3 ms·

parallelization is not only about scalability, but also performance. If a task takes 20min and can be parallelized 4X, it now takes 5 minutes. There's only a ce

by keefe 17y ago

parallelization is not only about scalability, but also performance. If a task takes 20min and can be parallelized 4X, it now takes 5 minutes. There's only a certain portion of each program that is inherently sequential. We're at 2-4 cores now, soon it will be 8-16. I'm not really in a position to comment on average joe computing... but my social circle runs PCs down to a halt regularly. If I had 8 cores and all of my apps were setup to exploit it, I'd be a very very happy man and I don't think I'm in a minority. There's analytics on large databases - every enterprise does this. There's gaming - imho not a fringe activity at all. Exactly what are these day to day applications? CRUD web apps with no analytics? word processing which certainly do parallel processing of spellchecking etc? firefox? photo editing? I honestly can't think of a program worth writing that couldn't stand to use multiple threads of execution - even gedit polls files for modification.

aaronblohowiak 17y ago
I agree that increased parallelization of common computing tasks could increase performance, but I believe that performance is acceptable (by the consumers and management) for most applications. Programming games is fringe programming. I believe that most PCs are used for: CRUD web apps, VB/C# apps, productivity apps, document editors, ecommerce clients, collaboration, and communication clients. Sure, faster programs would be great! I want it as much as the next person. Sadly, I don't see it being the Next Big Thing. I hope I'm wrong! I do think that the present high-performance community is going to get nicer tooling for parallel programming, and some of that may find its way into your everyday consumer apps but that will be in forms like Grand Central Dispatch or other library adjuncts to existing platforms, and therefore not a technological leap but rather a step in the right direction. Polling files for modification is an example of not taking advantage of platform capability, where existing performance is "good enough." Most platforms now have filesystem hooks for modification, and if you want to improve the speed of gedit you can register an event handler.

by keefe 17y ago

aaronblohowiak 17y ago

I agree that increased parallelization of common computing tasks could increase performance, but I believe that performance is acceptable (by the consumers and management) for most applications. Programming games is fringe programming. I believe that most PCs are used for: CRUD web apps, VB/C# apps, productivity apps, document editors, ecommerce clients, collaboration, and communication clients. Sure, faster programs would be great! I want it as much as the next person. Sadly, I don't see it being the Next Big Thing. I hope I'm wrong! I do think that the present high-performance community is going to get nicer tooling for parallel programming, and some of that may find its way into your everyday consumer apps but that will be in forms like Grand Central Dispatch or other library adjuncts to existing platforms, and therefore not a technological leap but rather a step in the right direction. Polling files for modification is an example of not taking advantage of platform capability, where existing performance is "good enough." Most platforms now have filesystem hooks for modification, and if you want to improve the speed of gedit you can register an event handler.