In some cases especially hardware, it is essential that PID tuning is done safely.
I've implemented this reinforcement learning algorithm in C++ for safely tuning a PID controller on a hardware system with successful results i.e. has been successfully deployed at customer sites for in-situ tuning.
I'm running Windows 7 as a Xen guest using Intel GVT-g on my i3-5005U (2C4T, HD Graphics 5500) for the past week now. I've pinned 2 vcpus each to both Dom0 (Ubuntu 15.04) and DomU and use both simultaneously in a dual monitor setup.
I can't comment about Photoshop or Illustrator as I have no experience using those programs, though I do a fair bit of work with PCB CAD tools: OrCAD, EAGLE. I haven't ran into any major issues thus far. Media playback works fine btw; mpv does not report any skipped frames when playing 1080p webm files downloaded from Youtube with youtube-dl.
> AMD lets you pass your graphics cards through to your VMs, no problem.
This is still based on a 1-1 basis i.e. one GPU passthrough-ed for one VM. Intel's GVT-g, notably XenGT, is IMO more interesting: allowing for one iGPU to be shared with up to 4 VMs (DomU + 3 DomU). This is especially interesting considering Intel's recent inroads into the GPU market with Iris Pro graphics, even bundling them with certain Xeon CPUs.
The XEON CPU's which come with IGP's are the low end CPU's (E3 only) which are re-branded low to mid range desktop processors that were cherry picked to go through XEON's QC process.
Intel doesn't ship high end desktop or server CPU's with IGP's atm, the decision for the XEON's was to provide video transcoding performance, even highest performance Iris chip is still no match for even a mid range GPU from 5 years ago.
The OpenSSD project[1] might be worth a look. If you don't fancy paying thousands of dollars, you can buy SSD controller boards and raw NAND flash chips off Taobao and assemble them together. There's plenty of information on various Chinese forums (Mydigit, Upan etc.), admittedly more towards USB flash drives. Some older flash chips are TSOP rather than BGA which makes hand soldering much easier.
At that price point (~$500), one can get a i7-4XXXT in a fanless barebones setup off Aliexpress, though which CPU you get is entirely dependent on available stock.
I can recommend (no affiliation) HD-Plex passive cases, if that's what you're after. It cools 65W, which is not enough for the most powerful desktop CPU's, but gives you much more power than the Akasa box. It's sold as a barebone to the HTPC crowd but has worked great for me as a general workstation (with no moving parts if you go for an SSD).
> I wanted a display like this for years. In fact, I even did a lot of research to build my own. The biggest hurdle was getting a manufacturer to sell me a big-enough panel at reasonable cost. Absolutely nobody wanted to do anything less than 1k units (understandable, I guess), and I wanted only a few units.
This guy claiming access to 13.3" panels, and he quoted me $2800 for a single 13.3" dev kit along SDK when I PMed him several months back.
I've implemented this reinforcement learning algorithm in C++ for safely tuning a PID controller on a hardware system with successful results i.e. has been successfully deployed at customer sites for in-situ tuning.
https://github.com/befelix/SafeOpt
http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6692-safe-model-based-reinforcem...