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Welcome aboard the System76 Transmission Log. The space station orbiting the Linux computer manufacturer, System76: home to handcrafted Open Source hardware and the makers of Pop!_OS.
You.
3210.
Welcome aboard the system
76 transmission log.
Our broadcast is about to begin.
This is the latest on System 76 computers
may manufacturing and popos
now for your inorbit crew.
Thank you for joining us aboard our
pretend spaceship for this
month's dose of System 76 news.
I'm Emma.
And I'm Alex.
So we went to a marketing summit recently.
Emma, what was that all about?
Well, we got to learn all about cosmic,
and we got to see Carl present all the new
features and some of the
coolest selling points.
And Maria was there showing
off all her incredible designs.
Maria is head of UX for the
cosmic team and the company.
Yes, we have a UX designer
because usability matters.
But that wasn't all we did.
We went out for karaoke afterwards,
and Alex was our top
performer of the night.
Somehow I ended up getting song after song
after song, and probably because
I requested a lot of didn't.
I think I requested maybe two
of the songs, but I ended up
singing a lot of them as well.
So it was actually really
fun and we had a great time.
Yeah.
Andrina, our designer, was in from Texas.
It was good to see her, so.
We had to party Hardy
while she was in town.
Hardy.
Hardy.
Yeah.
Love it.
Let's jump into some hardware news.
So our desktops got updated
recently with the new Nvidia GPUs.
It's the 40 series super.
So Thalio got the 40 70 Super,
Thalio Mira got the 40 70 Ti,
and Thalio major got the 40 80 Super.
40 70 Ti Super.
Forgot the super.
There's a lot of modifiers on that number,
and those are available
in custom configurations.
With Thaliomira.
You can also get the Thaliomira Elite,
which is sort of the top tier
configuration for that desktop.
And that'll come with the 40 70 Ti super.
And I heard we did some
benchmarking on those cards.
And the 40 70 super seemed to be
higher performing,
more so than the other super cards,
but definitely had some noticeable changes
in performance between the non
supervariant of that model.
Yeah, in terms of performance improvement
from its counterpart,
it's gone up quite a bit.
I think it's about 20% more powerful
is what I've heard in the ether.
Nice.
And we tested it in cyberpunk, and we were
getting 100 frames per second or more.
So even in ray tracing.
And that one got about a 16%
frames boost from what we saw.
So, pretty cool.
Cool.
And how about on the laptop front?
On the laptops, we recently
released the new bonobo Ws.
And servalws laptops.
Those are our high end laptops.
They got a new Intel CPU, the one 4900 HX.
Very powerful machines.
The bonobo has two K
and 4K resolution options.
And Servalws has one thousand and eighty
P, two K and four K to choose from.
And there's more on the way pretty soon.
Yes, the new adder Ws is in the powerful
laptops category as well.
And she will be coming soon.
And that laptop is one
powerful and sexy little beast.
I can't wait for the debut.
And as a little tease, we're working
on the Lemur Pro and Oryx Pro after that.
I think that was a secret, Alex.
We don't really do secrets all that well.
I don't know if you noticed,
we're kind of an open source company.
Mostly.
This is true.
Okay.
All right, well, thanks for updating
us on the hardware news, Alex.
Let's jump into what's happening
with the software side of things.
All right, well, back on cosmic.
So with cosmic text, there's
a new shape run cache feature.
This feature is a text
shaping optimization.
Text shaping, for those of you who don't
know, basically determines where to place
like a letter or number character,
depending on what came before it,
so that it's more neat and legible.
So the shape run cache feature basically
caches the shaping operations so
that the next time an I comes after a T,
it remembers how to space that out.
So that ends up increasing
the frame rates within the terminal.
And we put out some designs
for the OSDs on screen displays.
Those are the things you see when you
adjust things like volume,
brightness, turn on airplane mode.
Those are pretty cool.
You can find them
in the February cosmic blog.
We probably just put out the March 1,
by the time this comes out.
So there's going to be a bunch of new
goodies in that, including, potentially,
designs for cosmic files, the new file
system, and finishing touches on cosmic.
Edit, the text editor and cosmic terminal.
