OnPrem Trial Hardware

Dell Precision 5820 Workstation

In this post we describe recommended minimal hardware setup for OnPrem. This can be used for trial or for running small volume transcription or IVR. It should support at least up to 25 concurrent ASR session. Note that:

• It is possible to run a trial on even less expensive (throw-away) hardware, see this blog post.

• If the intention is to test Acoustic Model training, a single machine setup will work, but runtime recognition will not be possible as long as the training is in progress..

Computer

For a trial we recommend to use workstation as it is easier find a workstations that can be configured with GPU at lower price points. Most standard rack type servers will not work with the GPUs, either for space or power (cabling) concerns, which necessitates purchase of a dedicated GPU server.

An example workstation that will work out of the box is Dell Precision 5820 Tower. It is available directly from Dell with a variety of GPU configurations, ranging from single NVIDIA® Quadro® P2000 for about $300 (which is the lowest we would recommend for a trial) all the way up to Dual Nvidia Quadro RTX6000 for over $9000.

For a basic trial any modern CPU with 4 cores should be sufficient. Plus at least 32GB RAM and at least 1TB storage.

For testing model training we suggest at least an 8 core CPU, 64GB RAM and a fast 2TB SSD.

GPUs

While the Nvidia GeForce consumer type GPUs have a price/performance advantage, one has to be aware of the limitations that Nvidia puts on consumer grade GPUs:

• The warranty - for GeForce products Nvidia states: . Warranted Product is intended for consumer end user purposes only, and is not intended for datacenter use and/or GPU cluster commercial deployments ("Enterprise Use"). Any use of Warranted Product for Enterprise Use shall void this warranty.

• The license - again, for GeForce products Nvidia states: No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.

Because, the recommendation here is for a Trial type of use and because we do recommend a workstation rather than a server, below we give a recommendation for both Consumer and Enterprise grade GPUs.

Consumer Grade Cards

• For testing recognition (w/o training) single GeForce RTX 2070 (at $500) would be sufficient.

• For testing training dual GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (at $1200) cards offer a good price to performance ratio. A faster choice would be dual Titan RTX cards but these are twice as expensive (about $5000 for two) with a speed advantage of about 30%.

Enterprise Grade Cards

• For testing recognition Quadro P4000 (at $600) will provide sufficient performance although it will be a lot slower than RTX 2070 at similar price point.

• For testing training, we recommend at least a single Nvidia Quadro RTX6000 (at $4500) but preferably two of them.

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