4 ms·

> I stopped eyeing for cpu advances a decade ago Even in the x64 space massive advances have been made [0]. For 2.5x the power, you can have 8x the parallelism

> I stopped eyeing for cpu advances a decade ago Even in the x64 space massive advances have been made [0]. For 2.5x the power, you can have 8x the parallelism, with 50% faster single core speeds, (plus all the micro improvements with avx, or the other improvements that make 3.5GHz today faster than a 3.5GHz cpu from 10 years ago) [0] https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-TR-3970X-vs-Intel-Core-i7-2600/m970030vs620 https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-TR-3970X-vs-...

wmanley 6y ago
I think the point is that while CPUs have gotten (significantly) better over time using a computer doesn't feel any faster than 10 years ago because software has more than made up for it. On my 3 year old Ubuntu machine here it takes ~2-3s to launch gnome-calculator. This is no faster than launching gnome-calculator in 2004 on my 2004 Athlon 64 with Gnome 2.6. It's not like gnome-calculator is suddenly doing a lot more now. It feels like I spend more time now waiting for the computer than I did then. It's the same with the phone - click, wait, click, wait, click, wait. For a taste of what it could be like try running Windows 2000 in a VM. Zoooooooom. Why? Developers will only optimise their software when it becomes unbearably slow - and in the absence of automated performance tracking and eternal vigilance software gets slower over time. The result is that there is no reason* to get excited about CPU advances. It doesn't make your life better, it's just a cost you have to pay to stop your life getting worse. * Sure there are some reasons - if you're already using/dependant upon heavily optimised software like games or machine learning, but for most people that's a very small part of their computing use.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
  Fully agree. It also feels like some kind of disdain for performance and optimization has taken root in certain parts of our industry and communities. The "client does not care about this" school of thought that aggressively sees optimizations as foolish to even think about. While this kind of thinking obviously has its place especially when it comes to proper management, it has been way overblown to the point of not being able to mention performance advantages without someone appearing out of nowhere to smugly tell you how the evil performance and optimization (the enemies of creating revenue, apparently) should be ignored and looked down upon in the face of the allmighty "faster development times".
- dangus 6y ago
  This take is common, understandable, but at the same time mostly just cynical and I think misguided. First, application launch times have to do with storage and memory speed over raw CPU power. So, without knowing your exact specs, I can’t tell you if your launch times for your new and old machine are actually a problem, especially if you’ve upgraded your older machine to an SSD or if your new machine still uses a HDD for its main drive. Second, I simply don’t believe you that it takes a full three seconds to open gnome calculator on your new machine. Or your old one, really. (It makes me want to ask the annoying question: is Linux that bad? My Mac or Windows machine has opened the calculator instantly regardless of the era). Finally, this is actually the most important point: capability of your computer is still miles ahead of what it used to be. Try playing 1080p video on your 2004 machine. Now try 4K. Maybe you say that high resolution video isn’t important. I don’t agree, but fine, let’s move on: Browser performance is another hugely important aspect where your 2004 machine will get smoked. Sure, you can remain cynical about websites getting “bloated,” but you should also realize that almost all business applications and some seriously complex general purpose applications are all moving to the web. Things like video conferencing in a browser window were a pipe dream in 2004. Microsoft word used to be considered a big complex and slow application, and now multiple competitors just run it right in your browser. This is a very good thing for interoperability and for making your Linux system actually useful instead of having to jump on your Windows partition every time you want to collaborate on a Microsoft Word document. You may not like Apple machines but step into an Apple store one day and play around with the cheapest M1 MacBook Air computer. It has no fan, doesn’t get hot on your lap, and the battery lasts 15 hours. Yet, it beats the 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro that is still the most current model on some benchmarks - a machine that is hot, loud, heavy, and will give you probably 6 hours of battery at best with the largest possible battery that’s legal to fly with. I think the long story short is that software developers leveraging the hardware is actually a good thing. It means that our capabilities are increasing and developers have less friction, so they can deliver more complex and useful functionality. As long as UI latency is within the acceptable range, allowing developers to build more complex software and focus on functionality over performance optimization could be argued to be a very good thing. In 2004 a developer would struggle to make a decent cross platform application with rich functionality. Something like a chat application with embedded media would need to be written three times to cover three platforms, and I’m still not aware of any chat app in 2004 that had a whole application and webhook ecosystem. The most important part about a chat application is for it to be interoperable! Now you’ve got Slack, which is practically a business operating system. Rather than being annoyed about that I think we should be impressed. (I also disagree that gaming is just a niche use of hardware. That’s an industry with higher revenues than movies and sports combined).
- jamincan 6y ago
  It's a similar dynamic to how widening a road only provides temporary relief for traffic. More traffic fills the newly available space until it reaches homeostasis with the number of people avoiding the road due to congestion. Similarly, developers take up the space that better hardware provides until the user experience starts to degrade and they are forced to optimize. In both cases, you end up with the apparent contradiction that the user's experience doesn't seem to change despite improvements that on the face of it should translate to them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    That's why I never became a cook. Jerks kept eating my food!
- imiric 6y ago
  Haven't you heard? Streaming a web browser that runs in The Cloud is the future. So don't worry about bloated software or upgrading your hardware, The Cloud will make it better. ;)