So be on the lookout.
Grab your telescope and your crow's nest,
and when you see it land.
Go Landho.
What I think he means to say is you should
check out the blog at blog system
76 dot for more updates on Cosmic.
Yeah, I'd be knowing what I said.
Side note, the pop and cosmic
community is just awesome.
We just love people making these cosmic
videos, showing off features
and explaining all the new
customizations you can do.
If you subscribe to our newsletter,
our monthly newsletter, we put all
of them in a compilation at the bottom.
So we are sharing those community efforts
that you guys are putting out there,
and we just want to keep seeing more.
And we love what you guys
are doing, so keep it up.
Yeah, it's pretty cool to see the nyx
community also adding cosmic pieces
to the OS as we're finishing them.
Pretty much, yes.
And I think fedora even had
mentioned packaging it as well.
So we're interested to see which other
distros pick up our desktop environment.
That's exciting.
Another community thing.
Carl, our founder,
is going to be at Linux Fest Northwest
in Bellingham April 27,
speaking about cosmic in a presentation
called Mink Cosmic de so definitely
check it out if you're in the area.
And also that same night,
we'll be having an epic system 76 Jupiter
broadcasting meetup in the parking lot
of the Bellingham technical college.
And I'll be there.
What do you think cosmic de would be
like as a person if you were to meet?
Oh, that's a tough question.
Like a floating.
They'd be, ooh, so like
a shaman kind of thing.
Just always levitating.
Yeah, something levitating.
That's awesome.
Blue and sparkly.
Blue and sparkly levitating person.
Would they be wearing a penguin suit?
No, you heard it here, folks.
We should get a sketch
artist to design that.
So thanks for listening up to this point.
That's it for the regular podcast segment.
Emma, we have an interview
guest with us today.
We do.
It is Brandon from streaming Global,
and he's here to talk with us about their
media delivery systems
running on system 76 hardware.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
We're really happy to have you.
Can you tell us a little bit about
streaming global and who you
guys are and what you're about?
Sure.
Absolutely.
So the company has been around since 2018.
We're a privately held software company,
and our focus has been really
the transport of a variety
of different things across IP networks.
So that could be media and entertainment
content, like streaming
services that you would watch.
We can provide a transport,
and we have a product for that called
SG Modern, which stands for media data,
real time networking.
And then we also have a transfer
product, which we call SGX.
And that's for when you have a need
to move large, complex data sets
from one part of the planet to another.
That's where we have leveraged
the streaming methodology to be able
to move those kinds of data volumes.
And then the last one,
which is where system 76 is really helping
us out a lot, is in an area
of interactive or immersive experiences.
Some people are calling them like spatial
commerce, where you could go to a website
and be able to purchase goods,
but you're doing it through like a virtual
storefront where maybe you're building
an avatar or
you're going to buy a Ferrari and you're
going to configure exactly what color you
want and you can get into the driver's
seat and your salesperson might
be sitting in the passenger seat.
And
where we use system 76 servers
in that instance with GPUs that are loaded
in them, puts us in a position to be able
to respond to the scale demand
that customers would have
while being able to have a global
footprint across our data center.
So we're a small company headquartered
in the Atlanta, Georgia area,
and I've been with a company
for about three and a half years.
I joined in the summer of 2020.
And my responsibility and role is I'm
the head of strategy,
the chief revenue officer.
So everything, sales and marketing
kind of rolls up through me too.
Cool.
What is the core technology behind your
media delivery system, and how does
it differ from traditional solutions?
Yeah, so if we focus on exactly where
system 76 is helping, it's in that SGRT
product and RT standing for real time.
We have a baseline software foundation
that enables what's
called pixel streaming.
Okay, so if you think about the game
engines that are available in the market
today, Unreal Engine is the market leader.
There's another company called Unity.
And when you think about video game
development, you're now starting to see
that move into other
forms of content, right?
Whether it's corporate training or
the spatial commerce that we talked about,
it could be content management solutions.
And so people use unreal engine or unity
to be able to create
this immersive content.
But what you want to do to make sure it
gets to the most broad audience is
that you don't want to have
the end user to rely on
their own device to have these really high
photorealistic,
high fidelity content, right?
