Editor's Pick: Notebook Delivers Fast Ray Tracing and AI Development

Dear DE Reader, 

BOXX Technologies has a reputation for being the computer workstation equivalent of a master mechanic who turns street cars into racing machines. When NVIDIA stunned everyone earlier this year with the RTX specification for advanced ray tracing and artificial intelligence (AI) development, BOXX was ready on Day One with an RTX Studio notebook. The new GoBOXX SLM-17 is fast and slim; this screaming new notebook computer is our Editor’s Pick of the Week. 

Two specifics make the GoBOXX SLM a head-turning notebook workstation. First is the Quadro RTX GPU. This first-ever ray tracing GPU transforms the time-consuming process of creating realistic visualizations, and it provides new technology for deep learning. When NVIDIA announced RTX, it also announced the RTX Studio specification, a recommended approach to building wicked fast visualization and AI development notebook workstations. 

The second specific is what BOXX has done with the RTX Studio specification. There is a lot of power residing in a slim package. GoBOXX SLM is only 0.69-in. thick and weighs less than 5 lbs. BOXX says it is the thinnest laptop it has ever built. GoBOXX SLM is available standard with a 17-in. display running full HD (1920x1080). A 15-in. version is also available. The brain of it is an eight-core Intel Core i9 (i9-9880H), supported by 32 GB of RAM and a variety of storage options. A Core i7 version is also available. The GPU is the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000, the notebook computer version of NVIDIA’s new ray tracing racehorse. 

RTX technology offers two new technology cores. RT Cores (Ray Tracing) and Tensor Cores, which make quick work of the matrix-based calculations common in AI, deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML). Initial reaction in the technology press focused mostly on the ray tracing, but for engineers the Tensor Cores for DL/ML/AI applications are just as important. 

NVIDIA claims RTX Studio technology will boost visualization tasks by up to 12x faster. BOXX recommends the GoBOXX SLM for use with applications including Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya and AutoCAD; Siemens Solid Edge; and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks and Catia. 

Check out our Product Brief for full system specifications and more details on the RTX Studio specification. Thanks for reading; we’ll be back next week with another Editor’s Pick of the Week. 

—The DE Editors