4 ms·

No, it really isn't. Desktop cpus blow mobile cpus out of the water (same with gpus, of course), and can use far more RAM and disk storage. Laptops simply have

by vacri 10y ago

No, it really isn't. Desktop cpus blow mobile cpus out of the water (same with gpus, of course), and can use far more RAM and disk storage. Laptops simply have the rather massive advantage of portability.

derefr 10y ago
I've always wondered: has any computer ever come with a "dock" that actually contains its own CPU+GPU+RAM+disks+etc, such that, when you plug the "computer" into the "dock", you're really telling the "dock" to boot and parasitize all the "computer's" PCI-E peripherals into its own address-space? Sort of like an iMac's Target Display Mode, but in reverse: instead of the "guest" computer doing the work and the "host" computer acting as a dumb frame-buffer, the "host" does the work and the "guest" acts as a Thunderbolt hub.
- lmm 10y ago
  You want to be running the "guest" since that's where all your work is (just having access to the disk isn't really enough, you want to run your apps/settings/etc). I think we may see a move towards docks with graphics cards, but the CPU and RAM probably want to stay on the guest computer.
  - derefr 10y ago
    I would imagine that the "host" would be diskless and would treat the "guest"'s boot disk as its boot disk. It's effectively the same as swapping the guest disk into the host, but all its other peripherals (ports, sensors, etc.) come along as well. This is why I was asking whether there was ever a dock made for a specific computer that had this feature: it requires the guest's disk's OS to have drivers to let it boot the host—or even hardware compatibility such that docking the "guest" would cause it to hibernate to disk, and then boot from that same hibernation image on the host. That basically requires the host and guest [the dock and the portable] to be made together. (And that's not even getting into weird things you could do with live process migration and NUMA and memory hotplug if you want to make both the host's and guest's processors available without an effective reboot/hibernation/sleep step.) An aside: before it was revealed what exactly the Nintendo Switch was (a portable with a variable clock rate that overclocks itself when plugged into a heatsink dock), I had a suspicion that it might use this architecture: a portable that just turns itself into a disk and Bluetooth controller for a more powerful non-portable when plugged into it.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    > You want to be running the "guest" since that's where all your work is (just having access to the disk isn't really enough, you want to run your apps/settings/etc). I think we may see a move towards docks with graphics cards, but the CPU and RAM probably want to stay on the guest computer. Like the Razer Core, with USB-C. Yep, I can see this happening, but also remote gaming where you rent the workstation and just get a thin client which only has to be able to download and see the 'movie'. Gaming-wise, I can also see use cases where you want to get additional CPU power.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > Like the Razer Core, with USB-C. Yeah, I was thinking of my Surface Book (with the graphics card in the base). > Yep, I can see this happening, but also remote gaming where you rent the workstation and just get a thin client which only has to be able to download and see the 'movie'. I suspect the inherent latency will always argue against remote gaming - especially for the kind of games where you most want extra computing power.
      - Fnoord 10y ago
        > Yeah, I was thinking of my Surface Book (with the graphics card in the base). Excellent example. In theory it could also work with devices like the newest MBPs. > I suspect the inherent latency will always argue against remote gaming - especially for the kind of games where you most want extra computing power. Not necessarily. FPS and perhaps LoL, sure. RPG such as WoW, not really. Not sure about AR/VR. If one doesn't have/want a PC workstation with a strong graphics card, and one does have a laptop, why not just a Razer Core or akin device? Until we can just have those in the device itself. But that is gonna take a while!
lmm 10y ago
Does the horsepower give you any extra capability these days though? My laptop (Surface Book) is plenty powerful enough for development, even a certain amount of 3D rendering.
- vacri 10y ago
  It depends what you're doing as to whether the CPU is enough, but RAM is still a frequently-cited constraint in the laptop world. Obviously with the immense rise in popularity of laptops, mobile CPUs are now 'fast enough' and have been for a while, but when you do need the grunt, desktops are nice. I imagine most developers these days have 'forgotten' how nicely desktops perform, simply due to lack of access. My own anecdata: I work in two places, one where I have a 'nice' laptop (some old-but-beefy Alienware thing) and one where I have a 'nice' whitebox desktop. When I'm on the desktop, I find that I'm not keeping my computer's limitations in mind as I do my work, whereas on the laptop I do. It's not at the forefront of my mind, but it's there to some degree. Before I moved to the Alienware (16G ram), I was on an 8G laptop, and I had daily issues with that constraint - even though all I used daily were terminals, about 15-20 browser tabs[1], and maybe a screencap program. Then I go home and play games, and in that realm, laptops really are the middle-child if the game has any GPU or CPU heft (though again, laptops have the benefit of portability). [1] not all website are created equal, of course...
macspoofing 10y ago
I have Dell XPS 15 with quad-core i7, 512 SSD, dedicated GPU and 16 GB of RAM. It's plenty for anything I want to do ... with the added benefit of mobility. Why desktop? These days if you're purchasing a computer the default option is a laptop. You have to have a good reason not to go with a laptop.

