tried, I think it's like a dozen different codecs. We tried a lot of transitions or similar heavy effects. Lumetri Color and all that kind of stuff. - That's why I'm here. Then I run the Phantom. It's a high speed Phantom camera and we analyze the data and we have a video and then we usually apply some noise filtering software to it. - Yes, actually. - You got it? - Yes. - The file I sent you? - Yes. - Yes.

Did you give it to him? Thank you so much. That's why I'm in this room. So yeah, I have a problem where it takes me forever to edit this stuff, man. And then... - Yes, I looked at it. It's something great. - What file did I send you, the cannon shot? - You sent a cannon up close, it was like 1280 by 720 and then further out 1920. - Yeah. And you guys like Adobe Creative Cloud because they change every month or whatever now. - There are updates coming soon that will be even worse because they will no longer support Windows 7 and Windows 8 in the next version and all that other stuff, so things are constantly changing. - So you have to run the benchmark again? - Ah yes yes.

That's how we still have a job. - Actually? - We have a job because we have to constantly redo these things over and over again. - So, it's every time the hardware is updated or every time the software is updated. And when you put those two things together, it's an almost constant clip of something changing. - So you give your opinion to Adobe and tell them what they're screwing up? - Well, we don't say it like that, but yes. - Let me put it this way. Do you tell them when they make a mistake? - We have comments about it.

Just like on the hardware side, on the software side we have different levels of relationships with different vendors. Some are very, very receptive and love talking to us. Some we are still working on, we are still working on that relationship. Adobe specifically is very, every team is different, so I don't know what teams you're on, that you come across the most, but like Lightroom, After Effects, those are different teams that we deal with than Photoshop. - In general, do people recognize that you are trying to help their software work more efficiently? - I think in general. - And so people are very okay with that? - Or yes or yes. - So here's the deal.

So that's just playing, right? - Mm-hm, live playback. - Oh man. Yes, that's live playback. - Yes, it has Lumetri Color because it is normally very flat. - Good. Yeah, so the kind of thing that happens, do you see this granulation here? That's the noise that happens because the Phantom doesn't have an optical low pass filter, so we're going to go in and run this software called Neat Video. - Yes, in fact we downloaded the trial version. - Really? - There because we don't have a full license, but yeah, that's it. And yeah, man, that thing just, I don't think I even set it up correctly because it doesn't really do much, but yeah, it fragments.

But we looked at it and it's because it only uses one core. So, if we had... - You mean the software itself? - The software itself will only use a single core on the CPU. He jumps from side to side, so it's a little hard to see him there. That core is super high and that means you have to adapt it, if this was all you cared about was Neat Video, you'd want to get a CPU whose core count doesn't even matter. You just want that core to be as fast as possible. Now it's really difficult when you get into Premiere because, well, you're also applying Lumetri Color or you're doing transitions or you're playing other images at the same time, so it's the balance between all those different aspects. .

But there are also some things that simply can't run on multiple cores. It's just not possible because, like you're doing a bunch of calculations, you have to rely on the first bit of calculation, the result of that to execute the second bit and then the third. Some things are like that. CAD modeling is a good example of one of them. And this could be so. I mean, without being a Neat Video developer, there's no way for us to know. - So it is possible that acquiring a racehorse machine does not speed up that particular process? - No, probably not.

And in fact, this CP that we have here, is Intel's highest end consumer CPU, it has 18 cores. This is probably not as good as, say, a $500 CPU. Like today in the case of 8,700, it is only six cores instead of 18. - For this particular application. - For this one thing. - Actually? - Now it won't be so massive. It's going to be like, total assumption here, 10 or 15% faster, so like this live playback, it's going to keep moving forward. But you know, that might come into play if you're doing what I know you often like render previews for that to work.