So what you do is you use a server
infrastructure and then you stream
the pixels from the game engine
to the user's device,
whether that's mobile desktop or
VR headset, or even a game console.
And so where system 76 helps us is
that they build out very specific custom
servers because there's a real market
demand and need for companies to be
able to scale these experiences.
So let's say that Nike is going to do
a big campaign and they're going to drop
some of these digital assets
as part of a campaign.
And they think that they could get 500,
000 people to show up
to check out this experience.
The challenge is if you use cloud
resources, like virtual machines that are
assigning a GPU, you have a one to one
relationship between that server
and the GPU and the user.
The average cost in the market today
for cloud resources for that type of
experience is a dollar per hour per user.
So if Nike says, hey,
we got a half a million people that can
show up, well, you would actually have
a cost of $500,000 an hour to deliver
that experience using the pixel
streaming offering in the market today.
So what we've done with System 76 is build
out these high power servers
with multiple GPUs in them.
And then we've invented a way to be able
to have multiple users on a single GPU.
We call that GPU multitenancy.
And so now instead of only one to one
server to user, we actually
can get on a dual GPU.
We could get 18 users.
Right, so nine tenants per GPU.
Well, that dramatically changes the unit
economics so that these companies
that want to have these really immersive,
high fidelity photorealistic campaigns can
actually achieve scale,
because the data doesn't lie in terms
of these users getting
into these experiences.
They spend a lot of time.
I mean, you're cruising around looking
at a variety of different products.
Or maybe we're working with the
Atlanta Braves, as an example.
They created a digital twin of their
baseball park here in Atlanta.
And so if I'm a fan, I can run the bases.
I can go to Q A with the front
office or maybe some players.
But you have to make sure you have both
the hardware infrastructure and software
to be able to deliver those kinds
of experiences in a cost effective
and reliable and performant way.
So how does SGRT play into all
that with the pixel streaming?
Yeah,
instead of having to download a big file,
for example, you're basically streaming
the pixels of these experiences, right?
So just imagine a car,
and as you move around the experience,
then the lighting and the shading,
you want it to look as if you're
right there and you're in it.
And the only way that you're able to do
that is if you pixel
stream that actual content.
And that's what SGRT does.
It creates the transport from the system
76 server environment, right,
where we've got that housed at a global
footprint of data centers,
and then pushes that to the user through
just a browser like we're using today,
or a mobile device, or a VR headset or
whatever the end client device would be.
Cool.
Are there specific industries or sectors
like education, gaming, entertainment,
where you see your technology
having the most impact.
I think that where you're seeing,
and we're early dates, right?
I mean, when these kinds of experiences
first came about,
there was a use that's almost become
a little bit of a taboo word out
there now, which is metaverse.
Right?
And so there was a lot of different
definitions of what the metaverse
was, is, and could be.
I think that when it first came out a few
years ago, it was all about social spaces.
And now what you're seeing is that there's
some really great experiences that can be
built with all of these tools,
like unreal engine unity.
There's agencies that are spending all
day, every day, building out this awesome,
really impressive content.
But then how can you best
monetize that, right?
You don't want just something that's
really cool, but then you don't actually
be able to point to how
that helps your business.
And so we're seeing a decent amount
of use in that spatial commerce use case.
Right?
So I'm going into a virtual
environment, maybe.
I'm looking at the new
campaign of Sephora, right?
Sephora just released what's called
the Sephora universe on a limited basis.
So you could do, like,
a virtual makeup tryon, as an example.
You build an avatar, you're like,
maybe this color would work, or whatever.
But the automotive industry, we've seen a
significant amount of investment in that.
They're doing that in
partnership with Epic Games.
And because Epic Games owns Unreal Engine.
And so instead of just going to a website
today, and I kind of picked my model and I
picked the color and maybe what the trim
looks like, and it shows me
a bunch of flat 2D pictures.
Now I'm able to actually
go into a virtual showroom.
I'm walking around, I'm looking
at all the different angles.
I can step into the car,
I can look at the trunk space.
And so I still think that's kind of still
in that spatial commerce type of use case,
there's definitely going to continue to be
a significant amount of investment
in corporate training.
