Filed under: Features, Mac Pro
Mac Pro takes a bullet, brings justice
Pyramidal's tagline, "Solve more crimes, Convict more criminals, Save more lives" sums up their mission pretty succinctly. ALIAS will help to convict more criminals with more accuracy, and should even solve some previously-unsolvable cold cases. Helping to proactively build a civil society by identifying wrongdoers and exposing them to justice is among the many socially conscious goals of Pyramidal Technologies.
I found this story of interest because, in my limited experience, the world of law enforcement does not lean very heavily toward the Apple side of the computing spectrum. I assume that this is for the same primary reason that any agency, organization or company tends to stick with Windows: the software they depend on is Windows-based and often proprietary. What intrigued me here was the fact that the benefits of various systems, both hardware and operating system, were weighed in an OS-agnostic fashion, and the Mac won. Here's what I learned about the reasons why ...
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The ALIAS bench-top is a combination of an interferometer, used for mapping the surface of an expended cartridge, and advanced software -- developed entirely on OS X -- for data interpretation, visualization and comparison. The heart of the system is a well-stocked Mac Pro: the current base system, which starts at $375,000US, contains a Mac Pro with two 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xenon processors, 16GB of RAM, Two NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 and one NVIDIA GTX 285 graphics cards, a RAID card, two 640GB hard drives, SuperDrive, 30" Cinema display, and wireless keyboard and mouse. The ALIAS software started development back on Tiger, but is now optimized for the Snow Leopard OS that comes with the bench-top.
What made Pyramidal Technologies decide to go with a Mac Pro over other systems? That was the question I asked the system's architect and Pyramidal's CTO, Ardavan Tajbakhsh. He came across as very knowledgeable in all areas of computer science and, while not a Mac-fanatic, was able to weigh the options from what he called a "non-religious" stance.
In comparing the Mac and OS X to other available options, the primary benefits he found were on the technical end of the spectrum, but that's what you need in forensics, right? Ardavan had plenty of prior experience with UNIX systems (which OS X is based on), and already knew that they were more stable and secure than other options. He also considered pedigree important, and UNIX has had plenty of time to mature. Here's an abbreviated list of some of the many additional considerations:
- Superior plug-and-play capabilities (the Mac "Just Works")
- A more robust file system, data protection
- Superior memory management
- Multi-core architecture
- Easy computation with the GPU, OpenCL
- OS X is, essentially, founded on Open Source software, versus the proprietary nature of Windows.
- Mac hardware has maintained high quality, while Windows hardware has been a race to the bottom of the price gamut and quality has suffered.
- 64-bit computing
- Superior application development tools
- On the Mac, form does follow function. "Why shouldn't things be beautiful?"
When you put all of that together, it really does make sense that the high-tech system sitting in some forensics labs now is built around a Mac Pro. Given that a benchtop, single-workstation system starts at $375,000US, it's probably not a purchase many of our readers are going to be making. It does, however, shed some bright light on why so many people are making the switch to Mac in general these days. It's great to know that our justice system is a little more accurate and our society may be safer, thanks to some amazing computer engineering ... and a Mac Pro.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ack154 said 5:44PM on 11-23-2009
$375,000 and no Blu-Ray drive? Pssshhhht.
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Jay said 5:49PM on 11-23-2009
That's one free internetz for you today sir.
mac said 5:50PM on 11-23-2009
"Pyramidal Technologies" - Masonic symbology perhaps ? The "all seeing eye" ?
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bombo said 6:18PM on 11-23-2009
News just in - computers help professionals to do their jobs faster and with more accuracy!
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Chris said 7:06PM on 11-23-2009
News just in: you fail!
This is a story about a mac being used in high end police work where one wouldn't usually be seen, and this is TUAW an apple blog.
Now I hope that was tasty, cause that's all I'm feeding you, troll.
Jordan said 7:23PM on 11-23-2009
News just in: This is lame
Why do people get all giddy over a Mac being used. Who cares.