That could end 10% faster and maybe be worth it to you. - Let me understand what just happened. You sell sophisticated machines with many cores. - Sometimes. Yeah that's right. - And I came to ask you for a machine and instead of telling me that the expensive machine is what I need, you just told me that the cheap machine is what I need? - It depends exactly on what you are doing and the balance between everything. Again, because you're doing a lot of different things, yeah. And again, it's all about well, you can sacrifice 5% here but you get 15% here or you sacrifice 10% here and you get 30% here.

It all depends entirely on what you are doing. - This is my only specific application here. Is this how you work with all your clients? They say this is what I'm doing, I kind of sent them that file and that video software and told them this is my problem. Is this what you do? You just sit in this room and... - Doing things at the client level, we do it for some of our clients depending on what they're doing and all that kind of stuff. But I want to say that we try to make our tests specific enough that we don't have to do them for every client.

Because if we already know the answer, great. For example, if you come to us and just say I'm doing in Premiere Pro, I work with 8K red footage and basically do Lumetri and basic adjustments. We already have the answer. We can tell them exactly what to do. - Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, this is what you do. This is the recipe. - Yes, exactly. - And we have to continue learning constantly. Like now that we have tested on your Neat Video, we now have knowledge in our company that Neat Video uses one or two cores and therefore the next person who comes to us and asks us about Neat Video, we now have the answer. - So how do you document everything you're learning? - Mm-hm. (laughs) - So, is that the problem that every engineering company has? - Probably.

We try to communicate it at least to the consulting and support staff because they are the people who are customer-facing. You know, so salespeople can help when a customer asks and support people can help if a customer from a year or two ago suddenly uses Neat Video and asks about it, they need to know that too. But it can be challenging to make sure everyone gets the right information and follow up on it to hire someone who wasn't at the meeting where we told everyone; we must make sure they know it too. Then it gets a little complicated. - In fact, yesterday we launched an LMS, a learning management system, that we use internally in the company and that is why we are publishing training, internal training, on video editing, engineering and scientific computing that all our employees go through. - Actually? - From the person who sells the computer to the person who packages it.

We have that knowledge throughout the company. - So you said that happened yesterday. - We launched it yesterday. We're not done. - Ah OK. So what problem do you think it will solve for you? - First of all, one of our passions is the customer experience that we provide and one of the ways we do that is that we need to know the language of our customers. That's why we believe that even beyond the technical point of view, understanding our clients' workflow and having that empathy and that vocabulary will enhance the entire experience we can provide. - So you are creating a culture. - Yes, a culture that is not about technology.

A culture that revolves around the work that technology does. - I have it, yes. Because that's how I found them. We were trying to analyze this software and it was getting stuck and we were very sad, so we started looking for solutions. And on their website they have a specific build designed for Adobe Premiere and that's how we found it. So I mean that's your bread and butter, right? - Yes, yes, absolutely. That's the way we approach it with all the applications we target. - That's great. - I think it would be great at some point to talk, like you want to talk about Moore's Law, and I think we should do that because it kind of clarifies a lot of what we're talking about here because before-- - Do you have a clean room? - Not precisely. - Is this the laboratory?

Are we in the laboratory? - Yes, I mean, this is a laboratory. But I could take you into the warehouse and you can see how we put things together and do the quality control and the imaging computers and all that. - Yes. Let's talk about Moore's law there. - Well. - That works? - Yes absolutely. - Yes. So you have CPU lying around? - Yes, well, right now because I'm on exchange. In that one I'm doing a lot of Lightroom testing for a thread ripper like AMD's big rig, but we have to do these benchmarks over and over again to test all these different CPUs.

So it will be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven Intel CPUs, I think like four AMD CPUs. But yes, you have to run that benchmark and change the CPU. - So there is a difference: do you take a statistically significant number or do you just test one CPU per benchmark? How do you do it? - The CPU usually doesn't change too much, so if you buy the 79 80 XE from Intel, they will generally all be within a few percent. Not enough to really... - And you know this because you've analyzed the data? - Yes Yes. Well, and we're actually starting to implement a lot of these benchmarks throughout our production process.

