6 ms·

I wish core counts hadn't gone crazy. Our developers are using PHP, Python, and Visual Basic so none of it gets used. A 6-core system is perfect. However, we e

I wish core counts hadn't gone crazy. Our developers are using PHP, Python, and Visual Basic so none of it gets used. A 6-core system is perfect. However, we end up buying 12, 14, 16 cores. And to make it worse, we buy dual CPU's on the servers. The buyer has determined core count > * Give me 8 cores and all the clockspeed I can get (for our workloads)

ahbyb 7y ago
That's the trick: they can't make single cores faster so they just throw more cores at the problem and call it a day. Obviously that doesn't work but who cares? It looks good in benchmarks.
- plopz 7y ago
  Thats why they should sell cpus that sacrifice security for speed. I'll take a cpu thats vulnerable to spectre/meltdown if its 20% faster.
  - paines 7y ago
    You mean slower
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    Are you sure that they sacrifice speed for security? It's not obvious to me. Hardware fixes are supposed to be fast. That 20% slowdown comes from software implementation (and you can actually disable it).
    - plopz 7y ago
      I wasn't aware that the fixes for spectre and meltdown had no impact on performance.
  - waste_monk 7y ago
    At least on Linux it's pretty easy to disable the mitigations: https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(again)_on_Intel_CPUs https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(... I'm not sure how easy it is to disable on Windows though.
- hgoel 7y ago
  It isn't the hardware developers' job to make you design good infrastructure.
driverdan 7y ago
> Our developers are using PHP, Python, and Visual Basic so none of it gets used. Why aren't they being used? Even for single threaded languages you can spawn multiple processes.
- robto 7y ago
  Making programs concurrent is hard, especially if you don't have good support from the language. I, too, would hesitate before attempting to make a highly concurrent application in PHP, Python, or Visual Basic. And even then you're looking at considerable investment rewriting stuff that already works. Maybe it works out if the cost savings from being able to purchase fewer machines outweighs the rewrite and the risk of new concurrency bugs.
  - p_l 7y ago
    Still, even single threaded applications can be distributed across the cores by the simple fact that you can run many of them. And web browsers eat a lot these days :-|

ahbyb 7y ago

That's the trick: they can't make single cores faster so they just throw more cores at the problem and call it a day. Obviously that doesn't work but who cares? It looks good in benchmarks.

plopz 7y ago
Thats why they should sell cpus that sacrifice security for speed. I'll take a cpu thats vulnerable to spectre/meltdown if its 20% faster.
- paines 7y ago
  You mean slower
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Are you sure that they sacrifice speed for security? It's not obvious to me. Hardware fixes are supposed to be fast. That 20% slowdown comes from software implementation (and you can actually disable it).
  - plopz 7y ago
    I wasn't aware that the fixes for spectre and meltdown had no impact on performance.
- waste_monk 7y ago
  At least on Linux it's pretty easy to disable the mitigations: https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(again)_on_Intel_CPUs https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(... I'm not sure how easy it is to disable on Windows though.
hgoel 7y ago
It isn't the hardware developers' job to make you design good infrastructure.

driverdan 7y ago

> Our developers are using PHP, Python, and Visual Basic so none of it gets used. Why aren't they being used? Even for single threaded languages you can spawn multiple processes.

robto 7y ago
Making programs concurrent is hard, especially if you don't have good support from the language. I, too, would hesitate before attempting to make a highly concurrent application in PHP, Python, or Visual Basic. And even then you're looking at considerable investment rewriting stuff that already works. Maybe it works out if the cost savings from being able to purchase fewer machines outweighs the rewrite and the risk of new concurrency bugs.
- p_l 7y ago
  Still, even single threaded applications can be distributed across the cores by the simple fact that you can run many of them. And web browsers eat a lot these days :-|