5 ms·

Of course not and "640K software is all the memory anybody would ever need on a computer".

by belval 5y ago

dmitriid 5y ago
False equivalence
throwaway4good 5y ago
No. I am asking if there are genuine new use cases that will be enabled by say a ten-fold increase in processing power? Other than it is nice going from 2K at 30 Hz to 4K at 120 Hz (which is an 8-fold increase).
- belval 5y ago
  Your question is difficult to answer in good faith because "everything" would benefit from a ten-fold increase in processing power. Super computers could process protein foldings faster, any kind of simulation really could benefit from it. Deep learning could eat a ten-fold increase overnight (especially if accompanied by faster buses and memory) gaming at 30Hz is really not great, gaming at 60/120/144Hz is much better. VR was already mentioned in this very thread. I answered your question with a joke because your question is a joke, what doesn't benefit from a 10-fold increase in processing power? Why would no new use case arise from a widely available 10-fold increase in processing power when the last 40 years have shown that new tech always materializes? Or maybe you just wanted to make a cynical statement, that all this tech from the last 20 years was pointless, that social media are a net negative for the world, that better video game graphics are pointless because only gameplay matter, that smartphones (only possible because of a previous wave of 10-fold increases) are only addictive little screens and not actually useful in everyday life? Yes there are genuine new use cases that would appear with a ten-fold increase in processing power. It's a certainty.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > I answered your question with a joke because your question is a joke, what doesn't benefit from a 10-fold increase in processing power? You misread the question pretty badly. They asked for new use cases, not things that would benefit. We can fold proteins pretty well now, 10x wouldn't fundamentally change things. There was a point where 10x in power made VR feasible. We're past that point, and can already do 144Hz VR with pretty good graphics. More power would increase the resolution but that's not a new use case. Deep learning, hmm. A 10x increase in GPU RAM would be pretty great for using things like GPT-3, but the limiting factor there isn't really processing power. Remember that you said "sorely need". That's a much stronger statement than benefiting. > Why would no new use case arise from a widely available 10-fold increase in processing power when the last 40 years have shown that new tech always materializes? Well, I can look back about a decade for the last 10-fold increase. Everyone has an SSD now, that's major but not based on processing power. VR is the only significant new use case I can name. That's cool but it's not exactly a big impressive list.
    - belval 5y ago
      > Well, I can look back about a decade for the last 10-fold increase. A decade ago (2011) we didn't even have "deep learning" with the real increase starting around 2013 when GPUs became good enough that things like AlexNet/ImageNet were practical so that's one. > You misread the question pretty badly. They asked for new use cases, not things that would benefit. I answered their question pretty directly, and I address your point in my reply as well. 10-fold increase in computing power brought us affordable smartphones (in 2011 iPhones existed but were mostly for the well-fortunated among us). 10-fold increase in processing power brought us the video streaming services of today. Without modern processing capabilities Netflix and co. probably wouldn't exist in any capacity. A 100Gpbs network interface just wasn't a thing in 2011 and it's not because engineers didn't have the idea. A new Pixel 6 can erase people from my pictures automatically on-device, that's another very nice use case that wasn't possible with the hardware of even five years ago. If you want to argue that a 10 years horizon wasn't large enough then sure, but there are literally thousands of use cases that only exist because computing scales and gets cheaper every year.
- dangus 5y ago
  If we asked this question in similar terms just a few years ago we wouldn’t have things like consumer VR and AR. You absolutely need high refresh rates and frame rates for VR, or else you get motion sick and/or lose immersion. You’d pretty much always benefit from higher resolution for VR since the pixels are being placed much closer to your eyes and spread across your entire peripheral vision. VR reduces the resolution your GPU can handle at the same level of performance/fidelity because two separate images are drawn. The increase in performance in graphics cards is enabling entire industries to exist and accelerating scientific research. Phones in your pocket are performing on-device ML and AR in ways previously thought impossible. They’re being used to shoot actual movies that are shown in actual theaters. Low power tech like smartwatches wouldn’t be possible without these breakthroughs because ultimately faster processors also imply low power devices that can actually do decent amounts of computation. So to answer your question, new use cases have already been unlocked by simply having more processing power to play with. It’s never been the case that all possible use cases are crystal clear before the tech that enables those use cases exists. If you want to know why Facebook changed their name to Meta, it’s actually because they see a near-future of VR/AR devices getting a lot less clunky to the point where they can offer a seamless virtual social network and/or truly next generation video conferencing where everyone feels like they’re in a room together. While the exercise may appear to be damage control from an arrogant billionaire, I can see the argument and business case for their vision.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > If we asked this question in similar terms just a few years ago we wouldn’t have things like consumer VR and AR. Things won't stagnate just because the sales pitch for a new product might be "no new use cases, it 'only' makes things smoother and a quicker and higher detail". Getting that out of the way, not every increase in power is equally useful. It's a fair question to ask. VR is good and newly enabled but that doesn't mean we're going to get a bunch of tech with similar potential in the next handful of years. > Phones in your pocket are performing on-device ML and AR in ways previously thought impossible. They’re being used to shoot actual movies that are shown in actual theaters. The fancy algorithms are somewhat important to picture quality, but for photos slower would be okay and for video you could run it in post without much disruption. > Low power tech like smartwatches wouldn’t be possible without these breakthroughs because ultimately faster processors also imply low power devices that can actually do decent amounts of computation. On the other hand, we've had pretty complex devices that run on button cells available for decades. And a lot of that power is taken up by the screen and radios rather than processing. And... wait a second, the original Apple Watch came out so long ago, it was around 8x slower than the current model.

