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That's an idea I've been thinking about. But I have a few responses that have been bouncing around my head on that topic. - Do we need much faster hardware for
by BuckRogers 11y ago
That's an idea I've been thinking about. But I have a few responses that have been bouncing around my head on that topic.
- Do we need much faster hardware for most tasks people are actually trying to accomplish? I don't think software is necessarily becoming more complex. It could be simplified it's just rushed out the door. I think complexity has plateaued. A common run of the mill usecase of application-layer software, a CRM, isn't limited by CPython (and definitely not by PyPy) today and there's no reason why it would start tomorrow.
- Something new will come along for hardware. So it actually is inevitable it moves forward. This isn't anywhere near the end. It may stratify hardware. If you truly need more performance, it may be very expensive hardware. The rest of us will rely on servers running on 7nm chips for ages. In connection to this point, the machine I'm typing this on is from 2009. A Q9450, it's still more CPU processing power than I need. I think that says a lot. The only reason I want to upgrade is for less power draw because that means less heat produced. If I needed more power for video, 3D rendering or compilation I'd use networked processing which would annihilate any local big iron I could put up in my basement.
- More development platforms will dump everything that isn't LLVM based. Significant gains could be had if say, Python was reimplemented on top of LLVM.
- For cases where the everyman company needs more power, they won't go for the chips made out of brain tissue or diamonds. They'll use services like AWS to gleam the power needed which will have the more expensive hardware on-top or massive swaths of 7nm CPUs to utilize.
- Chips will increasingly be built for specific tasks. Dropbox will keep having custom designs built by Intel for their specific workload. The general-use CPU will become less popular in the server room but still there for the small to midsize companies to lean on.
So while there's some individual points there, to add the always beloved car analogy. I've downgraded my car from a 325HP model 10 years ago to a 145HP model that I've been using since. Both got the job done within their environment and I suspect at worst, chips will simply become a commodity closer to modern day cars. The advance won't be more HP or better brakes, those are mostly maxed out in capacity. The paradigm shift is where the advancement will be (electrics for cars). But it's been settled for a while that either way, I really don't need over 150HP for what I'm doing.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoThe future is what was started with the old mainframes: general purpose CPU's plus I/O and algorithm acceleration. Possibly onboard FPGA logic. See Cavium Octeon III's w/ their accelerators, the Zynq line which Intel/Altera will likely do for Xeons, AMD's Semi-Custom business that took off, little GPU's in all the SOC's, and so on. Good news is many accelerators work well at old 90nm and 45nm nodes based on my reading of academic papers. Even startups or FOSS projects can still get plenty of mileage out of the cheaper nodes. The Core Duo 2 I'm typing this on... still running ever bloated web well... was taped out on 65nm.