So in production right now, I know they're already running our Photoshop benchmark, so the same thing we're running here is running on every computer out there. And we have some like the rendering ones. Eventually we'll have After Effects, Premiere, and Lightroom so that, actually, every client machine, if you tell us it's running Premiere, we'll do this big six-hour benchmark in Premiere to make sure your computer is running exactly on line with what we expect from what they are doing. - You mean before you send it. - Before sending it. - Actually? - Because, I mean, there are strange things.

As if a Windows update could do something strange. A video card driver update could cause something strange. And if we catch it here, it means our customers won't have to deal with it themselves. - Oh, wow, because it has to do with, I don't know what the word is, the symbiosis between software and hardware? - Yes, and if something changes... - For the specific application. - Yes, and if something changes. And we have a great example of those RTX cards we talked about before. Very, very new and a lot of times there are little mistakes when something is very, very new and it was true.

In Photoshop, if I zoomed in on an image or used smart focus, I would get artifacts in the image. Like integrated into the image, not just on the screen. And so we actually know, so we know to tell customers to expect this or this will probably be fixed by a driver update and we'll let them know when it is or if you want us to hold your machine until there's a fix and we can resolve it. - Whether it is a software or hardware repair. - Yes, yes, whatever it takes to fix it. But we have that knowledge.

We can tell the client that so he doesn't understand, start using Photoshop immediately and a strange error will occur. They have already been warned. - Can I ask you a question that will make John feel weird? - Yes. - Clearly your brain is the most powerful thing in the company and your brain is the most powerful thing in the company. Why do you still work here? - I like it here. I've been here 17 years. - Actually? - Yes Yes. Because John is my older brother, so I started... - Oh, there you go, there's the answer. (laughs) There's the answer. -No, yes, I started working with John, I mean he was still in high school.

I think I was a junior in high school and I worked with Puget all through college and after college. Now it's been a while since college. - Did you graduate? - No. - Oh, okay, there's something familiar here, yeah. - Siblings,computer science and fun chemistry. But this is in the old days, when we made cluster nodes, cooling was a big problem, everyone was looking for how to do anything. John and the guys here did an oil immersion, submerged system. - Oh, everything was under water. So they sealed all the electronic components? - It's in a fish tank... - Did you do that? - We did, yes. - You basically waterproofed the pieces. - We didn't have to do it because we put it, it was in a fish tank but we submerged it in mineral oil which is not conductive, not capacitive, you just put your electronic components. - It worked? - It worked.

It worked. - Actually? - Uh-huh, and we did it for years. - That? - It was brilliant. I mean, it's not a practical solution, but now, I mean, you can go to some HPC data centers and they're actually doing things like that. There are all kinds of immersion cooling options, some incredibly wonderful... - That's like science fiction. - 3M stuff and stuff. We didn't need that and this was always a fun thing to do. But I remembered Puget Systems, and this was, when was that, John? - It must have been 2005 or something like that. - Yes, a long time ago, you know.

And every computer nerd in the world knew Puget Systems for doing that, like that was cool. And we all talk about it and think about it and things like that. So I came here and I'm looking for people to work with and good companies and that's, I gotta go and talk to the Puget guys and see what they're doing. - And they said yes? - And they said yes. And it's been great because I think we caught it at a really good time because we did so well with scientific computing and machine learning, all of that.

I mean, recently that's important and these things are right up my alley, so you know I was in the perfect position to do this and they were in the perfect position to have me on board to do it. So I'm having fun and everyone benefits. - That's great. - The company has benefited, the customers definitely benefit and... - You are going to do more science. - I can help my former colleagues and things like that. - Where did you teach? Did you teach something? - I did it a little bit. - Where did you go to school? - I got my PhD at WSU, Washington State, and I'm a great theoretical chemist there, Shuster.