by vacri 10y ago

derefr 10y ago

I've always wondered: has any computer ever come with a "dock" that actually contains its own CPU+GPU+RAM+disks+etc, such that, when you plug the "computer" into the "dock", you're really telling the "dock" to boot and parasitize all the "computer's" PCI-E peripherals into its own address-space? Sort of like an iMac's Target Display Mode, but in reverse: instead of the "guest" computer doing the work and the "host" computer acting as a dumb frame-buffer, the "host" does the work and the "guest" acts as a Thunderbolt hub.

lmm 10y ago
You want to be running the "guest" since that's where all your work is (just having access to the disk isn't really enough, you want to run your apps/settings/etc). I think we may see a move towards docks with graphics cards, but the CPU and RAM probably want to stay on the guest computer.
- derefr 10y ago
  I would imagine that the "host" would be diskless and would treat the "guest"'s boot disk as its boot disk. It's effectively the same as swapping the guest disk into the host, but all its other peripherals (ports, sensors, etc.) come along as well. This is why I was asking whether there was ever a dock made for a specific computer that had this feature: it requires the guest's disk's OS to have drivers to let it boot the host—or even hardware compatibility such that docking the "guest" would cause it to hibernate to disk, and then boot from that same hibernation image on the host. That basically requires the host and guest [the dock and the portable] to be made together. (And that's not even getting into weird things you could do with live process migration and NUMA and memory hotplug if you want to make both the host's and guest's processors available without an effective reboot/hibernation/sleep step.) An aside: before it was revealed what exactly the Nintendo Switch was (a portable with a variable clock rate that overclocks itself when plugged into a heatsink dock), I had a suspicion that it might use this architecture: a portable that just turns itself into a disk and Bluetooth controller for a more powerful non-portable when plugged into it.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  > You want to be running the "guest" since that's where all your work is (just having access to the disk isn't really enough, you want to run your apps/settings/etc). I think we may see a move towards docks with graphics cards, but the CPU and RAM probably want to stay on the guest computer. Like the Razer Core, with USB-C. Yep, I can see this happening, but also remote gaming where you rent the workstation and just get a thin client which only has to be able to download and see the 'movie'. Gaming-wise, I can also see use cases where you want to get additional CPU power.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > Like the Razer Core, with USB-C. Yeah, I was thinking of my Surface Book (with the graphics card in the base). > Yep, I can see this happening, but also remote gaming where you rent the workstation and just get a thin client which only has to be able to download and see the 'movie'. I suspect the inherent latency will always argue against remote gaming - especially for the kind of games where you most want extra computing power.
    - Fnoord 10y ago
      > Yeah, I was thinking of my Surface Book (with the graphics card in the base). Excellent example. In theory it could also work with devices like the newest MBPs. > I suspect the inherent latency will always argue against remote gaming - especially for the kind of games where you most want extra computing power. Not necessarily. FPS and perhaps LoL, sure. RPG such as WoW, not really. Not sure about AR/VR. If one doesn't have/want a PC workstation with a strong graphics card, and one does have a laptop, why not just a Razer Core or akin device? Until we can just have those in the device itself. But that is gonna take a while!

lmm 10y ago

Does the horsepower give you any extra capability these days though? My laptop (Surface Book) is plenty powerful enough for development, even a certain amount of 3D rendering.

vacri 10y ago
It depends what you're doing as to whether the CPU is enough, but RAM is still a frequently-cited constraint in the laptop world. Obviously with the immense rise in popularity of laptops, mobile CPUs are now 'fast enough' and have been for a while, but when you do need the grunt, desktops are nice. I imagine most developers these days have 'forgotten' how nicely desktops perform, simply due to lack of access. My own anecdata: I work in two places, one where I have a 'nice' laptop (some old-but-beefy Alienware thing) and one where I have a 'nice' whitebox desktop. When I'm on the desktop, I find that I'm not keeping my computer's limitations in mind as I do my work, whereas on the laptop I do. It's not at the forefront of my mind, but it's there to some degree. Before I moved to the Alienware (16G ram), I was on an 8G laptop, and I had daily issues with that constraint - even though all I used daily were terminals, about 15-20 browser tabs[1], and maybe a screencap program. Then I go home and play games, and in that realm, laptops really are the middle-child if the game has any GPU or CPU heft (though again, laptops have the benefit of portability). [1] not all website are created equal, of course...

macspoofing 10y ago

I have Dell XPS 15 with quad-core i7, 512 SSD, dedicated GPU and 16 GB of RAM. It's plenty for anything I want to do ... with the added benefit of mobility. Why desktop? These days if you're purchasing a computer the default option is a laptop. You have to have a good reason not to go with a laptop.