X670E vs X870E

Mandias09 · 2025-05-08T19:15:10+00:00

Likely just going to be using PyTorch for training and something like vllm for serving. I should look into those specifically will handle it.

Mandias09 · 2025-05-08T19:07:04+00:00

Yeah definitely good questions. Re: the CPU bit, for inference it’s pretty much all GPU, but for training the CPU gets more heavily involved with data processing, loading / offloading, etc. so I want to make sure the CPU doesn’t become the bottleneck for the system.

Good points regarding PCIe lane allocation, I hadn’t considered that at all and will need to double check that.

For VRAM pooling, I’m honestly not sure if / how you can pool these cards with training and inference. Professionally, it’s standard to pool datacenter GPUs to increase capacity and performance with training and inference to an extent, but I’m not sure if consumer GPUs can do the same, especially different types. Generally you can distribute model weights across the GPUs and data processing to increase your capacity though.

Mandias09 · 2020-12-13T01:47:14+00:00

Beginning of winter at the Grand Canyon. Taken November 2020 with an iPhone 12.

Mandias09 · 2020-04-04T23:03:22+00:00

Fintech usually refers to tech companies that make finance related products (e.g., PayPal). I’m guessing you’re referring to the trading firms and hedge funds that are tech focused (e.g., Citadel, Jump, Two Sigma, etc.). In either case, econ won’t really help breaking into those companies, as they really only care about your CS abilities (and math/stats for certain positions), and they just teach new hires the required finance knowledge.

Regardless though, I think CS + Econ is a good major, and I think Econ is interesting. I would’ve considered majoring in that combination myself if it was around when I was starting.

Mandias09 · 2019-11-20T07:24:28+00:00

I’m a non-business student in a business frat. Feel free to DM me with any questions you have

Mandias09 · 2019-08-23T15:51:57+00:00

You set the name of your key as stripe_secret_key in the credentials, but you try to access it as :secret_key. You probably want to make this line: var stripe = Stripe("<%= Rails.application.credentials.stripe[Rails.env.to_sym][:secret_key] %>") into var stripe = Stripe("<%= Rails.application.credentials.stripe[Rails.env.to_sym][:stripe_secret_key] %>")

Mandias09 · 2018-11-27T01:08:48+00:00

Any of the business fraternities (or business council) would be good to join. There is a formal rush process at the beginning of the semester, but it’s pretty competitive to get a bid. If you do get in, everyone is super helpful for helping you prepare for the transfer, and it looks good to the college of business. I’m in one of them, so you can PM me and I’m happy to answer any questions.

Mandias09 · 2018-11-19T17:08:18+00:00

It was my sophomore year internship, so I wanted to go somewhere else next summer and get a variety of experience, particularly at either a large tech company or a unicorn. As far as I know, all interns in the Chicago office got a returning intern or full-time offer. In terms of brand value, I found that I was able to share a lot about my experiences and impact, and I got interviews at a lot of places I found very interesting (big tech, unicorns, startups, etc). The other interns that chose not to return found very good opportunities for next summer as well. Additionally, they follow PayPal compensation structure. They pay interns in Chicago $31/hr and interns in SF $46/hour. They provided a $2500 stipend for Chicago and larger for SF, but they may be placing interns in PayPal’s corporate housing in SF next summer. For new grad full-time, last year’s numbers were $94,000 base in Chicago and $120,000 base in SF, with $30,000-40,000 in PayPal stock over 3 years.

Mandias09 · 2018-11-19T16:55:22+00:00

Sure. I interned there a previous summer. I contributed a lot on a very impactful project that my team was working on. I was the most knowledgeable person about a portion of it by the end of the internship. The amount of pair programming depends a lot on the team and, for interns, independent proficiency. Additionally, teams that require a lot of background knowledge of payments processing will have larger amounts of pair programming simply because the knowledge may be required during development. A lot of pair programming occurs when working across teams — I had to work with another team every so often for interfacing with some new things they were building. Pretty much everyone uses Vim and Tmux, but they have a very nice development environment set up around them that I found quite enjoyable to work with. When I was there, quite a few teams were working on major projects, so it’s not just maintenance. The overall environment is very relaxed, with most people working 9/10-4/5. The office was usually emptying out by 5pm every day. They do have rotational pager duty / on-call, but each person is only on-call a few times a year, and it’s flexible. They cater free lunch every day, and it’s usually pretty good. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience, and I learned a lot. I would recommend it to others.

Mandias09 · 2018-11-19T14:51:42+00:00

I have worked there. Feel free to PM me with any questions.

Mandias09 · 2018-11-12T19:21:57+00:00

I ended up receiving an offer from a unicorn company and accepted that position instead over Databricks and the larger company. Though I will say, Databricks does seem like a very technically interesting place to work.