I went from there and did research in a lab at the University of Arizona with (mumbles), who is wonderful and we did some really crazy things. I mean, yeah, this is some quantum mechanics stuff we did. A lot... - What about the optics? When will we stop using cables and start liking fibers? - In fact, it is already being done a little. - Yeah? - Yes. Well, okay, there is a lot. (laughs) If you get me going, you could really get me going. - Well, then answer it concisely. - That question, finally there is supercomputing, which I need to talk to you about, John, because I really want to do it again.

In the last Supercomputing, there was a startup there and they were using, what do you call that process? DLP chips in projectors? - Yes. - It's a great variety of massive videos. Actually, they were using it to calculate. - Actually? - Yes. It was surprisingly clever what they did, but it was actually literally optical computing. And what they could do was very limited, but what they could do was incredibly fast because they could basically calculate all of this at once. - Good. So how long until you guys here at Puget Systems have desktop quantum computers and optical computing methods here? - I think, especially in quantum computing, you know, the quantum processor thing, I know quantum mechanics and I know the weirdness of it.

And I look at what is being done. I haven't put in the time, I just haven't wanted to go down that rabbit hole, but I look at it and I have ideas that make total sense. How to take advantage of things like electron spin and spin states. This is essentially what they're actually doing, but you know, they have these (mumblings) and all that and they had to reduce things to almost absolute zero in order to do the computing. Practical solutions are probably five to ten years away, but we'll see. Because they are investing enormous amounts of brain and money into it. - Oh, yes, then it will happen. - It will happen. - Did you put an X on it? - Yes, X is the best way to spread thermal paste.

You can make a dot if it's a circular heatsink, but since they're square, you make an X so that no matter what you do, it expands from the center. It's like an extreme version of if you imagine you put a circle of thermal paste, you'll get like an air bubble right in the middle. So when you make an You just have to make sure you don't have too much. As long as you don't have too much, it spreads very well. and we swap CPUs, you know, 20+ times a day so we can see what it looks like after it's been extended many, many, many, many times.

That's definitely the best way to do it. And power switch. Power switch. I already turned it off before. - You turned it back on. - Yes, I turned it on again. (laughs) It didn't turn on, so it's okay. - So you pointed this out. That's a Mac, right? - Yeah, yeah, that's the high-end Mac Pro and it hasn't been updated since 2014, 2013? - Because I am here. - Yes, yes, exactly and that is why many of our clients come here. So yes, we have that one. We also bought the iMac Pro, I think it's actually also the top of the line, fully loaded because, yes, we have a lot of customers who are now using Macs but are thinking about moving to PC and I kind of want to know what the performance would be like. .. - Well, let me ask you this.

So I'm here because I feel like Apple might be losing its way because they no longer listen to customer needs. - I agree with that. I don't want to like Apple bashing because Apple does amazing things. - Okay, so we don't want to do this. We don't know, we don't want to talk about it. - No, I think it's fine. - I just don't want to criticize them. - Okay, so that's how it is. I edit this right here. I'm trying to edit on a MacBook Pro, right? It doesn't support 4K at all. So I bought an old one, you know the old Apple towers where you can put things on it? - Yes Yes.

Those are great. You can update them. - Yes, I bought one of those and I've been updating it but it no longer does what I need. Like I couldn't stand what you showed. It can't handle high speed camera timelines and stuff. - And I think a lot of our customers come to us to move from Mac to PC for a couple of different reasons and one of them is upgradeability. You know, you buy one of these new iMacs, I mean, they're incredible pieces of technology. Just like the engineering that is done is amazing. But let's say in the future you want to put more RAM because you were working with 1080P images and now you are working with 4K.

You can not do that. If you want to install a more powerful CPU in the future, you cannot do so. You want to install a more powerful video card, whatever, you can't do it. - So what you're doing in this room is you have processors and you combine them with certain types of graphics cards and hardware and then combined with different types of software, you get a certain result. And so the ability to be flexible and all that is important and now I can't do it on the Mac. - No, well, and on the Mac, a lot of the things we're running into is this is starting to get a little technical, but They only use AMD video cards or GPUs.