wmanley 6y ago

I think the point is that while CPUs have gotten (significantly) better over time using a computer doesn't feel any faster than 10 years ago because software has more than made up for it. On my 3 year old Ubuntu machine here it takes ~2-3s to launch gnome-calculator. This is no faster than launching gnome-calculator in 2004 on my 2004 Athlon 64 with Gnome 2.6. It's not like gnome-calculator is suddenly doing a lot more now. It feels like I spend more time now waiting for the computer than I did then. It's the same with the phone - click, wait, click, wait, click, wait. For a taste of what it could be like try running Windows 2000 in a VM. Zoooooooom. Why? Developers will only optimise their software when it becomes unbearably slow - and in the absence of automated performance tracking and eternal vigilance software gets slower over time. The result is that there is no reason* to get excited about CPU advances. It doesn't make your life better, it's just a cost you have to pay to stop your life getting worse. * Sure there are some reasons - if you're already using/dependant upon heavily optimised software like games or machine learning, but for most people that's a very small part of their computing use.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
Fully agree. It also feels like some kind of disdain for performance and optimization has taken root in certain parts of our industry and communities. The "client does not care about this" school of thought that aggressively sees optimizations as foolish to even think about. While this kind of thinking obviously has its place especially when it comes to proper management, it has been way overblown to the point of not being able to mention performance advantages without someone appearing out of nowhere to smugly tell you how the evil performance and optimization (the enemies of creating revenue, apparently) should be ignored and looked down upon in the face of the allmighty "faster development times".
dangus 6y ago
This take is common, understandable, but at the same time mostly just cynical and I think misguided. First, application launch times have to do with storage and memory speed over raw CPU power. So, without knowing your exact specs, I can’t tell you if your launch times for your new and old machine are actually a problem, especially if you’ve upgraded your older machine to an SSD or if your new machine still uses a HDD for its main drive. Second, I simply don’t believe you that it takes a full three seconds to open gnome calculator on your new machine. Or your old one, really. (It makes me want to ask the annoying question: is Linux that bad? My Mac or Windows machine has opened the calculator instantly regardless of the era). Finally, this is actually the most important point: capability of your computer is still miles ahead of what it used to be. Try playing 1080p video on your 2004 machine. Now try 4K. Maybe you say that high resolution video isn’t important. I don’t agree, but fine, let’s move on: Browser performance is another hugely important aspect where your 2004 machine will get smoked. Sure, you can remain cynical about websites getting “bloated,” but you should also realize that almost all business applications and some seriously complex general purpose applications are all moving to the web. Things like video conferencing in a browser window were a pipe dream in 2004. Microsoft word used to be considered a big complex and slow application, and now multiple competitors just run it right in your browser. This is a very good thing for interoperability and for making your Linux system actually useful instead of having to jump on your Windows partition every time you want to collaborate on a Microsoft Word document. You may not like Apple machines but step into an Apple store one day and play around with the cheapest M1 MacBook Air computer. It has no fan, doesn’t get hot on your lap, and the battery lasts 15 hours. Yet, it beats the 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro that is still the most current model on some benchmarks - a machine that is hot, loud, heavy, and will give you probably 6 hours of battery at best with the largest possible battery that’s legal to fly with. I think the long story short is that software developers leveraging the hardware is actually a good thing. It means that our capabilities are increasing and developers have less friction, so they can deliver more complex and useful functionality. As long as UI latency is within the acceptable range, allowing developers to build more complex software and focus on functionality over performance optimization could be argued to be a very good thing. In 2004 a developer would struggle to make a decent cross platform application with rich functionality. Something like a chat application with embedded media would need to be written three times to cover three platforms, and I’m still not aware of any chat app in 2004 that had a whole application and webhook ecosystem. The most important part about a chat application is for it to be interoperable! Now you’ve got Slack, which is practically a business operating system. Rather than being annoyed about that I think we should be impressed. (I also disagree that gaming is just a niche use of hardware. That’s an industry with higher revenues than movies and sports combined).
jamincan 6y ago
It's a similar dynamic to how widening a road only provides temporary relief for traffic. More traffic fills the newly available space until it reaches homeostasis with the number of people avoiding the road due to congestion. Similarly, developers take up the space that better hardware provides until the user experience starts to degrade and they are forced to optimize. In both cases, you end up with the apparent contradiction that the user's experience doesn't seem to change despite improvements that on the face of it should translate to them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  That's why I never became a cook. Jerks kept eating my food!
imiric 6y ago
Haven't you heard? Streaming a web browser that runs in The Cloud is the future. So don't worry about bloated software or upgrading your hardware, The Cloud will make it better. ;)