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This might sound like a silly question, but what would one use a 64-code CPU on a desktop machine for? Or more precisely, in what situations is a 32-core Thread
by krylon 7y ago
This might sound like a silly question, but what would one use a 64-code CPU on a desktop machine for? Or more precisely, in what situations is a 32-core ThreadRipper2 insufficient?
- Crinus 7y agoI don't know about others but my lightmapper will certainly benefit :-P. Perhaps compilation times, for some stuff.
- Quekid5 7y agoCompilation of C++ code is one workload. Just make sure you also have a lot of RAM!
- TheHardew 7y agoIsn't c++ compilation single-threaded and linking multi-threaded? I imagine with pre-compiled headers 64 cores would be a massive overkill. I don't know, if even my 2700x wouldn't be.
- ahartmetz 7y agoC++ compilation is massively multiprocess. Linking is mostly single-process but the gold (for little benefit) and lld (for good benefit) linkers support multithreading.
- mmrezaie 7y agoI am not sure if any c++ compiler can actually compile a single file in parallel but usually you have many small to large files in compiling a project then "make -j" or "ninja" can build in parallel, and it is quite embarrassingly parallel task (but very memory intensive too).
- noselasd 7y agoC++ compilers are normally single threaded, so you launch as many instances of the compiler as you can and make them compile different files in parallell
- neuromancer2701 7y agoIf your code base is 1000+ c/cpp files each of these needs to be compiled into an o file so all of that can be done in parallel.
- rasz 7y agoChrome, Google web properties, gmail javascript, dev perk. What kind of system do you think a developer making this >first photo is a 2000x1489px PNG (4.5MB) and it is scaled to just 451x335px. had on his desk?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoMarketing copy is usually not written by developers.
- zekrioca 7y ago“640k should be enough for anyone”?
- krylon 7y agoI was not saying 16 or 32 cores should be "enough for anyone", I was just curious about the specific workloads people might want such a beast for. ;-)
- zekrioca 7y agoLooking from the context, it is easy to expect that all available cores will inevitably be used by newer dynamic workloads. From the context of the “640k” sentence, the same thing applied. Apply it to now, and the same effect will be noticed.
- zabhi 7y agoRun Slack of course.
- krisroadruck 7y agoLaughed harder than I should have at this. Thanks for the morning chuckle.
- bitL 7y agoOpen 10+ tabs in Chrome.
- noodleincarnate 7y agoUses right now are fairly limited. However advancing technology has a tendency to open up new possibilities unthinkable before
- r00fus 7y agoI don’t think even enthusiasts can fully engage a 64 core device with any meaningful uses that a 32 core wouldn’t suffice. This is a server chip that excels at virtualization.
- IshKebab 7y agoTry compiling Chromium or LLVM and tell me you don't want more than 32 cores. Also there are plenty of embarrassingly parallel operations like 3D rendering, video editing, password cracking, and so on that would benefits. Ok usually you can use GPUs for that sort of thing but not always.
- feanaro 7y agoI could definitely fully engage a 64 core CPU for fuzzing.
- mmrezaie 7y agoThen you are not a target. There are many scientific workloads that actually can benefit from shared memory multi core processors like this. They do not scale properly in cluster. Data Science is very simple and obvious target. Developers also can benefit a lot. Have you worked on a very large project of mixed c++ and Fortran + for some reason python (Compiling or profiling)? This is god send. I am currently working on a single node with 2x28 core and I still need more cores. For licensing issues I cannot use more than one node for my task.
- willis936 7y agoI think most of the people finding themselves here would be in the “I wait on my computer several times a day” category. Data science and local compilation will see benefits for any amount of core scaling. One could argue all of this could be done on a server using a remote terminal, but that isn’t how many workflows are set up.
- BubRoss 7y ago3D rendering and video encoding need every bit of power they can get.
- 7y ago
- Ragib_Zaman 7y agoIf you do data science/ML with CPU computed models (basically everything except deep networks), you get a ~2x speedup when doing e.g n-fold cross validation (n >= 64), or hyperparameter optimisation via grid search.
- empath75 7y agoBut can it run Crysis?
- ImJasonH 7y agoThe question is, what workloads do people have that they'll run often enough and/or profitably enough to warrant those 64 CPUs sitting around idle when they're not using them. This is the advantage of a cloud host. Sure you pay a premium, but you're paying not to pay for it when you're not using it (and networking and power and updates and security etc.). (Disclaimer: I work on Google Cloud)
- Filligree 7y agoMost cloud hosts are painfully expensive. If you don't value your own time at market value (as is typical and reasonable for hobby time; it isn't really exchangeable), then we're comparing an ongoing lease to just the hardware cost. It doesn't take much usage for those lines to cross.
- ImJasonH 7y agoOh there's definitely a point at which you save money buying the hardware and running it yourself. But especially for hobby usage my experience is that's often further out than real usage. YMMV. I think I'd save money by renting a RPi for even $20/day, for instance. :)
- chaosbutters 7y agoI can answer this! So my work computers are 28, 32, and 96 physical cores each. And honestly, none of those are enough. I'd ideally have a very high clock speed 128 core desktop with a 1,000-10,000 compute cluster available with 10 gb/s internet speeds. Now back to your question on why these are needed, parallelized simulations. I do computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for designing, fixing, troubleshooting, and optimizing processes and products. They solve large systems of equations that need many cores for meshing and solving and then we need high CPU/GPU core counts just to handle and process the data. In my case at least, the average industrial/manufacturing piece of equipment needs about 1000 cores to recreate as a digital twin due to the amount of multiphysics, complicated geometry, etc.
- elorant 7y agoRun dozens of parallel vms for Selenium tests. Honestly, I could utilize anything the industry could offer as long as the price would be affordable. Aside from that let me just remind that pretty much everyone in here is an edge case user. We're not the norm so my guess is that your question should be addressed to the general public. In that context I doubt anyone would need such processing power. It's no surprise that Apple is investing heavily in the iPad Pro product line. Most users could be fine with just a tablet.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoRaytracing.