9 ms·

One of my favorites is a super-long one by a user named bane, about three solutions to speeding up computing: (1) "high" (more RAM, CPU), (2) "wide" (more machi

One of my favorites is a super-long one by a user named bane, about three solutions to speeding up computing: (1) "high" (more RAM, CPU), (2) "wide" (more machines), and (3) "deep" (refactoring), which is what he recommends first. More than once he has rewritten something that was running slowly even on the latest and greatest architectures (perhaps partially because of that), to running on a single machine, even an old personal computer. He reminds us that a modern computer, with its solid-state drives, gigabytes of memory, and multicore gigahertz processors, can take on many large problems, if you just stoop to give the problem a decent amount of attention first, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739

cpach 6y ago
Very inspiring!
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Reminds me of this recent comment on Chuck Moore, of Forth fame, building his own technology stack right down the hardware and squeezing it for performance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469625
postit 6y ago
Ah, there's where the "bane's rule" comes from; I've heard if from a FAANG friend, and I kept wonder the source.
higerordermap 6y ago
This is now my favourite comment!
tootie 6y ago
We've used the terms horizontal and vertical scaling to mean those same things for a while.
- combatentropy 6y ago
  He does not claim to introduce the concepts of horizontal and vertical scaling. He mentions them only to immediately discourage them: "Lots of people make the mistake of thinking there's only two vectors you can go to improve performance, high or wide. [...] There's a third direction you can go, I call it 'going deep'." Like I said, it's a long post, so I tried my best to summarize it and then linked to it.
chubot 6y ago
Very nice, reminds me of a quote from this very related paper: You can have a second computer once you’ve shown you know how to use the first one. –Paul Barham Scalability! But at what COST? https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos15-paper-mcsherry.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos... http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/04/COST2.html http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/... Interesting it also involves graph processing, which Bane's comment did. The point is that distributed graph processing frameworks were mostly parallelizing their own overhead, not solving the problem, which could be done on a single machine!
29athrowaway 6y ago
Horizontal and vertical scalability is something people have been talking about for decades.

cpach 6y ago

Very inspiring!

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Reminds me of this recent comment on Chuck Moore, of Forth fame, building his own technology stack right down the hardware and squeezing it for performance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469625

postit 6y ago

Ah, there's where the "bane's rule" comes from; I've heard if from a FAANG friend, and I kept wonder the source.

higerordermap 6y ago

This is now my favourite comment!

tootie 6y ago

We've used the terms horizontal and vertical scaling to mean those same things for a while.

combatentropy 6y ago
He does not claim to introduce the concepts of horizontal and vertical scaling. He mentions them only to immediately discourage them: "Lots of people make the mistake of thinking there's only two vectors you can go to improve performance, high or wide. [...] There's a third direction you can go, I call it 'going deep'." Like I said, it's a long post, so I tried my best to summarize it and then linked to it.

chubot 6y ago

Very nice, reminds me of a quote from this very related paper: You can have a second computer once you’ve shown you know how to use the first one. –Paul Barham Scalability! But at what COST? https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos15-paper-mcsherry.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos... http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/04/COST2.html http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/... Interesting it also involves graph processing, which Bane's comment did. The point is that distributed graph processing frameworks were mostly parallelizing their own overhead, not solving the problem, which could be done on a single machine!

29athrowaway 6y ago

Horizontal and vertical scalability is something people have been talking about for decades.