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(for the average user) the CPU speed isn't relevant anymore, even the number of cores. Internet speed plays the biggest factor when watching a movie, opening a

(for the average user) the CPU speed isn't relevant anymore, even the number of cores. Internet speed plays the biggest factor when watching a movie, opening a web page, using some cloud-based app. Then memory speed and GPU speed (even in cell phones) come second: how fast will your CPU grab that data and process something. In niches, of course, CPU speed matters. I want to compile something in half of the time. I want to train my AI model faster. But what really bugs me is when I have to wait for a refresh on some site, this really makes me loose focus (and then I come to HN to see some news and time goes by).

romaniv 7y ago
>CPU speed isn't relevant anymore Only because most software is conceptually stuck in the 50s and Intel fell asleep at the wheel. Having extra cores can allow you to move away from cludgy and insanely complicated solutions to much simpler code. In turn, this enables faster development and experimentation.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Generally code becomes more complicated when you have to run it on multiple cores. I personally am working on a toy actor library to test if easy but still reasonably efficient parallelization is possible even with heavy communication needs. I see a 2.3x slowdown when I run it on a single core vs the baseline that uses locks but it reaches parity at higher levels of parallelism and congestion when you have 10 million actors each 32 bytes in size running on 4 threads. As soon as you need to acquire two locks that are only known at runtime it starts to become increasingly difficult to find a solution. It will usually be highly specific to the problem at hand and not generalize at all when the problem changes slightly. If you limit yourself to only acquiring one lock at a time then generalizing becomes simpler but you now have to implement something very similar to transaction rollback. It isn't the end of the world and it is definitively possible but compared to not worrying about it at all in single threaded code it's a massive headache.
  - romaniv 7y ago
    Some of the most drastic simplifications I've made to real-life code in the recent years were achieved by splitting a "classic" program into multiple independent agents. Making things "parallel" wasn't even the goal. The goal was to clean up some messes. >As soon as you need to acquire two locks that are only known at runtime Why would you need to acquire two locks that are only known at runtime when using the actor model?
sandworm101 7y ago
I'm an average computer user. I like to watch videos and game on weekends. For me CPU speed remains a massive bottleneck. I like to play Kerbal Space Program and, with realism mods, it really needs general computing horsepower. That said, moore's law is irrelevant. I don't care about transistor density, or even CPU count. I care about processing power. Give me a 4-slot motherboard to mount for AMD threadrippers ... I would consider that as an option. What matters to me is price.
- woliveirajr 7y ago
  Hi! 4-slot motherboard for AMD? That's something the "average user" wouldn't even know where to begin. I understand your poing, but when I think of "average user", I mean users who wouldn't dare to open a case, and wouldn't even know where is the CPU and why there are so many coolers inside.

romaniv 7y ago

>CPU speed isn't relevant anymore Only because most software is conceptually stuck in the 50s and Intel fell asleep at the wheel. Having extra cores can allow you to move away from cludgy and insanely complicated solutions to much simpler code. In turn, this enables faster development and experimentation.

imtringued 7y ago
Generally code becomes more complicated when you have to run it on multiple cores. I personally am working on a toy actor library to test if easy but still reasonably efficient parallelization is possible even with heavy communication needs. I see a 2.3x slowdown when I run it on a single core vs the baseline that uses locks but it reaches parity at higher levels of parallelism and congestion when you have 10 million actors each 32 bytes in size running on 4 threads. As soon as you need to acquire two locks that are only known at runtime it starts to become increasingly difficult to find a solution. It will usually be highly specific to the problem at hand and not generalize at all when the problem changes slightly. If you limit yourself to only acquiring one lock at a time then generalizing becomes simpler but you now have to implement something very similar to transaction rollback. It isn't the end of the world and it is definitively possible but compared to not worrying about it at all in single threaded code it's a massive headache.
- romaniv 7y ago
  Some of the most drastic simplifications I've made to real-life code in the recent years were achieved by splitting a "classic" program into multiple independent agents. Making things "parallel" wasn't even the goal. The goal was to clean up some messes. >As soon as you need to acquire two locks that are only known at runtime Why would you need to acquire two locks that are only known at runtime when using the actor model?

sandworm101 7y ago

I'm an average computer user. I like to watch videos and game on weekends. For me CPU speed remains a massive bottleneck. I like to play Kerbal Space Program and, with realism mods, it really needs general computing horsepower. That said, moore's law is irrelevant. I don't care about transistor density, or even CPU count. I care about processing power. Give me a 4-slot motherboard to mount for AMD threadrippers ... I would consider that as an option. What matters to me is price.

woliveirajr 7y ago
Hi! 4-slot motherboard for AMD? That's something the "average user" wouldn't even know where to begin. I understand your poing, but when I think of "average user", I mean users who wouldn't dare to open a case, and wouldn't even know where is the CPU and why there are so many coolers inside.