4 ms·

Gonna beat a dead horse here, but >50% of PCs that are surveyed by Steam have 12 threads or more. That’s PCs that have steam installed at all. Intel’s bare mi

by aerxes 4y ago

Gonna beat a dead horse here, but >50% of PCs that are surveyed by Steam have 12 threads or more. That’s PCs that have steam installed at all. Intel’s bare minimum current-gen i3 processor has 12 threads. That’s the absolute cheapest desktop-level processor you can get. Your phone probably has 6 cores (though not 12 threads). So yes, if you’re writing code for desktop hardware, it’s safe to assume you have at least 8 threads. Maybe you don’t want to consume all of them, but it’s better to let the OS handle scheduling. https://www.techspot.com/article/2363-multi-core-cpu/ https://www.techspot.com/article/2363-multi-core-cpu/

cmeacham98 4y ago
This article doesn't say that, what it actually says is "Over 70% of Steam users have a CPU with 4 or more cores." Steam doesn't even measure publicize information about threads on the survey, which makes it near impossible to check because not that long ago Intel locked out hyperthreading/SMT on their low/mid-grade CPUs. Additionally, and more importantly: the Steam hardware survey _obviously_ doesn't represent the average consumer PC.
- aerxes 4y ago
  The data that it presents shows that >50% of PCs surveyed have 6 cores or more.
  - rob74 4y ago
    >50% of PCs which have Steam installed, i.e. are used for gaming. So the statistic is not really representative of all PCs out there...
    - loup-vaillant 4y ago
      The fact remains that virtually all systems except perhaps old low-end phones now have more than one thread. Not going multi-thread for anything that makes the user wait leaves significant performance on the table. Low end systems (4 threads or less) have less potential, but they also have the most need for speed, making multi-threading quite important. And high-end systems have more threads, so going multi-thread makes a bigger difference.
jcelerier 4y ago
Gaming is very much not representative. There's roughly 120M active steam users, vs. ~1.4 billion windows installs. If I look around me, for instance in my whole family we're two with Steam installed but ever household has a desktop or a laptop (and generally a 7-8 years old cheap entry-level 350€ one, you'd be hard-pressed to find even a quad-core in there)
- aerxes 4y ago
  I don’t know dude, if you want to write software for the worst performers instead of commodity hardware that’s up to you Just that single core systems are dying and probably won’t come back. Even Raspberry Pi’s are quad core now.
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    > I don’t know dude, if you want to write software for the worst performers instead of commodity hardware that’s up to you I want to write software that people, most people, not only those with SV salaries able to buy a computer every year, can use. Here's the current best seller laptop in Amazon in my country: https://www.amazon.fr/Dell-Inspiron-i5-1135G7-Ordinateur-portable/dp/B09XZZ3KXB/ref=zg_bs_429879031_sccl_1/261-6940445-1249017?pd_rd_i=B09XZZ3KXB&psc=1 https://www.amazon.fr/Dell-Inspiron-i5-1135G7-Ordinateur-por... It's half past 2022 and the most sold laptop here in France, 7th-ranked in GDP, has 8 gigabytes of RAM and 4 cores. This is what the real world looks like. (and just a year ago it was still 4GB of RAM iirc) The second best sale is a gamer PC which is a bit better. https://www.amazon.fr/MILUI-Modulaire-Colosseum-Livraison-30X40_30X60_30X80cm_with_Frame/dp/B081V5WQ16/ref=zg_bs_429879031_sccl_2/261-6940445-1249017?pd_rd_i=B081V5WQ16&psc=1 https://www.amazon.fr/MILUI-Modulaire-Colosseum-Livraison-30... The third https://www.amazon.fr/Ordinateur-Portable-Celeron-Resolution-Windows/dp/B09498PLQ8/ref=zg_bs_429879031_sccl_3/261-6940445-1249017?pd_rd_i=B09498PLQ8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.fr/Ordinateur-Portable-Celeron-Resolution... comes with a CPU that does not support hyperthreading (so 4C/4T) and does not even support friggin AVX and goes to SSE4.2 at most. That does not mean not making use of multiple cores of course, but a software should still be able to work on a single-core. Right now we only have certifications such as https://www.blauer-engel.de/en/productworld/resources-and-energy-efficient-software-products https://www.blauer-engel.de/en/productworld/resources-and-en... (see https://www.umwelt-campus.de/en/research/projekte/green-software-engineering/projects/ufoplan-ssd-2015 https://www.umwelt-campus.de/en/research/projekte/green-soft... for the methodology) but hopefully in a few years we can start making it first heavily discouraged and over time less and less viable to create resource-wasting software - in any case this is a thing I am asking of the people whom I vote for :-)