So it's just AMD and that's a big problem for a lot of things because CUDA is only in video and a lot of software works much better with CUDA. I mean there is some rendering software that is CUDA only, so you have to use a PC if you are going to do that. And to have that freedom with the PC, you can use AMD, you can use Nvidea, you can use whatever. Hey, you need FireWire, you don't need to use a dongle. We can insert a FireWire PCIE card and you're good to go. So, it's all about customization, upgradability, and simply performance.

I mean, if you have a budget of $6000, you'll get more performance out of a PC at that price. - Do you speak Mac fluently? - Do you speak Mac fluently? - You know what I'm trying to say. Are you able to use a Mac as your daily driver if you wish? - Could. Well, because we actually even have articles where we look at all the different applications we're targeting. Premiere, Pro, Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects. And we had to recreate all of our benchmarks on Mac. I even had to get into Apple scripts and all that. - Well, let me ask you this.

How do I know as a consumer that you're not telling me to use a PC with all these bells and whistles because of your confirmation bias, because you're more comfortable with it? How do I know that? - Well, some of that, I mean, some of that goes back to all the transparency. Then we can say trust us and you don't have to just trust us out of blind faith. - You have data is what you say. - Yes, we have data and we help people with things. So I'll even mention... Let's see, that's an article I'm working on.

Let's see, like here. So on our Premiere Pro page, we have a whole tab that says, are you moving from Mac to PC? And we try to address these are the common questions that people ask: What are the obstacles that come to mind? Especially in video, ProRes shows up all the time because you can't export to ProRes on Windows. So how do people solve that? What is the way to solve it? And just by presenting them all, here are the questions you probably have and here are the answers. And again, as we said before... - But my question is from a consumer, because you are

smarter

than me in this area.

It's just a fact. - Yes, it's just experience. - Yes, exactly. So in this particular area, how do I know that they aren't actively trying to push me towards these solutions? How do I know you're giving Apple versus PC a fair deal? - Well, I mean, the easiest way is to talk about performance. I mean, all the other things, a lot of them are personal opinions. But performance-wise, again I think we just publish all of our benchmarks and say here are the test files we used, here are the configurations we used, and here are the data we came up with.

We have open comments on our articles, so if people really disagree, they can speak up and we can discuss it and maybe, because maybe we're a little bit biased. I mean, I'm sure there's a little bit of that no matter how much we try to be as unbiased as possible. I mean, that's just not possible with human nature. So by leaving those things as open as possible, by allowing those conversations, I think that's how we convey that we're not trying to sell them something that's wrong. - So, do you perform the same comparative tests with Apple products? - Yes, and that's why we have those machines there, because we did that.

We did the iMac Pro when it came out and then we'll probably include them again when Intel makes a major update to the CPUs. That's not something we do all the time because our benchmarks aren't as automated, so it takes a lot more work to test Apple. But that's what we do when it makes sense. - I understand. But you don't need to do it frequently because they are not published frequently. - No, yeah, Apple doesn't release often, so it's really only when there's a major change to the PC, honestly, it'll almost always make the PC look even better because I mean, yeah, like you said, Apple doesn't update . - Because the update cycle is faster.

So just like the testing you're running today, have you run these same similar benchmarks on Apple? - Similar. I mean, our benchmarks are currently evolving as things change and all that, but yeah, very similar things. And then, like when the new Mac Pro comes out, which there's all the mystery about, when it comes out, we'll probably buy one of those and do the whole round. - So, a one sentence answer, devoid of emotions, a cold and hard answer from a test engineer. If I want to edit 4K at 60 frames per second right now, do I buy a Mac or a Puget Systems PC? - The PC will give you a lot more for your money.

