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Software is versioned in numerical order which is pretty intuitive. At a glance it's clear which versions are minor updates, and which are major. Cars are vers

Software is versioned in numerical order which is pretty intuitive. At a glance it's clear which versions are minor updates, and which are major. Cars are versioned by year/model, which again makes it pretty clear to understand minor/major updates. Sometimes significant updates are introduced in a model year, but generally the core features remain the same and it could still be considered an upgrade to that model. Without a clear and intuitive versioning scheme it can be confusing and time consuming to make sense of a product line. And that gets frustrating if it keeps changing.

craftyguy 8y ago
No one does semantic versioning for hardware products (at least consistently), but maybe they should.
- skohan 8y ago
  It's apple and oranges. Adobe doesn't release 5 versions of photoshop every year with different performance levels.
alasdair_ 8y ago
>Cars are versioned by year/model, which again makes it pretty clear to understand minor/major updates. Sometimes significant updates are introduced in a model year, but generally the core features remain the same and it could still be considered an upgrade to that model. Tesla managed to break this trend massively, which proves a problem for things like insurance. The feature set on (say) the January 2014 Model S is very different from the December 2014 Model S, even though they technically share the same "year".
- mirashii 8y ago
  Tesla didn't break this any more than any other car manufacturer. The model year hasn't been tied to the manufacture year for a long time. See https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/why-doesnt-cars-model-year-match-calendar-year-262514 https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/why-doesnt-cars-model-ye... for instance.
  - hakfoo 8y ago
    I think the difference is more "model year no longer reliably indicates feature set", not "model year no longer indicates date of manufacture." This may make finding and pricing spare parts difficult, or categorizing safety and performance metrics.
skohan 8y ago
> Cars are versioned by year/model Just look at BMW or Porsche. Their numbering systems are just as obtuse as GPUs.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  BMW went that way very recently. It wasn't that long ago that their model numbers were very much explicit. A 328i was a 3-series chassis with a 2.8 liter. The i and d stood for fuel-injected and diesel respectively.
  - nextweek2 8y ago
    That was fine back in the day when there was a correlation between engine size and performance. Since they started strapping turbochargers to everything down to 1.0l, the engine size comparison has become less important. If anything my 3.0l car is seen as a negative because of the higher fuel consumption. The manufacturers are just trying to walk a fine line.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Well it still makes sense to some extent. i and d still mean petrol and diesel, with e for hybrid joining the ranks lately. But in general x1x(say 116d or 114i) are entry level engines, x2x(320d) are mid-tier and x3x(430d) x4x(240i) are higher end, more powerful engines.
ethbro 8y ago
> Without a clear and intuitive versioning scheme it can be confusing and time consuming to make sense of a product line. And that gets frustrating if it keeps changing. This is a case of Nvidia working with that sentiment rather than against it. They were roasted by review sites previously for co-mingling architectures in the same numbering generation. So this time, they didn't. TU106 was far too big of a chip to die-harvest low enough for a true volume x60 budget part. Add in all the non-graphics acceleration hardware that needed to be cut to hit price and... Nvidia didn't feel this could be called an RTX 20xx part. The 16xx is awkward, but it's the least bad choice.

craftyguy 8y ago

No one does semantic versioning for hardware products (at least consistently), but maybe they should.

skohan 8y ago
It's apple and oranges. Adobe doesn't release 5 versions of photoshop every year with different performance levels.

alasdair_ 8y ago

>Cars are versioned by year/model, which again makes it pretty clear to understand minor/major updates. Sometimes significant updates are introduced in a model year, but generally the core features remain the same and it could still be considered an upgrade to that model. Tesla managed to break this trend massively, which proves a problem for things like insurance. The feature set on (say) the January 2014 Model S is very different from the December 2014 Model S, even though they technically share the same "year".

mirashii 8y ago
Tesla didn't break this any more than any other car manufacturer. The model year hasn't been tied to the manufacture year for a long time. See https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/why-doesnt-cars-model-year-match-calendar-year-262514 https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/why-doesnt-cars-model-ye... for instance.
- hakfoo 8y ago
  I think the difference is more "model year no longer reliably indicates feature set", not "model year no longer indicates date of manufacture." This may make finding and pricing spare parts difficult, or categorizing safety and performance metrics.

skohan 8y ago

> Cars are versioned by year/model Just look at BMW or Porsche. Their numbering systems are just as obtuse as GPUs.

jhall1468 8y ago
BMW went that way very recently. It wasn't that long ago that their model numbers were very much explicit. A 328i was a 3-series chassis with a 2.8 liter. The i and d stood for fuel-injected and diesel respectively.
- nextweek2 8y ago
  That was fine back in the day when there was a correlation between engine size and performance. Since they started strapping turbochargers to everything down to 1.0l, the engine size comparison has become less important. If anything my 3.0l car is seen as a negative because of the higher fuel consumption. The manufacturers are just trying to walk a fine line.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Well it still makes sense to some extent. i and d still mean petrol and diesel, with e for hybrid joining the ranks lately. But in general x1x(say 116d or 114i) are entry level engines, x2x(320d) are mid-tier and x3x(430d) x4x(240i) are higher end, more powerful engines.

ethbro 8y ago

> Without a clear and intuitive versioning scheme it can be confusing and time consuming to make sense of a product line. And that gets frustrating if it keeps changing. This is a case of Nvidia working with that sentiment rather than against it. They were roasted by review sites previously for co-mingling architectures in the same numbering generation. So this time, they didn't. TU106 was far too big of a chip to die-harvest low enough for a true volume x60 budget part. Add in all the non-graphics acceleration hardware that needed to be cut to hit price and... Nvidia didn't feel this could be called an RTX 20xx part. The 16xx is awkward, but it's the least bad choice.