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Your proposal for immediate panic is an unnecessary overreaction. > it sounds like we don't get faster or cheaper CPUs The progress in desktop CPUs has been a

by adwn 10y ago

Your proposal for immediate panic is an unnecessary overreaction. > it sounds like we don't get faster or cheaper CPUs The progress in desktop CPUs has been a near-plateau for several years now. > bigger CPU caches Diminishing returns have been hit several years ago. > more CPU cores Dito for most use cases. > more RAM Dito for most use cases. > better or cheaper GPUs GPUs have become so fast and cheap that integrated GPUs are good enough for most use cases. > better/cheaper LED lights or OLED screens I don't think they are related to the semiconductor nodes of digital logic? > So the whole show just stops, like a high-speed train hitting a wall. No, the train has already started slowing down several kilometers away, and most people on it have realized it. There will be no wall-hitting. > Steel is now a base commodity Steel may be a commodity, but the steel-using industry (in this analogy, the software industry) is alive and well. > no one is waiting to upgrade all of their steel structures to some next generation steel alloy that will justify the massive expense of a complete "hardware upgrade." This is actually a good thing. Besides, the sentiment "no need to optimize, just wait a year and computers will be fast enough" died over ten years ago and was stupid to begin with. > our global economy seem to be fundamentally dependent on technology consumption cycles stemming from Moore's Law It's really, really not. At least not outside of the SV-startup-scene cognitive bubble.

tmikaeld 10y ago
"GPUs have become so fast and cheap that integrated GPUs are good enough for most use cases." Except for realistic VR I'd argue, this will be an issue.
- jon_richards 10y ago
  640K ought to be enough for anyone.
- adwn 10y ago
  I agree that not having realistic VR due to a lack of hardware performance would be sad, but my arguments mostly concerned the global economic collapse (or rather, a lack thereof) mentioned in the parent comment.
  - tmikaeld 10y ago
    Yes of course, I'm not disagreeing with that - just adding that VR is a difficult case right now and something that i don't think can be solved with software or hardware in the short term.
n00b101 10y ago
If I can summarize what you are saying, we have been experiencing early symptoms of end of Moore's Law for the past 5 to 10 years, and nothing drastic has happened yet, so there's nothing to worry about? Consider the possibility that such a narrative is simply describing a "slow-motion train wreck" as opposed to the absence of a "train wreck?" There is no doubt that the slow-down has been occurring for several years. One turning point was the collapse of Dennard Scaling around 2005, which led to stalling CPU clock speeds and the "multi-core crisis." I know that CPU clock speed has plateaued over a decade ago. I have not tracked costs, cache sizes, and other factors as closely, but comments here seem to be confirming that many factors have been stalled for the past 5 to 10 years (somewhere between the failure of Dennard Scaling and 28nm nodes). There have been other slow-motion slowdowns happening as well, including the collapse of PC sales growth and now the emerging collapse of smartphone sales growth. The fact that this has been happening for "a while" does not make me feel any more at ease. To be frank, I am less confident in your comments regarding the dependence (or lack thereof) of global economic growth on technology consumption. I beg to differ that it is just a "SV-startup-scene cognitive bubble" ... I'm pretty sure technology is systemically important to global economic growth.
- brian-armstrong 10y ago
  Most software companies won't have a lot of exposure here, since they just depend on the devices being out there. As long as there's no shortage of ideas, software advancements are still possible. There is certainly quite a lot of downside for hardware and device companies, though, and it's hard to guess how that will also ripple into companies that just do software
- aleksei 10y ago
  This is OT, but I can't wrap my head around the reverence of global economic growth. Surely it is unsustainable in the long run. It would seem far better if people weren't required to buy a new, slightly shinier, device every few years just to keep society from collapsing. As for the stalling of technological progress & sales, I would venture it's partly because the technology has caught up with other industries; eg. I can now watch HD movies on demand on my smartphone, at practically no cost. While it may be impractical to design smaller CPUs, there is also no incentive to do that, as people don't really have a need for it (also, see the rise in high end GPUs for VR gear, since that's what people want). However, I'd say there are other avenues of progress available than mere clock speeds, eg. energy consumption. I doubt marketing departments around the world will shrug and say 'Well, we had a good run, now it's time to call it a day'. Although that's what I'd hope for.
snovv_crash 10y ago
> This is actually a good thing. Besides, the sentiment "no need to optimize, just wait a year and computers will be fast enough" died over ten years ago and was stupid to begin with. Ruby, Python, PHP :-/ Maybe with the next few years of performance not improving developers will wake up to the fact that doing stuff in a slow language limits the scale you can push it to.
- cstejerean 10y ago
  Or maybe most developers aren't worried about the scale you can push something too. Most projects never go anywhere. If one turns into a runaway success you can deal with performance later. Designing everything as if it is going to require Google scale infrastructure is a good way to get distracted by cool technology and procrastinate on actually solving any useful problems.
- adwn 10y ago
  Thankfully, programmers are already waking up to the fact that C and Python are not the only choices. Compare the success of Rust.
  - ido 10y ago
    I was astonished how fast plain-old JS has become (probably closer to c++ than to Ruby or Python, in terms of performance - even more impressive with support for stuff such as asm.js). And recent versions of ECMAScript/JS (which are gradually albeit slowly become more and more available for real-world usage) actually make for a pretty nice language.
jdietrich 10y ago
IT infrastructure consumes a non-trivial proportion of global electricity production, ~10% by some estimates. That consumption is growing at an alarming rate. Most of our electricity still comes from coal. Performance-per-core may have stagnated, but performance-per-watt continues to improve at an exponential rate. Without the efficiency dividend provided by Moore's Law, IT infrastructure could become one of the biggest obstacles in our transition to sustainable energy.
imtringued 10y ago
The jump from 28nm to 14nm for graphics cards enabled a massive jump for mobile graphics card made by nvidia. They are no longer a seperate product from the desktop cards. The difference is so massive that even the lowest end model, the 1060, is 15% faster than the highest end mobile graphics card (980M) from the last generation.