That's probably the most direct way to say it. You can edit 4K on a Mac. You're going to pay more to do it. - Ok I have it. So you can do it, obviously they prefer Final Cut. - Yes, obviously. - Yes, but you can also run Premiere there, but Final Cut is more efficient or effective, you know? - Those are the areas where we stay away, simply because there are a lot of things when comparing software packages. It's not just like you have a clip, you load it and hit play, does it play? It's like all the things in your workflow and it's all your similar effects. - It's a more holistic question. - Yes, and normally we tend to feel like that's a little out of our ballpark.

Therefore, we do much less to tell people what software they should use, instead letting them- And there are hardware and software problems, then. - Actually? Cool. Thanks for your time, guys. I appreciate it. A very quick and true story here. When I was in fourth grade, we had this program at a local supermarket where, if we collected enough receipts, they would give you a computer in your classroom. And in fourth grade, Mr. Keenan was at the front of the room and he was opening the case of this new computer and in the back of the room, I had been watching Arsenio Hall when I was younger and I thought this is what Lo you did when you were excited because I remember watching it when my parents were watching it.

So at the back of the room I said hoo, hoo, hoo, like that and I still remember Mr. Keenan turning around. He was a preacher on the weekends but he turned around, he asks who did that? And it was me. And he said out in the hall, young man, and he beat me up. I got rowed for being so excited about a computer and I remember while he was rowing he said, "I feel bad that I have to do this because this is one of my best students." So, all of that to say that computers are really cool when you unbox them and I mean, clearly, that's a formative time in my childhood, but I realized that my kids haven't had that experience because they've always been laptops for them, iPads and stuff. in your life or tablets, whatever it is.

So when the computer arrived from Puget Systems, I wanted them to be there to help me unpack and set up the computer because it is a complete desktop machine. I don't know, it's a workstation and they've never seen that. So it was really fun to see my son's face light up when he turns this thing on. It's just a really cool moment, something that reminded me of my childhood. I don't know why but he made me feel things. You've never seen a computer open, right? - No sir. - Look at this. - Why is it in such a big box if it's just a computer? - How big is the computer? - Because it's like the real deal.

Have you never seen... - How big is it? - It's in that box, we have to open it. Do you want to help? So when I was a kid you had to specify everything you wanted on your computer and it could make it fast or slow depending on if you had it, that's not sharp enough. And this, you used to get really excited when Pawpaw opened a new computer, but I haven't done that. Have you ever seen a new computer open? - No sir. - Has? - No sir. - Remove the top of the box and gently turn it over. - And then pick it up, what does it say? - Pull it up. - Oh, is it going to fall? - I understand. - This is the background. - This is the background. - Oh, look at that. - This says take everything off. - Did you put this in the transmogrifier? - Oh, (mumbles). - Do you know what that looks like? - That? - That looks like sleeping. - Does that mean you'll be able to dine with us much longer? - Yes. - Enter like this. - Yes. - You have the honor.

Who will do it? - Do it? -Who is going to press the button? - What button? (beep) - Is it working? They said it's super quiet. Does it look like it's going? - The fan is back here. - Huh? - The fan is back here. - I can't even hear it, can you? - No. - Can you hear it? - No sir. - It may be in capital letters. - That's the license agreement. You're supposed to read it in its entirety. - Is it going to take a long time? - Go ahead and click accept. - Well, I don't have to read it. - Hi to you too. - We are preparing everything for you, dad.

It may take several minutes. - Should we go eat? Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day here on the second channel. I want to thank Puget Systems for allowing me to come see the plant and all that good stuff. The reason I turned to them in the first place is that I was looking for a specific hardware application for my software needs. They have a website that details all of that for very different versions, like a Twitch streamer or whatever. That's below in a link in the video description. Don't hesitate to check it out.

I guess that's all. Thank you for watching this full video. That's pretty amazing. Feel free to subscribe to the second channel if you like that kind of thing. If not, it's not a big deal. I'm Destin and I'm getting

smarter

every day. Have a good. Bye bye.