The software that is running has nothing to do with Apple. The hardware in the MacPro is the exact same hardware that PCs use.
The fact that Apple users get all giddy over stuff like this is exactly why I try not to tell people I own a Mac. I hate the douchebaggery that comes with it.
Dani Reader said 7:55PM on 11-23-2009
news just in: no really this is an Apple news site. The fact that this is a Mac being used by a large organisation, particularly one in the field of forensics. This is a good thing for Apple, and again, this is a site about Apple. So what gives exactly? I see no 'douchebaggery' here...
grobbio said 7:21PM on 11-23-2009
Macs "Just works" like Justice "just works". Sure. And the
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Jordan said 7:27PM on 11-23-2009
* Superior plug-and-play capabilities (the Mac "Just Works")
* Multi-core architecture
* Easy computation with the GPU, OpenCL
*
OS X is, essentially, founded on Open Source software, versus the proprietary nature of Windows.
*
Mac hardware has maintained high quality, while Windows hardware has been a race to the bottom of the price gamut and quality has suffered.
* 64-bit computing
* Superior application development tools
Wow, where to begin. Windows has been 64-bit mainstream long before OSX even dreamed of it. The "superior application development tools" having nothing to do with Apple or OSX. Mac hardware being higher quality has NOTHING to do with Windows. Windows is optional. PCs are also multicore...and actually are the same processors....Superior plug and play, this has been disproven many many times. Stop trying to make things up, this is terrible reporting
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Michael Rose said 8:52PM on 11-23-2009
Yo.
Trolly McTrollerson.
Those bullet points are what the DEVELOPER of this system cited as reasons he built his product around the Mac Pro -- which has nothing to do with 'terrible reporting' except for the part where apparently you fail to READ the posts before delivering the "Macs sux, Windows roolz" tune you whistle so consistently. Even on posts about $375K forensics systems, where it would seem that if Macs sux00rd so badly they wouldn't be selling that many of them to law enforcement agencies.
You're providing really solid confirmation that your decision to wipe down OS X on your Mac and replace it with Windows wasn't a temporary lapse in judgment, but a fair and unflinching metric for your overall mental capacity, or lack thereof.
Also...
"The "superior application development tools" having nothing to do with Apple or OSX."
Really? You are aware of some third party delivering an XCode-like IDE for the Mac and OS X? And you have evidence that Apple's development tools, widely regarded as excellent, in fact have nothing to do with OS X or Apple? Please do share. I'm sure we'd all benefit from your thorough understanding of the platform and the marketplace, pinhead.
You're right about one thing, though: the douchebaggery is getting tiresome. Get constructive with your commentary, or get lost.
David Frantz said 9:16PM on 11-23-2009
Very interesting, if slightly expensive. Of course these are not mass sale systems but expensive none the less.
My take on hardware like this is that it isn't an issues today what the hardware is. The issues come ten years down the road when you need to repair/ upgrade or enhance that machine. I've had the good fortune to work on significantly different interferomters hooked up to PC hardware. Some of these started out on 386 hardware, all use ISA bus I/O. The problem becomes supporting that ISA hardware as you try and uppgrade, it throws a monkey wrench into the mix as you try to find suitable hardware.
Sure you can ask the vendor for a hardware upgrade but you better not expect much. Sometimes tech has moved so far beyound what was state of the art nobody cares. So the question is this ten years from now will the choice of Mac Hardware look wise? Sadly you can't say.
Dave
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Ryan Kubasiak said 8:03PM on 11-23-2009
Apple hardware and software offers a excellent resource for digital forensics as well. Whether it is the OS X operating system and the applications offered for it, or Windows being run on the Apple hardware, the stability is outstanding. Take a look at what is being done in the law enforcement and eDiscovery realm at www.MacOSXForensics.com for a whole new look into how Macs are being used.
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Frederico said 4:45AM on 11-24-2009
Uummm... I guess I could go research the system further, but it would be nice, Brett, if you had elaborated on how the system specs and features correlated to the peripherals needed on this system: e.g., especially: why three video cards for one Cinema Display?
