The article sure mentions 💩a lot.
The article sure mentions 💩a lot.
These technologies, although archaic, clumsy and insecure
Like cars? Or phones? Those are also archaic, clumsy and insecure technologies.
Sure -> I’m not smart enough to explain it like you’re five, but maybe 12 or so would work?
The problem here is that you’re not adding 1 + 2
, or 0.1 + 0.2
. You’re converting those to binary (because computers talk binary), then you’re adding binary numbers, and converting the result back. And the error happens at this conversion step. Let’s take it slow, one thing at a time.
See, if you are looking at decimal numbers, it’s kinda like this:
357 => 7 * 1 + 5 * 10 + 3 * 100. That sequence, from right to left, would be 1, 10, 100, … as you go from right to left, you keep multiplying that by 10.
Binary is similar, except it’s not 1, 10, 100, 1000 but rather 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 -> multiply by 2 instead of 10. So for example:
00101101 => right to left => 1 * 1 + 0 * 2 + 1 * 4 + 1 * 8 + 0 * 16 + 1 * 32 + 0 * 64 + 0 * 128 => 45
The numbers 0, 1, 2, 3…9 we call digits (since we can represent each of them with one digit). And the binary “numbers” 0 and 1 we call bits.
You can look up more at simple wikipedia links above probably.
We usually “align” these so that we fill with zeroes on the left until some sane width, which we don’t do in decimal.
132 is 132, right? But what if someone told you to write number 132 with 5 digits? We can just add zeroes. So call, “padding”.
00132 - > it’s the same as 132.
In computers, we often “align” things to 8 bits - or 8 places. Let’s say you have 5 - > 1001 in binary. To align it to 8 bits, we would add zeroes on the left, and write:
00001001 -> 1001 -> decimal 5.
Instead of, say, 100110, you would padd it to 8 bits, you can add two zeroes to left: 00100110.
Think of it as a thousands separator - we would not write down a million dollars like this: $1000000. We would more frequently write it down like this: $1,000,000, right? (Europe and America do things differently with thousands- and fractions- separators, so 1,000.00 vs 1.000,00. Don’t ask me why.)
So we group groups of three numbers usually, to have it easier to read large numbers.
E.g. 8487173209478 is hard to read, but 8 487 173 209 478 is simpler to see, it’s eight and a half trillion, right?
With binary, we group things into 8 bits - we call that “byte”. So we would often write this:
01000101010001001010101010001101
like this:
01000101 01000100 10101010 10001101
I will try to be using either 4 or 8 bits from now on, for binary.
As a tangential side note, we sometimes add “b” or “d” in front of numbers, that way we know if it’s decimal or binary. E.g. is 100 binary or decimal?
b100 vs d100 makes it easier. Although, we almost never use the d, but we do mark other systems that we use: b for binary, o for octal (system with 8 digits), h for hexadecimal (16 digits).
Anyway.
To convert numbers to binary, we’d take chunks out of it, write down the bit. Example:
13 -> ?
What we want to do is take chunks out of that 13 that we can write down in binary until nothing’s left.
We go from the biggest binary value and substract it, then go to next and next until we get that 13 down to zero. Binary values are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, … (and we write them down as b0001, b0010, b0100, b1000, … with more zeroes on the left.)
the biggest of those that fit into 13 seems to be 8, or 1000. So let’s start there. Our binary numbers so far: 1000 And we have 13 - 8 = 5 left to deal with.
The biggest binary to fit into 5 is 4 (b0100). Our binary so far: b1000 + b0100 And our decimal leftover: 5 - 4 = 1.
The biggest binary to fit into 1 is 1 (b0001). So binary: b1000 + b0100 + b0001 And decimal: 1 - 1 = 0.
So in the endl, we have to add these binary numbers:
b1101 `
So decimal 13 we write as 1101 in binary.
So far, so good, right? Let’s go to fractions now. It’s very similar, but we split parts before and after the dot.
E.g. 43.976 =>
Just note that we started already with 10 on the fractional part, not with 1 (so it’s 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000…)
The decimal part is similar, except instead of multiplying by 10, you divide by 10. It would be similar with binary: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. Let’s try something:
b0101.0110 ->
So b0101.0110 (in binary) would be 5.375 in decimal.
Now, let’s convert 2.5 into binary, shall we?
First we take the whole part: 2. The biggest binary that fits is 2 (b0010). Now the fractional part, 0.5. What’s the biggest fraction we can write down? What are all of them?
If you remember, it’s 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16… or in other words, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625…
So 0.5 would be binary 1/2, or b0.1000
And finally, 2.5 in decimal => b0010.1000
Let’s try another one:
13.625
Together with b0.1000 above, it’s b0.1010 So the final number is:
b1101.1010
Get it? Try a few more:
4.125, 9.0625, 13.75.
Now, all these conversions so far, align very nicely. But what when they do not?
1 + 2 = 3. In binary, let’s padd it to 4 bits: 1 -> the biggest binary that fits is b0010. 2 -> the biggest thing that fits is b0010.
b0001 + b0010 = b0011.
If we convert the result back: b0011 -> to decimal, we get 3.
Okay? Good.
Now let’s try 0.1 + 0.2.
How do we get it in binary? Let’s find the biggest fraction that fits: 1/16, or 0.0625, or b0.0001
What’s left is 0.1 - 0.0625 = 0.0375.
Next binary that fits: 1/32 or 0.03125 or b0.00001. We’re left with 0.00625.
Next binary that fits is 1/256
… etc etc until we get to:
decimal 0.1 = b0.0001100110
We can do the same with 0.2 -> b0.0011001100.
Now, let’s add those two:
b0.0100 1100 10 `
Right? So far so good. Now, if we go back to decimal, it should come out to 0.3.
