4 ms·
Performance improvements have slowed a great deal since then. Assuming you aren't doing anything particularly heavy, you can easily get away with using a Sandy
by Hiopl 6y ago
Performance improvements have slowed a great deal since then. Assuming you aren't doing anything particularly heavy, you can easily get away with using a Sandy Bridge CPU (10 years old) for most tasks. You'll likely still be able to use it in 5 years just fine. That applies even moreso for something as performant and efficient as the M1.
Case in point, my ThinkPad T420 has been in use since 2011. Even though it's no longer my main driver, the performance is more than good enough for when I need a backup device.
For comparison, 16 years ago, we're talking about single-core 32-bit CPUs, the very first version of their Centrino brand, DDR2 RAM and IDE/PATA HDDs. There's just not much you can do with those limitations.
- auggierose 6y agoThe performance improvements due to parallel computing hardware (think Metal GPUs and their successors) will be so insane in 16 years that your current laptop won't stand a chance at doing anything what will be considered standard then.
- lmm 6y agoIncreasing parallelism is irrelevant for most workloads due to Amdahl's law.
- auggierose 6y agoThat's bullshit. All of the programs I have written recently had an incredible speedup after porting relevant parts of the program from single-threaded to GPU. Right now we are hitting the threshold of incompetent programmers and tools long before any other.
- Filligree 6y agoAmdahl's law is only relevant if you can't change your algorithms. If you can, then most of the time it's a non-issue. The human brain runs off umptillion neurons each running at 100-1000 Hz (depending on measure). Not GHz, MHz or even kHz. Hz. Obviously it's an extreme case, but if general intelligence can be achieved without fast serial computing then there should be lots of things we can do with a few dozen cores all running at GHz rates.