And when you think about a large employee
base, I mean, the example one that one
of our strategic partners is working
with today is Emirates Airlines.
And so they have 100,000 employees,
and they'll build out these training
modules, whether it's for customer service
staff or for flight attendants,
or it could even be regulated types
of training that's required for,
say, maintenance or pilots.
And so we're seeing quite a bit of that.
We were on a call last week where Target
stores use unreal engine and build out
these things when they're looking
for the next season rollout of how
they want to configure the store.
So you're imagining and trying
to determine what that customer
experience is going to be.
And then the content management one,
I think, is really coming about.
I mean, you see some of these consumer
brands that if they'd like to have a real
live view, rather than just go
to an internal website and get a download
of what the right kind of colors are
for a particular campaign so that they can
put that label on the outside of a drink.
You're seeing people build those out
in those game engines,
like an unreal or unity,
so that those agencies know exactly what
it is that that end product will look
like, rather than kind of guessing
on what the vision would be.
So those are the main use cases
that we're seeing today for SGRT.
It's kind of cool to know the technology
behind those things on the websites where
you're putting the accent on your car
in real time and the makeup
on your face in real time.
That's right.
So thanks for sharing that.
What are some advancements in streaming
tech that streaming global foresees,
and how does streaming
global prepare for these?
That's a really good mean.
I think at the end of the day,
as a software company,
especially with a deep bench strength
that we have in our engineering team,
is you always need to be innovating.
Right?
I mean, the adage out there that always
talked about the hockey player
Wayne Gretzky, as to why he was a Hall
of Famer and maybe the best to ever play
the game is that he would always skate
to where the puck was going
to be rather than where it was.
And I think as a software company and as
a business, we're trying
to anticipate where exactly that goes.
And I think from a streaming standpoint,
you can look at it in a
couple of different ways.
I mean, you can look at it as far as
the streaming video,
and we're all very familiar with that,
whether it's using a platform like this
for a podcast or
Zoom on a conference call, or
going to a Netflix or an Amazon
prime to consume video.
There's a variety of different kinds.
But at the end of the day,
you're just wanting to make sure that
the customer experience is always better.
And is there an opportunity to be able
to enhance that through add on technology?
I mean, maybe
know being able to have side by side
streams, you're starting to see
that with some of the sports sites today.
And our job as a company is not.
We don't do like the front end delivery
or the monetization.
We don't build products that would
help customers monetize that.
We integrate with those.
But ours is to figure out how you go
from that source of where the content lies
to where the user needs to do it and how
quickly and reliably and what's the best,
not only performance,
but visual quality that they can get.
And I think consumers are just going to
continue to demand that on the data side.
And this is probably a two year old stat,
but the comment was, every year
the amount of world's data doubles.
Right?
So if I'm using these tools that enable
me, because my computer,
even though I just have a laptop,
I can have terabytes of content, right?
How do I actually move that content
from the place where I'm working on it
to where it needs to go from a
business requirement standpoint?
And I think being able to have tools
like that are really important.
One thing that we're seeing and that we
feel is a real opportunity for our company
is that instead of services out there,
which I would call a publish and pull
model, like Dropbox, right,
I can publish a file,
but then the person that I want to have
review it can go up and pull it,
and there's some synchronization
that happens there.
I think you're going to see a lot more
advancements in the streaming of data that
will just make it that much more reliant.
Not only reliable,
but it'll basically stream just like
you would stream a piece of video.
And if you have a network hiccup or you
lose connectivity, then to be able to make
sure that it just picks up right where you
left off, rather than
having to restart it again.
And can you share a success story where
streaming global significantly impacted
a client's ability to deliver content?
I wish I could.
I don't mean to be cagey or anything like
that, but the one thing I probably should
have mentioned with our customer base is
that it's a little bit segregated
in that we work with consumer customers.
Atlanta Braves will be,
that won't start until after opening day,
but we also do a lot of government work.
And so given the sensitive nature of those
kinds of projects,
I'd love to be able to share with you,
but that, unfortunately, is just
a little too classified, if you will.
Okay, no problem.
And what led to your decision
to choose System 76 for hardware?
