Machine Learning/Object Detection PC Specs
Machine Learning/Object Detection PC Specs
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Discussion

GrizzlyBear

Original Poster:

1,108 posts

165 months

Sunday 25th April 2021
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Just wondering if anyone had any experience of this?

I am looking to Spec up a PC act as the training PC.
Minimum i7 Probably 10th Gen, maybe an i9 if the bit coin miners haven't bought them all .
32GB RAM (DDR4 probably)
GPU is almost a necessity for quick running (it should be running in real time eventually) so probably at least a 12GB Nvidia.
Obviously, there is the option of looking for a spec equivalent to the Tensor book, but I would rather understand the choice rather than going in partially sighted.

It will be used as a Label reader just to prove the technology in a single location (yes, I agree there are easier ways), the reason we are going down this route is... in the long term it will be linked into the product release standards; packaging, labelling etc.

I will be using Tensor Flow (probably Win10) although speaking to a few people Linux may be more stable?

I understand that we are almost looking at effectively a good spec gaming PC, but as it is Object detection rather than gaming, are any chip sets better than others for this application?

At the moment it will be just in one location, but as we progress we may need to adapt it into other locations so there may be several models to cope with the varying environments and challenges. As I get each model sorted, I will probably moving them to a server; freeing up the training PC for new and exciting projects!

There is no worry that if it doesn't work we have a high spec PC hanging around doing nothing, I will need to lock it away and access remotely as there are so many people salivating at the possibility!

Your thoughts?

mikef

6,158 posts

281 months

Sunday 25th April 2021
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AWS, GC or Azure all offer specialised ML environments We have a couple of hundred data scientists and wouldn’t think of doing ML on a desktop

biggiles

2,174 posts

255 months

Sunday 25th April 2021
quotequote all
mikef said:
AWS, GC or Azure all offer specialised ML environments We have a couple of hundred data scientists and wouldn’t think of doing ML on a desktop
Agreed, a desktop isn't the place to do it. Cloud environments will save you so much time (especially if you are still not decided on points such as Win10 vs Linux).

If you *must* be on-premise, then look at server hardware, not desktop.

GrizzlyBear

Original Poster:

1,108 posts

165 months

Sunday 25th April 2021
quotequote all
biggiles said:
mikef said:
AWS, GC or Azure all offer specialised ML environments We have a couple of hundred data scientists and wouldn’t think of doing ML on a desktop
Agreed, a desktop isn't the place to do it. Cloud environments will save you so much time (especially if you are still not decided on points such as Win10 vs Linux).

If you *must* be on-premise, then look at server hardware, not desktop.
The overlords of IT have said "No" to the Cloud solution, that was my first choice and I could have been progressing the project by now rather than arguing with IT, so that option is now dead.

Thanks for the advice; it's appreciated thumbup.

rxe

6,700 posts

133 months

Monday 26th April 2021
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I read your intro and thought “duh, AWS”, you have my sympathies on the restrictions. Stuff like Rekognition is incredibly clever and easy to use, I had my son using it for his class project ...

Indeed, you want as good a gaming PC as you can get, minus the light show. I would go large on the memory - probably 64 GB or more which will narrow the motherboard choice a bit. You’re going to end up wanting to run VMs on it at some stage, and then all your memory will vanish. And good luck getting a graphics card - my old 1660TI is now apparently worth more than I paid for it.

mikef

6,158 posts

281 months

Monday 26th April 2021
quotequote all
Indeed. I attended some good sessions at the last real life AWS:Reinvent in Vegas:
I also attended an interesting hands-on session on training a large set of images of damaged cars, for use in assessing insurance claims, but can't find a link to that

All sessions linked here: http://aws-reinvent-audio.s3-website.us-east-2.ama...

Maybe time to look for new Overlords of IT if ML is your thing?

biggiles

2,174 posts

255 months

Monday 26th April 2021
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GrizzlyBear said:
biggiles said:
mikef said:
AWS, GC or Azure all offer specialised ML environments We have a couple of hundred data scientists and wouldn’t think of doing ML on a desktop
Agreed, a desktop isn't the place to do it. Cloud environments will save you so much time (especially if you are still not decided on points such as Win10 vs Linux).

If you *must* be on-premise, then look at server hardware, not desktop.
The overlords of IT have said "No" to the Cloud solution, that was my first choice and I could have been progressing the project by now rather than arguing with IT, so that option is now dead.

Thanks for the advice; it's appreciated thumbup.
"Push back" on them?? It's cheaper and generally more secure than your on-premise IT. Very few firms "nowadays" have a reasonable excuse to say "no Cloud". Even governments and Swiss banks use cloud now. Maybe MI5 doesn't.
Perhaps when they see the capital cost of an AI-spec server they might reconsider their decision.

mmm-five

12,388 posts

314 months

Monday 26th April 2021
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Show them this Nvidia DGX A100 'PC' and I'm sure they'll suggest AWS is better solution.

wink



Edited by mmm-five on Monday 26th April 14:49

mikef

6,158 posts

281 months

Monday 26th April 2021
quotequote all
mmm-five said:
Show them this Nvidia DGX A100 'PC' and I'm sure they'll suggest AWS is better solution
Yeah, do it.