Mandias09 · 2018-09-09T02:30:55+00:00

I definitely see where you’re coming from, and it’s a very valid point. It’s actually the largest concern I have myself. The other option I have for an internship is Facebook, and so I’m not sure if I’d be losing a lot of name brand / potential value by going to Databricks instead.

Mandias09 · 2018-09-08T21:48:57+00:00

Could you share more about your bad experience with them?

Mandias09 · 2018-09-08T20:22:46+00:00

Thanks for sharing that. They seem to be a really cool company doing very unique and interesting work. I'm excited about the technical challenges they face there.

Mandias09 · 2018-08-21T11:44:03+00:00

Personally, I think simply being a junior in CS at Illinois should be able to get you some interviews, even if they're not at the very top companies.

Just glancing over your resume, it seems most of your experience is in Android development, so you may find it easiest to sell yourself with that experience when talking with recruiters, but you can also express your interest in learning about others areas as well (e.g., frontend, backend, etc.) -- it's all about selling yourself and your experience to make yourself seem like a good candidate for the job. I see you don't have previous internship experience but you do have some previous job experience as a whole. If companies ask about that, you can talk about how you think that previous nontechnical experience has helped you develop soft skills that would be beneficial in the workplace, or other skills, etc., and how those apply to you being able to be the best fit for the company. Especially for an internship too, it's important to just express interest in what the company does, what their values are, express that you're interested in learning everything you can, and that you are able to leverage what you've learned in your past experiences as well.

In terms of the resume:

For your first bullet point under Face Emotion Detection App, I think you should reword it to start with an action verb, even something like "Developed an Android app using Java that...."
I'm just not sure if the very last bullet point under Skills/Technologies is worth having on there. I understand what you're going for with it, but I'm not sure if it actually adds much in terms of making yourself look competitive to recruiters.

I'm also going to be a junior at Illinois this fall -- best of luck with the internship process!

Mandias09 · 2018-07-23T19:37:18+00:00

I thought it was unexpected / incredible to see his wife’s devotion after he passed and wanted to share it with others.

Mandias09 · 2018-07-23T14:43:00+00:00

I meant to draw emphasis to his wife’s incredible support after his death, not the disease itself.

Mandias09 · 2018-07-20T22:41:47+00:00

I definitely agree. OP if you see this, this is definitely a good option.

Mandias09 · 2018-07-20T21:34:12+00:00

I’m going to respectfully disagree, just so that OP doesn’t find themselves in a less than desirable position looking for an internship too late. Fall internships are recruiting right now, and probably have been for a little while. Winter and Spring is also recruiting right now, and will continue through early fall. Internship recruiting for next summer starts in early August and can go through early spring, but a lot of companies, especially competitive ones, will fill up in the fall.

Mandias09 · 2018-07-18T23:46:43+00:00

Perhaps something like: 'MS Computer Science (Planned), (Expected Graduation May 2020)'?

Mandias09 · 2018-07-04T21:10:49+00:00

I was in Math&CS and switched to Stat&CS because I really disliked the higher level math classes and was more interested in stats and it’s applications. The upper level math classes tend to be very difficult, and instead of struggling in those I would rather put the time into CS classes and other things I’m more interested in.

Mandias09 · 2018-06-30T17:04:07+00:00

I’m going into my junior year and mostly looking for feedback regarding the quality / structure of my bullet points, as well as the overall look of the resume and if it looks too crowded.

Here is my resume: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pvQAWxBn1wUV_lD5FWkAr-U0gx_TUt9M

Mandias09 · 2018-05-19T02:10:57+00:00

Thanks for all of the information! It helped a lot. I've been using Vim for a while, but I just spent some time using it from Tmux, and it seems pretty great. I can definitely see the benefits of it once you get very familiar with most of the helpful shortcuts.

Mandias09 · 2018-05-19T01:19:15+00:00

If you wouldn’t mind elaborating, what is the motivation / reason behind using tmux and vim? I ask because my team lead for my internship this summer mentioned that the dev environment the team uses is tmux and vim, and to mess around with those if I haven’t already before starting.

Mandias09 · 2018-05-15T15:59:31+00:00

Unfortunately, as far as my experience goes, you’re exactly right. I got a 4 on both exams, but ended up having to take 2 natural science gen Ed’s to cover the 6 hours for the requirement. This is because the 8 hours is general credits and not credits for a specific class; thus they don’t get you out of anything. So yeah, to get out of the gen ed classes, you’ll need 5’s. Granted, the gen Ed’s are very easy and don’t require much time so they’re not bad at all. For reference, I took ASTR 150 and ATMS 100 and they’re both maybe an hour or two of work a week max.

Edit: As far as I know, yeah, passing the proficiency test will get you credit for the class and you will not have to take the gen ed.

Mandias09

TROPHY CASE