Updated NI-x100 OS
PhreaK
Posts: 966
in AMX Hardware
Again, living vicariously through those of you at InfoComm - any extended news on the new NI-x100 OS?
LDAP integration is extremely sexy - any demo's of it and what's actually controllable (or is it just user/pass auth)?
What's in the "new logging functions"? Are we talking a syslog implementation or something else?
Also yay for increased performance and decreased overheads, always the sign of an update in the right direction
LDAP integration is extremely sexy - any demo's of it and what's actually controllable (or is it just user/pass auth)?
What's in the "new logging functions"? Are we talking a syslog implementation or something else?
Also yay for increased performance and decreased overheads, always the sign of an update in the right direction
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Single-sign-on services and the like. Commercial... massive remote authorization stuff.
You and me both John.
We run out of RAM in our biggest systems, over 40 rooms with over 24 panels with Security, KSCAPE, ipod docs, DMS support, intercoms, phone SIP... and have to start picking what gets less so something gets more.
AMX product management gave us a prototype 3100 sample with 4x the memory to test last year. It rocked. We could do 150 rooms with 100 panels in ONE master (probably more, fast too!). Not that you would, but you could. SO THEY KNOW THEY CAN DO IT... THEY DID IT. They decided not to produce it, yet anyway, due to perceived lack of demand.
It's a board-level change so it isn't cheap to do without volume (the parts aren't much, it's a production change issue). And the OS architecture limits the increase to 256meg max. But that's HUGE next to the 64m we now share with the OS.
For the big jobs, our customers would be happier to pay even another $1K in hardware than to have to trim back on rooms or panels. AMX told us they would build them if there were demand. They say more memory isn't asked for much, so it's not a priority. We've been trying to drum up some ASKING. Write your rep and ask him/her to forward it to product management. If we don't ask, they don't know we need it/want it/would pay for it. If it were made standard, it might add under $100, maybe even less. If it has to be a separate part/line, it has all sorts of extra costs. Maybe just add it to one model as standard, like a 4100? I would be happy to get it in any format.
Anyway, what do you need? Let them know.
When you're managing a few hundred (or more) masters (govt., education, large commercial etc) its extremely nice to have your access control centralized so that passwords can be rotated etc without having to manually update account settings on each individual box.
As much as I want to try and stay away from the 'AMX is just a massive company out there to screw over all moving objects' vibe that has been appearing on a few threads recently it easy to see why the masters have their current memory capacities. 64mb (well minus OS) is a hell of a lot of 1 and 0's. The stuff that takes place on the majority of the box's is not exactly rocket science or memory intensive computation. So for the most part a lot of systems wouldn't be anywhere near approaching current limits. On more complex systems, something such as John's example, it is much easier for them to 'suggest' you just purchase another master and distribute the load rather than modify their manufacturing process. That being said though it's going to be interesting to see how much the OS memory footprint has been reduced by, and most importantly if the NI-x000's are going to reap the benefits of this as well.
It depends on the programming. 64 MB is not a lot of memory these days, if you want to build structures and databases etc and keep it all in memory while also scraping websites and doing other chores. Since you can't have too much memory, more would be nice and 64MB seems a little parsimonious to me. I wonder if it is upgradeable to a larger memory chip?
Paul
Nope. Per AMX product management, it's not ordinary cheap style ram, its some kind of active memory and is surface mounted on the motherboard. Even so it isn't "expensive", it's the production change that costs.
Think also that 64mb minus OS must be shared between Netlinx and Duet module (using the command "SET DUET"): if you use heavy Java modules you have to reserve up to 20MB, leaving 20 (or less) MB for Netlinx.
As said a_riot42, if you have many structure in your program and module like Kaleidescape or Request ones, the memory can be filled very fast.
Paul
Same here, I would love to have more memory across the board, or at least an option for a processor with more memory. Those Duet modules eat up a ton of memory.