6 ms·

Normally this wouldn't feel so ground breaking, but the stars are in alignment and all these improvements are hitting at the same time. We're seeing years of w

by bmurphy1976 6y ago

Normally this wouldn't feel so ground breaking, but the stars are in alignment and all these improvements are hitting at the same time. We're seeing years of work and investment paying off (AMD, Apple, ARM, Nvidia, Amazon), new process nodes (TSMC), and new tech (Ray Tracing, DLSS, machine learning) all hitting at the same time. And that's the big stuff! There's also the steady incremental improvements such as battery technology, SSD and RAM that are ongoing. You also have an incumbent (Intel) who's lost their way. If they were as scrappy as they were 15 years ago this wouldn't feel like such a banner year. Yeah, I think we are in a new era of computing.

whizzter 6y ago
Not to forget that apparently some of the people driving that scrappy team that had a big part in Intel's resurgence has been working on the M1. This actually reminded me of how I got skeptical comments from people when I told them that my small and scrappy Pentium-M (P-M -> M1, HAH!) based laptop was almost as fast as their desktop P4 monsters in compiling code.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  The P4 (and Netburst in general) was a true low-point for Intel. Intel is struggling with fab issues right now, but things were really bad from about '02 to '06, with the P4 not completely going away until '08.
- Bayart 6y ago
  I remember people using socket adapters to put Pentium M chips on their desktop. I also have very bad memories of my P4 Prescott around the same era. What an absolute trash pile of an architecture.
  - spronkey 6y ago
    It wasn't actually that bad... Everyone likes to remember it as this massively power hungry beast with terrible performance. It was power hungry compared to what came later, but it did also provide some pretty good performance at the time - especially if you were the kind of tweaky nutter who liked to overclock. Northwood was a relative bargain when you cranked the bus clocks up well beyond what it said on the box.
bhouston 6y ago
Intel in 2020 is IBM in 1980.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  So in 2060 it will still be a huge company with $20B in revenue?
  - 3000000001 6y ago
    Past performance does not indicate future performance, but there are plenty of reasons to think Intel might be around for some time to come.
  - rualca 6y ago
    >>So in 2060 it will still be a huge company with $20B in revenue? That's great for shareholders. Meanwhile, keep in mind that IBM exited the consumer computing device market. If that's also in store for Intel then it's a bit pointless in the PoV of those in the market for consumer computing devices.
  - eulers_secret 6y ago
    That'd be quite a decline, last year Intel reported $72B in revenue...
  - scottlamb 6y ago
    Yeah. When I'm guessing how long something will last, I guess it's about halfway through its life unless I have really good information to the contrary. Intel was founded in 1968, so let's say it will shut down in 2072 (give or take...many...years). And Fortune 500 companies don't seem to totally shrink back to startup head count and revenue even when they go bankrupt—they might have significant revenue but even more expenses. So it seems pretty reasonable to guess Intel will be around with (at least) $20B of revenue in 2060, in spite of their rough patch today.
    - ZeljkoS 6y ago
      > When I'm guessing how long something will last, I guess it's about halfway through its life That is called Lindy effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
reaperducer 6y ago
Ray Tracing I'm not someone into the inner-working of chips much, but is "ray tracing" a new term used for something in microprocessors now? Or is this the same graphic "ray tracing" we were doing back in the 80's on Amigas and Atari STs?
- j4yav 6y ago
  The latter. Systems have become fast enough recently to do realtime ray tracing.
- mynegation 6y ago
  I did not read it as a list of technologies used in chip fabrication, but as a list of “killer apps” driving the need for more performance.
- deerIRL 6y ago
  The new ray tracing is being done in real time rather than being baked into the scenes.
- foobiekr 6y ago
  Realtime ray-tracing is a mix of hardware acceleration for ray intersections and de-noising. The de-noising approaches are certainly novel and not really analogous to previous methods, imho, though the accelerated bounding box hierarchies for accelerating intersections certainly appear in previous iterations.
  - shahar2k 6y ago
    I think this is the key answer, de-noising, using various neural techniques finally allowed acceptable images to be produced from sometimes <1 ray / pixel, where normally images produced at such densities were nearly unusable. This is still not perfect and many ray tracing techniques rely on accumulation over time which limits certain images from working (I imagine raytracing a small particle cloud, or fast shifting objects to be a worst case scenarios)
- ashika 6y ago
thatsnotmepls 6y ago
And yet everything still feels slower after every year lol.