by aerxes 4y ago

cmeacham98 4y ago

This article doesn't say that, what it actually says is "Over 70% of Steam users have a CPU with 4 or more cores." Steam doesn't even measure publicize information about threads on the survey, which makes it near impossible to check because not that long ago Intel locked out hyperthreading/SMT on their low/mid-grade CPUs. Additionally, and more importantly: the Steam hardware survey _obviously_ doesn't represent the average consumer PC.

aerxes 4y ago
The data that it presents shows that >50% of PCs surveyed have 6 cores or more.
- rob74 4y ago
  >50% of PCs which have Steam installed, i.e. are used for gaming. So the statistic is not really representative of all PCs out there...
  - loup-vaillant 4y ago
    The fact remains that virtually all systems except perhaps old low-end phones now have more than one thread. Not going multi-thread for anything that makes the user wait leaves significant performance on the table. Low end systems (4 threads or less) have less potential, but they also have the most need for speed, making multi-threading quite important. And high-end systems have more threads, so going multi-thread makes a bigger difference.

jcelerier 4y ago

Gaming is very much not representative. There's roughly 120M active steam users, vs. ~1.4 billion windows installs. If I look around me, for instance in my whole family we're two with Steam installed but ever household has a desktop or a laptop (and generally a 7-8 years old cheap entry-level 350€ one, you'd be hard-pressed to find even a quad-core in there)

aerxes 4y ago
I don’t know dude, if you want to write software for the worst performers instead of commodity hardware that’s up to you Just that single core systems are dying and probably won’t come back. Even Raspberry Pi’s are quad core now.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  > I don’t know dude, if you want to write software for the worst performers instead of commodity hardware that’s up to you I want to write software that people, most people, not only those with SV salaries able to buy a computer every year, can use. Here's the current best seller laptop in Amazon in my country: https://www.amazon.fr/Dell-Inspiron-i5-1135G7-Ordinateur-portable/dp/B09XZZ3KXB/ref=zg_bs_429879031_sccl_1/261-6940445-1249017?pd_rd_i=B09XZZ3KXB&psc=1 https://www.amazon.fr/Dell-Inspiron-i5-1135G7-Ordinateur-por... It's half past 2022 and the most sold laptop here in France, 7th-ranked in GDP, has 8 gigabytes of RAM and 4 cores. This is what the real world looks like. (and just a year ago it was still 4GB of RAM iirc) The second best sale is a gamer PC which is a bit better. https://www.amazon.fr/MILUI-Modulaire-Colosseum-Livraison-30X40_30X60_30X80cm_with_Frame/dp/B081V5WQ16/ref=zg_bs_429879031_sccl_2/261-6940445-1249017?pd_rd_i=B081V5WQ16&psc=1 https://www.amazon.fr/MILUI-Modulaire-Colosseum-Livraison-30... The third https://www.amazon.fr/Ordinateur-Portable-Celeron-Resolution-Windows/dp/B09498PLQ8/ref=zg_bs_429879031_sccl_3/261-6940445-1249017?pd_rd_i=B09498PLQ8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.fr/Ordinateur-Portable-Celeron-Resolution... comes with a CPU that does not support hyperthreading (so 4C/4T) and does not even support friggin AVX and goes to SSE4.2 at most. That does not mean not making use of multiple cores of course, but a software should still be able to work on a single-core. Right now we only have certifications such as https://www.blauer-engel.de/en/productworld/resources-and-energy-efficient-software-products https://www.blauer-engel.de/en/productworld/resources-and-en... (see https://www.umwelt-campus.de/en/research/projekte/green-software-engineering/projects/ufoplan-ssd-2015 https://www.umwelt-campus.de/en/research/projekte/green-soft... for the methodology) but hopefully in a few years we can start making it first heavily discouraged and over time less and less viable to create resource-wasting software - in any case this is a thing I am asking of the people whom I vote for :-)