7 ms·

The 100x plus speedup is no exaggeration either, I've noticed some incredulity from others at the numbers. For a very simple comparison, I recently was testing

The 100x plus speedup is no exaggeration either, I've noticed some incredulity from others at the numbers. For a very simple comparison, I recently was testing a (poorly) custom built data-oriented Entity-Component-System for usage in games with a more typical "componentized" object approach. No multithreading or anything complicated. On my system, the typical approach could generate about 1000 new objects and attach a single component in about 1 millisecond. The data-oriented approach could generate about 100,000 new "objects" and attach a single component in about 0.5 milliseconds. Same thing in the end, but one is roughly 200x faster in the same time frame. It's pretty stunning when you see stuff like this in benchmarks.

moonchrome 4y ago
I don't get this - you're talking about generating objects - I'm assuming you're talking allocating new objects. What's your bottleneck ? Allocator or do you have some poor data structure to update it ? Where is the speedup coming from ? The kind of speedup you're talking about sounds like moving from allocating each object separately to some arena and avoiding allocator overhead. I could be wrong in the assumptions - but OP is talking about fitting stuff in CPU cache don't really see how that translates to your scenario.
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
-----s.-ms.-us.-ns|---------------------------------------------------------- 0.1 ns - NOP 0.3 ns - XOR, ADD, SUB 0.5 ns - CPU L1 dCACHE reference (1st introduced in late 80-ies ) 0.9 ns - JMP SHORT 1 ns - speed-of-light ?~~~~~~~~~~~ 1 ns - MUL ( i**2 = MUL i, i ) 3~4 ns - CPU L2 CACHE reference (2020/Q1) 5 ns - CPU L1 iCACHE Branch mispredict 7 ns - CPU L2 CACHE reference 10 ns - DIV 19 ns - CPU L3 CACHE reference (2020/Q1 considered slow on 28c Skylake) 71 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA best case on XEON E5-46* 100 ns - MUTEX lock/unlock 100 ns - own DDR MEMORY reference 135 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA best case on XEON E7-* 202 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA worst case on XEON E7-* 325 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA worst case on XEON E5-46* |Q>~~~~~ 5,000 ns - QPU on-chip QUBO ( quantum annealer minimiser 1 Qop ) 10,000 ns - Compress 1K bytes with a Zippy PROCESS 20,000 ns - Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps NETWORK 250,000 ns - Read 1 MB sequentially from MEMORY 500,000 ns - Round trip within a same DataCenter ?~~~ 2,500,000 ns - Read 10 MB sequentially from MEMORY~~ 10,000,000 ns - DISK seek 10,000,000 ns - Read 1 MB sequentially from NETWORK ?~~ 25,000,000 ns - Read 100 MB sequentially from MEMORY~~ 30,000,000 ns - Read 1 MB sequentially from a DISK 150,000,000 ns - Send a NETWORK packet CA -> Netherlands 1s: | | | . | | ns| . | us| . ms| (https://stackoverflow.com/a/33065382 https://stackoverflow.com/a/33065382) However, 0.001 ns light transfer in Gemmatimonas phototrophica bacteriae biology has much more performant/optimized machines, therefore, yes, plenty of room for improvement in silico.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  The problem with the "plenty of space down there" remark is that practical computers have to have their input states programmable, ie., there must exist some causal deterministic process to set the state of the input. It's not clear that organic solutions at that level can do programmable computational work, nor that their work is at all deterministic. At best, it would seem the organic direction for computing will be about building robots rather than CPUs.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    Oh, but the "organic" solutions do highly deterministic, extremely programmable computational work: 99.99999+% of newborns have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 1 head, and they all started development from a single cell [1]. It's just that the "organic" solutions are written in a 4+ billion year-old highly redundant, distributed, resilient, evolved language whereas our CPUs are not on the same phylogenetic tree. The quotation marks around organic are just there to point out that there is something wrong with the dichotomy organic (various pro/eu-karyotes from bacteria to humans)/inorganic (from thermostats to CPUs). [1] Michael Levin: Anatomical decision-making by cellular collectives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9rLlFgcm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9rLlFgcm0
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      > extremely programmable computational work: 99.99999+% of newborns have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 1 head, and they all started development from a single cell [1]. Just on the risks of early miscarriage from wrong number of chromosomes I'd say your numbers are way off. > Miscarriage is the most common complication of early pregnancy.[21] Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is roughly 10% to 20%, while rates among all fertilisation is around 30% to 50%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage So 30-50% failure rate.
      - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
        You are nitpicking, nevertheless, newborn, noun, a baby that was born recently [1], hence the 99.99999+% figure is applied for the full term pregnancies, once the fetus is decoupled from the mother and has been born as a, well, newborn. And furthermore, the point is not that they live or die, but that they have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 1 head after developing from one single cell through deterministic computation in the morphospace. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/newborn#:~:text=communicate%20with%20confidence.-,newborn,noun,-%5B%20C%20%5D https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/newborn#...

