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Now if only programming multi-core work could catch up to this hardware. Honestly chips with more cores is starting to sound like cars with more wheels or I gue

Now if only programming multi-core work could catch up to this hardware. Honestly chips with more cores is starting to sound like cars with more wheels or I guess more valves lately. Doesn't matter the horsepower the speed limit is the same until we can make software better.

brianobush 7y ago
Depends on the problem domain. Some problems/algorithms, like genetic algorithms, are simple to implement on multicore systems with thread pools with significant gains in overall performance.
lawn 7y ago
At work our homegrown programming language is still single threaded only. Feels bad man.
klodolph 7y ago
This is a very outdated complaint, we are using all cores these days, just not on all systems. Backend software is concurrent & distributed, and although utilization is lower than we’d like, the extra cores are not going to waste. However, if you put this in a machine you use for playing games or checking Facebook then you might think that it’s a waste, and you’d be right. There is plenty of software out there which is still single-threaded, but it’s not dominating our utilization.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  Honestly with the way chrome and firefox behave nowadays, even grandma looking at facebook benefits from multiple cores
  - capableweb 7y ago
    Not really, any window/tab that is not in focus gets heavily throttled by the browser, gradma is probably not running any extensions and single websites are still single threaded for most parts (more and more are adding web workers for various parts though)
    - NullPrefix 7y ago
      >not running any extensions and single websites are still single threaded for most parts Such a shame that all that JS botnet is still single threaded, isn't it ?
benj111 7y ago
"or I guess more valves lately." Extra valves can increase efficiency, which is probably why the valve count is increasing, can't say I've noticed though. Extra wheels can improve aerodynamics also. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 I'll stop undermining your point now :)
- kraig911 7y ago
  Efficiency does not mean you're going faster though. My point still stands. Multi-core processors can invariably let us do more. I get it - valid point. But we're not doing more. We're just cruising along at the same speed I think.
kllrnohj 7y ago
> Doesn't matter the horsepower the speed limit is the same until we can make software better. For developers code compilations benefit from more cores. For hobby 3d artists their renderings benefit from more cores. For hobby video creators their editing & rendering benefits from more cores. For hobby IT usages the extra PCI-E lanes and ECC RAM gets you the capability of doing server-like virtualization without spending server money. Threadripper is an HEDT platform, same as Skylake-X. This is not targeting mass market usage, so complaining about mass-market viability is rather irrelevant.
otakucode 7y ago
Since the beginning I have always wondered when I came across complaints about there not being enough multi-core software. Am I the only one with more than 1 process running on my system?

brianobush 7y ago

Depends on the problem domain. Some problems/algorithms, like genetic algorithms, are simple to implement on multicore systems with thread pools with significant gains in overall performance.

lawn 7y ago

At work our homegrown programming language is still single threaded only. Feels bad man.

klodolph 7y ago

This is a very outdated complaint, we are using all cores these days, just not on all systems. Backend software is concurrent & distributed, and although utilization is lower than we’d like, the extra cores are not going to waste. However, if you put this in a machine you use for playing games or checking Facebook then you might think that it’s a waste, and you’d be right. There is plenty of software out there which is still single-threaded, but it’s not dominating our utilization.

mrguyorama 7y ago
Honestly with the way chrome and firefox behave nowadays, even grandma looking at facebook benefits from multiple cores
- capableweb 7y ago
  Not really, any window/tab that is not in focus gets heavily throttled by the browser, gradma is probably not running any extensions and single websites are still single threaded for most parts (more and more are adding web workers for various parts though)
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    >not running any extensions and single websites are still single threaded for most parts Such a shame that all that JS botnet is still single threaded, isn't it ?

benj111 7y ago

"or I guess more valves lately." Extra valves can increase efficiency, which is probably why the valve count is increasing, can't say I've noticed though. Extra wheels can improve aerodynamics also. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 I'll stop undermining your point now :)

kraig911 7y ago
Efficiency does not mean you're going faster though. My point still stands. Multi-core processors can invariably let us do more. I get it - valid point. But we're not doing more. We're just cruising along at the same speed I think.

kllrnohj 7y ago

> Doesn't matter the horsepower the speed limit is the same until we can make software better. For developers code compilations benefit from more cores. For hobby 3d artists their renderings benefit from more cores. For hobby video creators their editing & rendering benefits from more cores. For hobby IT usages the extra PCI-E lanes and ECC RAM gets you the capability of doing server-like virtualization without spending server money. Threadripper is an HEDT platform, same as Skylake-X. This is not targeting mass market usage, so complaining about mass-market viability is rather irrelevant.

otakucode 7y ago

Since the beginning I have always wondered when I came across complaints about there not being enough multi-core software. Am I the only one with more than 1 process running on my system?