I think like a lot of things in business,
it's a little bit relationship driven.
Right.
So some of an executive on our team that
has a technical operations background.
Our director of technical operations
is close to system 76 in Denver.
He actually lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
So just a couple of hours away and had
partnered with Sam and the team previously
with a previous company that he had.
So it was that relationship equity,
the history of system 76 being able
to deliver unparalleled service as well as
great products that put them
in the shortlist for us to work with them.
Cool.
And are there any other things that you'd
like to touch on about
streaming global before we go?
I think that maybe my parting shot would
just be that it's really going to be
fascinating to watch where this business
goes in the next three to five years,
specifically with that product
line that we have, SGRT.
And is it going to be so much more
commonplace that you have these immersive
experiences rather than you and I just
going to a website and seeing like a 2D
photo like you would see on Amazon or
whatever, and you're purchasing a product.
How much more time is going to go
by before we actually go into those kinds
of experiences and you're trying something
on virtually and you're creating an avatar
that is right specific
to your capabilities.
And I know it's early days with generative
AI, but I think it's only just going
to make it that much more accurate so
that hopefully we aren't in a position
where we have to return items that don't
fit or don't look like the way we thought
they should when we purchased the item.
And I also think that corporate training,
customer training piece,
there is so much data that suggests
that the more that you interact
with something, like maybe you set up
a scenario where you are
interacting with another person,
even if it's an AI generated person,
if that would just help you learn
that much more the topic
that you're working through.
Right.
Rather than having to review a PowerPoint
slide or even just listen to a speaker.
Right.
So I think the more immersive
the experience,
then the higher rate of retention
and engagement you get from the user.
And our technology enables that to happen.
That's really cool.
I agree, too.
Well, thank you so much
for joining us today.
We really appreciate
you sharing your story.
Absolutely.
I appreciate you guys inviting me.
All right, are you guys
ready for a fun game?
Yeah, I don't know if it's fun,
but it's a game and I invented it.
I think we're going to have fun
and that's all that matters.
All right, let's play
the Linux Alphabet game.
Here's how you play.
Each of us has to say a word relating
to Linux or computers or open source
in alphabetical order, alternating
answers between the both of us.
So, Alex, I'll let you start with a.
I'll do b, you do c.
Got the hang of it.
What's the next letter after C?
D.
Okay, once you get stuck, it's over.
And the winner is proclaimed.
It helps if you close your eyes.
If I close my eyes, I think
that's going to make it worse.
I really want him to close his eyes
because I know he has some stuff written
down and you guys can't see it,
but my notebook is trying.
To cheat out of sight.
Whatever.
No cheating.
No cheating.
No cheating.
All right, ready?
Set.
A, arch, by the way.
B bash.
C, cosmic.
D for Debian.
E for elementary.
F for flash.
G for Gnome.
I think I lose because Flash
is technically proprietary.
I think it's still computer related.
All right, I win.
No, I don't win.
Nobody wins yet.
Well, we haven't gotten an H.
All.
Right, h for hash.
I was just trying to buy my time.
I mean, no one uses flash anymore,
but, man, were those games fun?
Yeah, but I rhymed with flash for my h,
which is hash, so I need you to.
Do I.
Do I have to rhyme with gnome quickly?
I know you're trying to buy time.
Go Internet.
J for Json.
That's a good one.
K for kernel.
L for Linux mint.
M for mudder.
N for no, I lost.
I can't think of an N.
Nerd.
Can nerd be in one?
Because that's what we are.
Okay, I think that calls it.
I think n is where n is where it ended.
And it's all my fault the game is over.
But thanks for playing.
There's always room to play again.
All right, well, that's
all we have for you today.
Thanks so much for joining
us on our monthly podcast.
3210 F.
Has been the system 76 transmission log.
For more inspiration,
check out the website and follow us
on social media on your
descent back to earth.
Please keep your hands and feet inside
the transport beam at all times.
Captain, sign off in transmission
recently to text rendering.
There's a new.
It's called a shape run cache feature.
I say cache.
Sometimes other people say cache.
Yeah, it's definitely cache.
Well, cache is sh, not c h e, but anyway.