by adwn 10y ago

tmikaeld 10y ago

"GPUs have become so fast and cheap that integrated GPUs are good enough for most use cases." Except for realistic VR I'd argue, this will be an issue.

jon_richards 10y ago
640K ought to be enough for anyone.
adwn 10y ago
I agree that not having realistic VR due to a lack of hardware performance would be sad, but my arguments mostly concerned the global economic collapse (or rather, a lack thereof) mentioned in the parent comment.
- tmikaeld 10y ago
  Yes of course, I'm not disagreeing with that - just adding that VR is a difficult case right now and something that i don't think can be solved with software or hardware in the short term.

n00b101 10y ago

If I can summarize what you are saying, we have been experiencing early symptoms of end of Moore's Law for the past 5 to 10 years, and nothing drastic has happened yet, so there's nothing to worry about? Consider the possibility that such a narrative is simply describing a "slow-motion train wreck" as opposed to the absence of a "train wreck?" There is no doubt that the slow-down has been occurring for several years. One turning point was the collapse of Dennard Scaling around 2005, which led to stalling CPU clock speeds and the "multi-core crisis." I know that CPU clock speed has plateaued over a decade ago. I have not tracked costs, cache sizes, and other factors as closely, but comments here seem to be confirming that many factors have been stalled for the past 5 to 10 years (somewhere between the failure of Dennard Scaling and 28nm nodes). There have been other slow-motion slowdowns happening as well, including the collapse of PC sales growth and now the emerging collapse of smartphone sales growth. The fact that this has been happening for "a while" does not make me feel any more at ease. To be frank, I am less confident in your comments regarding the dependence (or lack thereof) of global economic growth on technology consumption. I beg to differ that it is just a "SV-startup-scene cognitive bubble" ... I'm pretty sure technology is systemically important to global economic growth.

brian-armstrong 10y ago
Most software companies won't have a lot of exposure here, since they just depend on the devices being out there. As long as there's no shortage of ideas, software advancements are still possible. There is certainly quite a lot of downside for hardware and device companies, though, and it's hard to guess how that will also ripple into companies that just do software
aleksei 10y ago
This is OT, but I can't wrap my head around the reverence of global economic growth. Surely it is unsustainable in the long run. It would seem far better if people weren't required to buy a new, slightly shinier, device every few years just to keep society from collapsing. As for the stalling of technological progress & sales, I would venture it's partly because the technology has caught up with other industries; eg. I can now watch HD movies on demand on my smartphone, at practically no cost. While it may be impractical to design smaller CPUs, there is also no incentive to do that, as people don't really have a need for it (also, see the rise in high end GPUs for VR gear, since that's what people want). However, I'd say there are other avenues of progress available than mere clock speeds, eg. energy consumption. I doubt marketing departments around the world will shrug and say 'Well, we had a good run, now it's time to call it a day'. Although that's what I'd hope for.

snovv_crash 10y ago

> This is actually a good thing. Besides, the sentiment "no need to optimize, just wait a year and computers will be fast enough" died over ten years ago and was stupid to begin with. Ruby, Python, PHP :-/ Maybe with the next few years of performance not improving developers will wake up to the fact that doing stuff in a slow language limits the scale you can push it to.

cstejerean 10y ago
Or maybe most developers aren't worried about the scale you can push something too. Most projects never go anywhere. If one turns into a runaway success you can deal with performance later. Designing everything as if it is going to require Google scale infrastructure is a good way to get distracted by cool technology and procrastinate on actually solving any useful problems.
adwn 10y ago
Thankfully, programmers are already waking up to the fact that C and Python are not the only choices. Compare the success of Rust.
- ido 10y ago
  I was astonished how fast plain-old JS has become (probably closer to c++ than to Ruby or Python, in terms of performance - even more impressive with support for stuff such as asm.js). And recent versions of ECMAScript/JS (which are gradually albeit slowly become more and more available for real-world usage) actually make for a pretty nice language.

jdietrich 10y ago

IT infrastructure consumes a non-trivial proportion of global electricity production, ~10% by some estimates. That consumption is growing at an alarming rate. Most of our electricity still comes from coal. Performance-per-core may have stagnated, but performance-per-watt continues to improve at an exponential rate. Without the efficiency dividend provided by Moore's Law, IT infrastructure could become one of the biggest obstacles in our transition to sustainable energy.

imtringued 10y ago

The jump from 28nm to 14nm for graphics cards enabled a massive jump for mobile graphics card made by nvidia. They are no longer a seperate product from the desktop cards. The difference is so massive that even the lowest end model, the 1060, is 15% faster than the highest end mobile graphics card (980M) from the last generation.