The cloud environments are not dissimilar, but you only spin up as big a cluster as you need (Databricks etc handles that) and for as long as the training job runs

Glade

4,516 posts

253 months

Monday 26th April 2021
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Are they different parts/ labels every time?

Damaged labels or freshly applied?

I worked in a factory who built their own optical defect detection systems and I don't think the hardware was that flash... but it was programmed to do one job. Towards the end I am sure that cameras were available with what we were doing on PC on the camera itself which would trigger the eject mechanism rather than the pc.

I must be be behind the times, but if the labels are consistent and fresh why is ML required? I can imagine that you teach it defects and after a while it makes it's own decision on what to accept rather than a pre-determined blob size and greyscale value.

We'd typically take a photo of a part, different parts had different strobe intensity, maybe an infra red setup for certain items. Potentially create a binary filter to expose defects. Then locate a feature to align the thing, then look for blobs of pixels outside an agreed darkness/size to detect a defect, or search a certain area with a text recognition tool, number of blobs within certain region etc.

Actually thinking about it... training it rather than programming it would probably be a dream!!

mikef

6,158 posts

281 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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Glade said:
Are they different parts/ labels every time?

Damaged labels or fresh
Ah, I had assumed that The OP was referring to labelling in the Machine Learning sense...

https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/groundtruth/what-...

h0b0

9,084 posts

226 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
quotequote all
biggiles said:
"Push back" on them?? It's cheaper and generally more secure than your on-premise IT. Very few firms "nowadays" have a reasonable excuse to say "no Cloud". Even governments and Swiss banks use cloud now. Maybe MI5 doesn't.
Perhaps when they see the capital cost of an AI-spec server they might reconsider their decision.
CIA is on AWS

Glade

4,516 posts

253 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
quotequote all
mikef said:
Glade said:
Are they different parts/ labels every time?

Damaged labels or fresh
Ah, I had assumed that The OP was referring to labelling in the Machine Learning sense...

https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/groundtruth/what-...
ah, lol... I saw the words "labels" and product release specifications, packaging and labels - and imagined boxes being labelled and stacked on a pallet on a production line, then photographed and verified as correct.

Edited by Glade on Tuesday 27th April 22:31

maffski

1,905 posts

189 months

Wednesday 28th April 2021
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Why not suggest cloud for development & evaluation - which should appeal to the accountants.

If you get everything working the on-site guys then have to justify the cost and time for their preference.

GrizzlyBear

Original Poster:

1,108 posts

165 months

Saturday 8th May 2021
quotequote all
Sorry, that wasn't thinking, they are printed labels, print quality is consistent (I won't even consider it until easy fixes like that are sorted), label placement is not so consistent, package size varies. I have suggested several cheaper (and potentially easier) solutions), but they have their hearts set on a object detection solution, OK your money.

I suspect their desire for Object detection solution is for it to be expanded into automated quality checks etc in time, which would make sense.

maffski said:
Why not suggest cloud for development & evaluation - which should appeal to the accountants.
You would think that wouldn't you, and especially as the accountants know me. I would also prefer the cloud as if the project falls on its face; when I get dragged onto another project, we don't have an asset gathering dust... oh well not my money!

biggiles said:
"Push back" on them?? It's cheaper and generally more secure than your on-premise IT. Very few firms "nowadays" have a reasonable excuse to say "no Cloud". Even governments and Swiss banks use cloud now. Maybe MI5 doesn't.
Perhaps when they see the capital cost of an AI-spec server they might reconsider their decision.
I agree, went right to the top and the decision was "no cloud please, but make it happen" so pick your battles Mr Bear, and get all the decisions in writing to cover your acensorede.

Looks like things are starting to come together, so we will see how it goes. Thanks for all your support, 5 years of stress here we come.byebye


Glade

4,516 posts

253 months

Saturday 8th May 2021
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Would a system like this work?

https://www.keyence.co.uk/products/vision/vision-s...

I have just been browsing their CX-V catalogue and the tech has come on a lot since I was using it... they even have their own auto learning feature.

https://www.keyence.co.uk/products/vision/vision-s...

If it's physical part/label inspection this type of thing is tried and tested technology - not sure what the benefit of developing your own machine learning is... especially if the label print is not ambiguous. (And even if it was a more traditional vision system could manage it).

Edited by Glade on Saturday 8th May 22:34

rustyuk

4,725 posts

241 months

Saturday 8th May 2021
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You need someone with experience in building Ml solutions rather than focus on the machine specification.

Training a model and running a model are two totally different things and usually executed on different kit.