whizzter 6y ago

Not to forget that apparently some of the people driving that scrappy team that had a big part in Intel's resurgence has been working on the M1. This actually reminded me of how I got skeptical comments from people when I told them that my small and scrappy Pentium-M (P-M -> M1, HAH!) based laptop was almost as fast as their desktop P4 monsters in compiling code.

aidenn0 6y ago
The P4 (and Netburst in general) was a true low-point for Intel. Intel is struggling with fab issues right now, but things were really bad from about '02 to '06, with the P4 not completely going away until '08.
Bayart 6y ago
I remember people using socket adapters to put Pentium M chips on their desktop. I also have very bad memories of my P4 Prescott around the same era. What an absolute trash pile of an architecture.
- spronkey 6y ago
  It wasn't actually that bad... Everyone likes to remember it as this massively power hungry beast with terrible performance. It was power hungry compared to what came later, but it did also provide some pretty good performance at the time - especially if you were the kind of tweaky nutter who liked to overclock. Northwood was a relative bargain when you cranked the bus clocks up well beyond what it said on the box.

bhouston 6y ago

Intel in 2020 is IBM in 1980.

aidenn0 6y ago
So in 2060 it will still be a huge company with $20B in revenue?
- 3000000001 6y ago
  Past performance does not indicate future performance, but there are plenty of reasons to think Intel might be around for some time to come.
- rualca 6y ago
  >>So in 2060 it will still be a huge company with $20B in revenue? That's great for shareholders. Meanwhile, keep in mind that IBM exited the consumer computing device market. If that's also in store for Intel then it's a bit pointless in the PoV of those in the market for consumer computing devices.
- eulers_secret 6y ago
  That'd be quite a decline, last year Intel reported $72B in revenue...
- scottlamb 6y ago
  Yeah. When I'm guessing how long something will last, I guess it's about halfway through its life unless I have really good information to the contrary. Intel was founded in 1968, so let's say it will shut down in 2072 (give or take...many...years). And Fortune 500 companies don't seem to totally shrink back to startup head count and revenue even when they go bankrupt—they might have significant revenue but even more expenses. So it seems pretty reasonable to guess Intel will be around with (at least) $20B of revenue in 2060, in spite of their rough patch today.
  - ZeljkoS 6y ago
    > When I'm guessing how long something will last, I guess it's about halfway through its life That is called Lindy effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

reaperducer 6y ago

Ray Tracing I'm not someone into the inner-working of chips much, but is "ray tracing" a new term used for something in microprocessors now? Or is this the same graphic "ray tracing" we were doing back in the 80's on Amigas and Atari STs?

j4yav 6y ago
The latter. Systems have become fast enough recently to do realtime ray tracing.
mynegation 6y ago
I did not read it as a list of technologies used in chip fabrication, but as a list of “killer apps” driving the need for more performance.
deerIRL 6y ago
The new ray tracing is being done in real time rather than being baked into the scenes.
foobiekr 6y ago
Realtime ray-tracing is a mix of hardware acceleration for ray intersections and de-noising. The de-noising approaches are certainly novel and not really analogous to previous methods, imho, though the accelerated bounding box hierarchies for accelerating intersections certainly appear in previous iterations.
- shahar2k 6y ago
  I think this is the key answer, de-noising, using various neural techniques finally allowed acceptable images to be produced from sometimes <1 ray / pixel, where normally images produced at such densities were nearly unusable. This is still not perfect and many ray tracing techniques rely on accumulation over time which limits certain images from working (I imagine raytracing a small particle cloud, or fast shifting objects to be a worst case scenarios)
ashika 6y ago

thatsnotmepls 6y ago

And yet everything still feels slower after every year lol.