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That's a bit like saying it's sad that cpus added media instructions, or that the gpu was invented. Dedicating silicon to fixed tasks or task specific designs c
by kec 7y ago
That's a bit like saying it's sad that cpus added media instructions, or that the gpu was invented. Dedicating silicon to fixed tasks or task specific designs can lead to massive performance increases and in no way means the death of general purpose compute.
- tambourine_man 7y agoAnd it is, in a way. At least to me. Would you rather have a burnt on silicon algorithm for video/encryption decoding or a 10X faster general purpose CPU that can do that and everything else?
- kec 7y agoI think you underestimate just how much faster and more energy efficient hardware acceleration can make certain tasks, the savings can be far in excess of 10x.
- tambourine_man 7y agoYou may underestimate the exponential function :) We where doubling our performance every year or two. For decades.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoWe were also watching 160x240 video clips.
- imtringued 7y agoThat doubling applies to any sillicon circuit, not just CPUs.
- tambourine_man 7y agoOf course it does, and your point is?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]