5 ms·

I can kinda see the value of getting a million PS3 cpus for in your new drone swarm or industry controllers. But how is gathering generic decades old hardware g

I can kinda see the value of getting a million PS3 cpus for in your new drone swarm or industry controllers. But how is gathering generic decades old hardware going to help? For Computation as a service its not that valuable or easy to install. And for reuse in 'new' devices it's even more questionable. All this stuff barely just works in this specific configuration.

chefkoch 6y ago
Military equipment is often more than a decade old and uses far older electronics.
blagie 6y ago
I'm only doing a few things on machine with around 32GHz worth of processing power (# of processors * GHz) that I couldn't do on my 80486 running 33MHz with a few MB of RAM. Emacs starts up a little bit faster. Pages in Chrome are more interactive than in Lynx, Mosaic, or Netscape. My word processor fits more text. On the whole, that 1000x increase in performance mostly bought the ability to have most of the code that runs be interpreted or JITed rather than statically compiled, to play videos, to do some heavy numerics and graphics (including things like family photos and videos), and so on. It's hard to think of anything I really /need/ in a life-or-death sense or an economic-survival sense that couldn't be done on older hardware with appropriate software. There's a ton of things I want, that help, or where migrations would be massive projects. If computers were to entirely disappear, and I couldn't automate things, communicate digitally (emails, messaging), word process, write code, I think that'd be a major systemic-collapse-level implosion of society. A lot of people would simply die. On the other hand, if computers were to regress to 33MHz-level performance, Youtube isn't sticking around, but we'd likely adapt as a society with some structural change, but without such a collapse.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Youtube isn't sticking around As an end user it would be manageable but dont forget that the whole world runs on servers and many Industries would collapse if computing power is gone
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Computational power < network connectivity If we lost a few decades of processor improvements, it would be about as parent noted. If we lost worldwide connectivity or all undersea backbones between some terrestrial networks... it would be civilization-altering.
    - blagie 6y ago
      I feel like BBSes did okay for most purposes over 300 baud modems. I mean, I'm not getting a picture of what I'm buying on Amazon, unless I want to wait 5 minutes for it to download, but I can still make the purchase. On the server side, you'll be running C code rather than a nice high-level language, but it will get the job done. You might not have all the ML which lets me get the most relevant product recommended, but.... Emails definitely won't be HTML, but they'll come through. The world would work.
- ip26 6y ago
  Older levels of performance wouldn't cripple humanity. But putting together something that actually works out of a big parts bin is a crapshoot, and supporting a deployment of machines which are each completely unique is an IT nightmare. We could do it if we had to, of course.
  - toast0 6y ago
    I think the best chances to get something useful would be to collect x86 consoles. x86 means you've got a well supported target, and consoles means you've got limited hardware variations. Military could probably pressure Microsoft to give them some way to turn an original xbox into a PC; and if you give people $50 for an original xbox most will be happy.
    - blagie 6y ago
      There are a number of commonly-used microcontrollers. Z80 comes to mind. So does Atmel. So do a few common ARM variants. If you can cover those, you're not in bad shape.
unionpivo 6y ago
because for a lot of things you don't need that much cpu power. Creating something that can read several sensors (switches and buttons are also sensors), and putting aggregate status updates on a serial line, or displaying status lights, triggering relay or something similar can be done, on decades old gaming consoles, and is probably one of the most common use of processors in the world today. In fact it is easier than trying to use modern cpu, that wasn't designed for that. Not everything is about computation, in fact in terms of units sold its probably a minority.

chefkoch 6y ago

Military equipment is often more than a decade old and uses far older electronics.

blagie 6y ago

I'm only doing a few things on machine with around 32GHz worth of processing power (# of processors * GHz) that I couldn't do on my 80486 running 33MHz with a few MB of RAM. Emacs starts up a little bit faster. Pages in Chrome are more interactive than in Lynx, Mosaic, or Netscape. My word processor fits more text. On the whole, that 1000x increase in performance mostly bought the ability to have most of the code that runs be interpreted or JITed rather than statically compiled, to play videos, to do some heavy numerics and graphics (including things like family photos and videos), and so on. It's hard to think of anything I really /need/ in a life-or-death sense or an economic-survival sense that couldn't be done on older hardware with appropriate software. There's a ton of things I want, that help, or where migrations would be massive projects. If computers were to entirely disappear, and I couldn't automate things, communicate digitally (emails, messaging), word process, write code, I think that'd be a major systemic-collapse-level implosion of society. A lot of people would simply die. On the other hand, if computers were to regress to 33MHz-level performance, Youtube isn't sticking around, but we'd likely adapt as a society with some structural change, but without such a collapse.

ekianjo 6y ago
> Youtube isn't sticking around As an end user it would be manageable but dont forget that the whole world runs on servers and many Industries would collapse if computing power is gone
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Computational power < network connectivity If we lost a few decades of processor improvements, it would be about as parent noted. If we lost worldwide connectivity or all undersea backbones between some terrestrial networks... it would be civilization-altering.
  - blagie 6y ago
    I feel like BBSes did okay for most purposes over 300 baud modems. I mean, I'm not getting a picture of what I'm buying on Amazon, unless I want to wait 5 minutes for it to download, but I can still make the purchase. On the server side, you'll be running C code rather than a nice high-level language, but it will get the job done. You might not have all the ML which lets me get the most relevant product recommended, but.... Emails definitely won't be HTML, but they'll come through. The world would work.
ip26 6y ago
Older levels of performance wouldn't cripple humanity. But putting together something that actually works out of a big parts bin is a crapshoot, and supporting a deployment of machines which are each completely unique is an IT nightmare. We could do it if we had to, of course.
- toast0 6y ago
  I think the best chances to get something useful would be to collect x86 consoles. x86 means you've got a well supported target, and consoles means you've got limited hardware variations. Military could probably pressure Microsoft to give them some way to turn an original xbox into a PC; and if you give people $50 for an original xbox most will be happy.
  - blagie 6y ago
    There are a number of commonly-used microcontrollers. Z80 comes to mind. So does Atmel. So do a few common ARM variants. If you can cover those, you're not in bad shape.

unionpivo 6y ago

because for a lot of things you don't need that much cpu power. Creating something that can read several sensors (switches and buttons are also sensors), and putting aggregate status updates on a serial line, or displaying status lights, triggering relay or something similar can be done, on decades old gaming consoles, and is probably one of the most common use of processors in the world today. In fact it is easier than trying to use modern cpu, that wasn't designed for that. Not everything is about computation, in fact in terms of units sold its probably a minority.