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RealBasic Fan said 11:32AM on 11-24-2009
Whenever I see a post or story about people sticking with Windows because of proprietary software lock-in, I just have to evangelize for my favorite development environment RealBasic.
Small/medium-sized software developers using Visualbasic, switch dev environments, and you can make amazing cross-platform solutions that give your users the freedom to leave Windows if they choose. Opens up a whole new user base too, especially with the growing popularity of the Mac in small business.
Just my two cents.
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Leonardo Santagada said 9:45PM on 11-24-2009
HFS+ is a terribly slow file system, telling that it is better than NTFS in any way is probably wrong.
Real support for 64/32 bits at the same time, better developer tools (XCode and gcc) and a really integrated OS does make macs much more attractive for this kinds of equipment.
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Ardavan Tajbakhsh said 3:27PM on 11-26-2009
Hello I’m Ardavan Tajbakhsh, the CTO of Pyramidal Technologies Ltd.
Brett and the editorial staff of TUAW did a great job taking a long interview filled with quite a lot of detail and distilling it into the article you see here. It's interesting to read the passions and perspectives of other commenters, whether they be focused on Windows or Unix.
ALIAS is a specialized solution involving the equivalent of many person years of effort in order to help create a civil society by identifying violent criminals and murderers. In essence ALIAS is a tool to help save human life. The price tag of $375,000 was justifiably questioned. For context, the dominant legacy solution offered by our competition is priced at $1,000,000.
The name of the company also drew comments on this thread. Our CEO, Mike Barrett, the co-creator of the IBIS system in the early 90s that is still in use in many law enforcement ballistics departments today, has a degree in anatomy and histology, so the name carries some insider symbolism. The pyramidal tract is specialized tissue in the midbrain which connects the brain to the spinal cord, which for us symbolized “Turning thought into action”. It represents the intellectual property which we have developed for forensic ballistics (patents), our innovation, R&D, as well as our ability to execute on our vision for ALIAS.
Any article has a limit on its length and the staff at TUAW, particularly Brett, did a great job taking my discussions about Unix, Unix philosophy (i.e. the cultural norm and philosophy of developing a solution on this NOS versus other ones), Unix security, POSIX, the Mach kernel, filesystem (HFS+, UFS), OpenCL (which is critical to our optimization efforts in dealing with massive data sets, i.e. tens of millions of 3D coordinates , as well as the need for the use of multi-core computing and the use of streams), plug-n-play which was useful in the development of the interface to our interferometer custom built for forensic ballistics, memory management and 64-bit addressing, utilization of both CPUs as well as multiple GPUs (hence the multiple graphics cards) for computation and processing as well as algorithm execution, the use of the XCode environment and tools for rapid development (yes, we did encounter issues when our application grew large enough, i.e. around 1.5 million lines of code, as well as our data sets from the interferometer complex enough due to our ability to resolve detail down to 2 microns, but those were alleviated in Snow Leopard).
Rather than taking a single technical point from the article above and saying that it’s available on Windows, as one commenter did, OS X (Unix) had the entire package of what our team was looking for in order to develop the kind of solution architecture which we felt was necessary today for forensic ballistics analysis. This is not a knock against Windows. Our philosophy is to use the best tools available for the job at hand and in this case, for this application, OS X is superior for our ALIAS solution.
Speaking of Windows, Mike first developed the legacy IBIS system using the Windows platform in the early 90s, then judged to be the best platform for the job. If you’ll permit me to make light of it, for you Apple and OS X aficionados, ALIAS has “taken a PC scalp”. Despite ongoing developments of the Windows NOS, IBIS still runs on Windows XP, whereas ALIAS runs on Snow Leopard, released to the public at the end of August of this year. Are we current? Yes, we are. Are we the best forensic ballistics analysis solution out there? I think so, but perhaps I'm a bit biased :-)
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