Of course not and "640K software is all the memory anybody would ever need on a computer".

by belval 5y ago

Of course not and "640K software is all the memory anybody would ever need on a computer".

dmitriid 5y ago

False equivalence

throwaway4good 5y ago

No. I am asking if there are genuine new use cases that will be enabled by say a ten-fold increase in processing power? Other than it is nice going from 2K at 30 Hz to 4K at 120 Hz (which is an 8-fold increase).

belval 5y ago
Your question is difficult to answer in good faith because "everything" would benefit from a ten-fold increase in processing power. Super computers could process protein foldings faster, any kind of simulation really could benefit from it. Deep learning could eat a ten-fold increase overnight (especially if accompanied by faster buses and memory) gaming at 30Hz is really not great, gaming at 60/120/144Hz is much better. VR was already mentioned in this very thread. I answered your question with a joke because your question is a joke, what doesn't benefit from a 10-fold increase in processing power? Why would no new use case arise from a widely available 10-fold increase in processing power when the last 40 years have shown that new tech always materializes? Or maybe you just wanted to make a cynical statement, that all this tech from the last 20 years was pointless, that social media are a net negative for the world, that better video game graphics are pointless because only gameplay matter, that smartphones (only possible because of a previous wave of 10-fold increases) are only addictive little screens and not actually useful in everyday life? Yes there are genuine new use cases that would appear with a ten-fold increase in processing power. It's a certainty.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > I answered your question with a joke because your question is a joke, what doesn't benefit from a 10-fold increase in processing power? You misread the question pretty badly. They asked for new use cases, not things that would benefit. We can fold proteins pretty well now, 10x wouldn't fundamentally change things. There was a point where 10x in power made VR feasible. We're past that point, and can already do 144Hz VR with pretty good graphics. More power would increase the resolution but that's not a new use case. Deep learning, hmm. A 10x increase in GPU RAM would be pretty great for using things like GPT-3, but the limiting factor there isn't really processing power. Remember that you said "sorely need". That's a much stronger statement than benefiting. > Why would no new use case arise from a widely available 10-fold increase in processing power when the last 40 years have shown that new tech always materializes? Well, I can look back about a decade for the last 10-fold increase. Everyone has an SSD now, that's major but not based on processing power. VR is the only significant new use case I can name. That's cool but it's not exactly a big impressive list.
  - belval 5y ago
    > Well, I can look back about a decade for the last 10-fold increase. A decade ago (2011) we didn't even have "deep learning" with the real increase starting around 2013 when GPUs became good enough that things like AlexNet/ImageNet were practical so that's one. > You misread the question pretty badly. They asked for new use cases, not things that would benefit. I answered their question pretty directly, and I address your point in my reply as well. 10-fold increase in computing power brought us affordable smartphones (in 2011 iPhones existed but were mostly for the well-fortunated among us). 10-fold increase in processing power brought us the video streaming services of today. Without modern processing capabilities Netflix and co. probably wouldn't exist in any capacity. A 100Gpbs network interface just wasn't a thing in 2011 and it's not because engineers didn't have the idea. A new Pixel 6 can erase people from my pictures automatically on-device, that's another very nice use case that wasn't possible with the hardware of even five years ago. If you want to argue that a 10 years horizon wasn't large enough then sure, but there are literally thousands of use cases that only exist because computing scales and gets cheaper every year.
dangus 5y ago
If we asked this question in similar terms just a few years ago we wouldn’t have things like consumer VR and AR. You absolutely need high refresh rates and frame rates for VR, or else you get motion sick and/or lose immersion. You’d pretty much always benefit from higher resolution for VR since the pixels are being placed much closer to your eyes and spread across your entire peripheral vision. VR reduces the resolution your GPU can handle at the same level of performance/fidelity because two separate images are drawn. The increase in performance in graphics cards is enabling entire industries to exist and accelerating scientific research. Phones in your pocket are performing on-device ML and AR in ways previously thought impossible. They’re being used to shoot actual movies that are shown in actual theaters. Low power tech like smartwatches wouldn’t be possible without these breakthroughs because ultimately faster processors also imply low power devices that can actually do decent amounts of computation. So to answer your question, new use cases have already been unlocked by simply having more processing power to play with. It’s never been the case that all possible use cases are crystal clear before the tech that enables those use cases exists. If you want to know why Facebook changed their name to Meta, it’s actually because they see a near-future of VR/AR devices getting a lot less clunky to the point where they can offer a seamless virtual social network and/or truly next generation video conferencing where everyone feels like they’re in a room together. While the exercise may appear to be damage control from an arrogant billionaire, I can see the argument and business case for their vision.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > If we asked this question in similar terms just a few years ago we wouldn’t have things like consumer VR and AR. Things won't stagnate just because the sales pitch for a new product might be "no new use cases, it 'only' makes things smoother and a quicker and higher detail". Getting that out of the way, not every increase in power is equally useful. It's a fair question to ask. VR is good and newly enabled but that doesn't mean we're going to get a bunch of tech with similar potential in the next handful of years. > Phones in your pocket are performing on-device ML and AR in ways previously thought impossible. They’re being used to shoot actual movies that are shown in actual theaters. The fancy algorithms are somewhat important to picture quality, but for photos slower would be okay and for video you could run it in post without much disruption. > Low power tech like smartwatches wouldn’t be possible without these breakthroughs because ultimately faster processors also imply low power devices that can actually do decent amounts of computation. On the other hand, we've had pretty complex devices that run on button cells available for decades. And a lot of that power is taken up by the screen and radios rather than processing. And... wait a second, the original Apple Watch came out so long ago, it was around 8x slower than the current model.