So let’s try it: 0/2+1/4+0/8+0/16+1/32+1/64+0/128+0/256+1/512+0/1024 => 0.298828125
WHAAAT?
I also didn’t think much of them, but when I compare this with off-the-shelf Synology or QNAP (in the consumer-grade, like I’m building), the Celeron is a beast :)
Well can you attach it when you fill the 250 characters?
Oh, I don’t want this to be a PC. I have plenty of CPU power for what I do, this has a different purpose.
I’m not planning to run anything much on those Celerons - it’s mostly just a file server. People do that with a RasPi - a 4-core CPU is going to blow it out of the water I think.
I also wanted some Ryzens, but my requirements were different. I did not want so much computational power, as much as I wanted low power. Combined with the price and availability, this works good enough for mne. We’ll see in the long run.
Yes, in fact! Two main reasons.
I wanted low-power, this is mostly gonna sit in the closet and serve files around. Even ARM CPUs like the RasPi can do that. But I didn’t want it to be too weak, in case I wanted a simple service or two, this still has extra oomph. This isn’t too powerful, but it is a 64-bit x86 CPU.
I also wanted some ports. This has 4 SATA ports. It’s supposed to be a NAS. It has a Gbit ethernet - I don’t have a Gbit network at home so this is good enough for now, and I can expand it somewhat. It has USBs, expansion slots etc.
those two combined resulted in a few selections, AsRock’s mini-ITX boards with integrated CPUs are quite good choices in this space.
I wanted low power consumption. I could have gone with a slightly stronger J5040-ITX perhaps, but it’s also using just slightly more power.
it’s also cheaper, the mobo with the CPU cost me 120€. The j5040 I mentioned would be a bit more - not a lot but still noticable.
I wanted silent, and this board and CPU is passively cooled. If I had money, I would get SSDs for storage as well (less power, less noise) but it’s a LOT more expensive.
I know there are other CPUs in this space but in the end you have to pick one so I did.
How did you find it for cable management?
Thanks! I ordered a SATA SSD already, and I did plan to read about the E key slot later, but for now I’m good. The board has 4 SATA slots, so I will either have to have an USB OS disk or an adapter like this, but for now I’ll just go with what I know.
Do you know what are the speeds like on that Sintech or similar adapter? I don’t really need NVMe speeds, it’s a simple OS disk, but I wouldn’t like to go down to something bellow regular SSD speeds.
Yes, I like it a lot. FD has this niche and does a good job.
Yes, the specs say less then 5W per HDD. Even if I had older and hungrier disks at 10W each, it’s still good. The CPU is consuming about 10 watts, the rest of the board, let’s say another 10. Even if I fill all six HDD slots that the case has room for, I think it would work.
Good thing I’m not gonna run Chrome on this :)
Well, look at these few things:
Modern CPUs, even Celerons, are powerful. People are driving a lot of workload even on ARM CPUs, and this is a proper 4-core x64 CPU. I mean, look at your phone, it’s most likely doing a lot of full-hd media, right? And it’s doing just fine.
Most commercially-available Home/Small Office NAS systems, by Synology, Asustor, QNAP and others, they have either CPUs in this class, or weaker, ARM CPUs. I’m not gonna be sitting at this box. I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops around the house for work - this is gonna be mostly storage.
My planned media management workload is a bit different than media processing. I mostly want to serve files around, maybe transcode something in the background. I don’t plan to watch movies off of this (yet). I have a 4-core Hetzner VPS that is similar in power to this, and it’s driving something like 4-5 docker containers and still serving all the files.
I think it’s gonna be fine, but we shall see.
I like the case a lot. It surprised me as it was bigger than expected and than it looked like, but I should have seen it coming. For one, it has room for a full-blown PSU (and I have the PicoPSU), and for two, I picked it because it has room for 6 3.5" HDDs.
But it’s still pretty small, it’s nice enough that my wife would let me keep it in a living room :)
I plan to try the OpenMediaVault first. For my use - a lot less for services and dynamic changes and a lot more for sitting in the closet quietly - it’s good enough. And I can still dig into the internals if I wanted to.
And with OMV I can also teach my non-techy wife and kids how to add themselves more disk space :)
I thought about it, but I got rid of a lot of my electronic junk in the recent years and would have to buy everything from scratch anyway. So I went with the “small and silent and low-power” route. I also think it’s going to live in a closet in my home office as well :)
Sure, here’s the breakdown:
AsRock J4125-ITX -> 120,62€ Crucial 8GB RAM kit -> 19,90€ 2 x Seagate IronWolf 4TB -> 2 x 114,99€ Samsung 870 EVO SSD 500GB -> 31,41€ (I originally ordered an NVMe one that cost 29€). Fractal Design Node 304 -> 91,89€ PicoPSU -> 35,95€ No-name Power Adapter (220V to 12V) -> 12,99€ Molex-2x Sata -> 9,99€ (there is a ~1€ option, but I wanted a nicer cable for some cable management.
A few cables that I had. Total: 552,73€
I wanted to get a 4-bay NAS, and QNAP, Synology or Asustor would be a bit less, but without the disks. Also, I wanted an x86 CPU, for potential future use. This way I turned out a little cheaper, and it is a bit more flexible.
Well, yes, kind of. More power means the PSU or the power adapter is heating up, generating more losses. Closer to their top power, it’s also a bit spikier. You have a bigger reserve for spikes.
The downside is a slightly higher power draw (in absolute values, it’s negligible, but in comparison, it can be a double-digit percentage difference).
I’ve been reading a bit, and I believe that my setup won’t exceed 50 Watts, maybe a bit more if I add two more spinning disks. It should be quite a good match, I think.
[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ man grep | wc -w 4297 [zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ man man | wc -w 4697 [zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$