4 ms·

>Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors The trend seems to be that we get only a

by carlmr 6y ago

>Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance. When the developer upgrades their PC it's easier for them to not notice performance issues. This creates the situation where every few years you need to buy a new PC to do the things you always did.

ganzuul 6y ago
So by dropping support for old CPUs, the Linux kernel burns a bridge. That conversation makes more sense now.
thebean11 6y ago
If the developer doesn't notice the performance issues, maybe they move on to the next thing more quickly and get more done overall? I'm not sure if that's the case, but it may be we aren't looking for utility in the right places.
avmich 6y ago
I'm sure a lot of developers upgrade their PCs (they were called workstations at a time) because of material problems - keyboards getting mechanically worse, and laptops can't easily get keyboard fixed, screens getting dead pixels, sockets getting loose, hard-to-find batteries getting less charge, and maybe some electronics degradation. Another reason is upgrades to software, which maintain general bloat, and which is hard to control; new hardware is easier. That's however is very noticeable. On top of that, just "better" hardware - say, in a decade one can have significantly better screen, more cores and memory, faster storage; makes easier for large software tasks (video transcoding, big rebuilds of whole toolchains and apps, compute-hungry apps like ML...)
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  >laptops can't easily get keyboard fixed This is a frustrating part of recent laptops, but it doesn't have to be this way - my X230's keyboard is removable with a few screws.
akiselev 6y ago
Is that the case for our highly centralized clouds? No one's putting a liquid nitrogen cooled desktop in their office so this type of hardware would be owned by companies who are financially incentivized to drive down the overhead costs of commoditized functionality like networking, data replication and storage, etc. leaving just inefficient developer logic which I assume is high value enough to justify it.
- root-z 6y ago
  It's quite common in the cloud industry to trade hardware for shorter development cycle these days too. I think that's because there is still very high growth in the sector and companies all want to be the first offering feature X. As cloud services become more mature I expect people will be more cost sensitive. Though when that will happen I cannot say.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    I think it's largely because deceloper time is so expensive. Hardware seems cheap in comparison in many contexts.
philsnow 6y ago
> The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance. "hardware giveth, and software taketh away"
- _0ffh 6y ago
  Nice! Another (slightly more pessimistic) one is "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster".
- deepnotderp 6y ago
  Andy Giveth, Bill Taketh Andy Grove and Bill gates

by carlmr 6y ago

ganzuul 6y ago

So by dropping support for old CPUs, the Linux kernel burns a bridge. That conversation makes more sense now.

thebean11 6y ago

If the developer doesn't notice the performance issues, maybe they move on to the next thing more quickly and get more done overall? I'm not sure if that's the case, but it may be we aren't looking for utility in the right places.

avmich 6y ago

I'm sure a lot of developers upgrade their PCs (they were called workstations at a time) because of material problems - keyboards getting mechanically worse, and laptops can't easily get keyboard fixed, screens getting dead pixels, sockets getting loose, hard-to-find batteries getting less charge, and maybe some electronics degradation. Another reason is upgrades to software, which maintain general bloat, and which is hard to control; new hardware is easier. That's however is very noticeable. On top of that, just "better" hardware - say, in a decade one can have significantly better screen, more cores and memory, faster storage; makes easier for large software tasks (video transcoding, big rebuilds of whole toolchains and apps, compute-hungry apps like ML...)

ryukafalz 6y ago
>laptops can't easily get keyboard fixed This is a frustrating part of recent laptops, but it doesn't have to be this way - my X230's keyboard is removable with a few screws.

akiselev 6y ago

Is that the case for our highly centralized clouds? No one's putting a liquid nitrogen cooled desktop in their office so this type of hardware would be owned by companies who are financially incentivized to drive down the overhead costs of commoditized functionality like networking, data replication and storage, etc. leaving just inefficient developer logic which I assume is high value enough to justify it.

root-z 6y ago
It's quite common in the cloud industry to trade hardware for shorter development cycle these days too. I think that's because there is still very high growth in the sector and companies all want to be the first offering feature X. As cloud services become more mature I expect people will be more cost sensitive. Though when that will happen I cannot say.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I think it's largely because deceloper time is so expensive. Hardware seems cheap in comparison in many contexts.

philsnow 6y ago

> The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance. "hardware giveth, and software taketh away"

_0ffh 6y ago
Nice! Another (slightly more pessimistic) one is "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster".
deepnotderp 6y ago
Andy Giveth, Bill Taketh Andy Grove and Bill gates