moonchrome 4y ago

I don't get this - you're talking about generating objects - I'm assuming you're talking allocating new objects. What's your bottleneck ? Allocator or do you have some poor data structure to update it ? Where is the speedup coming from ? The kind of speedup you're talking about sounds like moving from allocating each object separately to some arena and avoiding allocator overhead. I could be wrong in the assumptions - but OP is talking about fitting stuff in CPU cache don't really see how that translates to your scenario.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

-----s.-ms.-us.-ns|---------------------------------------------------------- 0.1 ns - NOP 0.3 ns - XOR, ADD, SUB 0.5 ns - CPU L1 dCACHE reference (1st introduced in late 80-ies ) 0.9 ns - JMP SHORT 1 ns - speed-of-light ?~~~~~~~~~~~ 1 ns - MUL ( i**2 = MUL i, i ) 3~4 ns - CPU L2 CACHE reference (2020/Q1) 5 ns - CPU L1 iCACHE Branch mispredict 7 ns - CPU L2 CACHE reference 10 ns - DIV 19 ns - CPU L3 CACHE reference (2020/Q1 considered slow on 28c Skylake) 71 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA best case on XEON E5-46* 100 ns - MUTEX lock/unlock 100 ns - own DDR MEMORY reference 135 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA best case on XEON E7-* 202 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA worst case on XEON E7-* 325 ns - CPU cross-QPI/NUMA worst case on XEON E5-46* |Q>~~~~~ 5,000 ns - QPU on-chip QUBO ( quantum annealer minimiser 1 Qop ) 10,000 ns - Compress 1K bytes with a Zippy PROCESS 20,000 ns - Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps NETWORK 250,000 ns - Read 1 MB sequentially from MEMORY 500,000 ns - Round trip within a same DataCenter ?~~~ 2,500,000 ns - Read 10 MB sequentially from MEMORY~~ 10,000,000 ns - DISK seek 10,000,000 ns - Read 1 MB sequentially from NETWORK ?~~ 25,000,000 ns - Read 100 MB sequentially from MEMORY~~ 30,000,000 ns - Read 1 MB sequentially from a DISK 150,000,000 ns - Send a NETWORK packet CA -> Netherlands 1s: | | | . | | ns| . | us| . ms| (https://stackoverflow.com/a/33065382 https://stackoverflow.com/a/33065382) However, 0.001 ns light transfer in Gemmatimonas phototrophica bacteriae biology has much more performant/optimized machines, therefore, yes, plenty of room for improvement in silico.

mjburgess 4y ago
The problem with the "plenty of space down there" remark is that practical computers have to have their input states programmable, ie., there must exist some causal deterministic process to set the state of the input. It's not clear that organic solutions at that level can do programmable computational work, nor that their work is at all deterministic. At best, it would seem the organic direction for computing will be about building robots rather than CPUs.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  Oh, but the "organic" solutions do highly deterministic, extremely programmable computational work: 99.99999+% of newborns have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 1 head, and they all started development from a single cell [1]. It's just that the "organic" solutions are written in a 4+ billion year-old highly redundant, distributed, resilient, evolved language whereas our CPUs are not on the same phylogenetic tree. The quotation marks around organic are just there to point out that there is something wrong with the dichotomy organic (various pro/eu-karyotes from bacteria to humans)/inorganic (from thermostats to CPUs). [1] Michael Levin: Anatomical decision-making by cellular collectives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9rLlFgcm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9rLlFgcm0
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    > extremely programmable computational work: 99.99999+% of newborns have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 1 head, and they all started development from a single cell [1]. Just on the risks of early miscarriage from wrong number of chromosomes I'd say your numbers are way off. > Miscarriage is the most common complication of early pregnancy.[21] Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is roughly 10% to 20%, while rates among all fertilisation is around 30% to 50%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage So 30-50% failure rate.
    - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
      You are nitpicking, nevertheless, newborn, noun, a baby that was born recently [1], hence the 99.99999+% figure is applied for the full term pregnancies, once the fetus is decoupled from the mother and has been born as a, well, newborn. And furthermore, the point is not that they live or die, but that they have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 1 head after developing from one single cell through deterministic computation in the morphospace. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/newborn#:~:text=communicate%20with%20confidence.-,newborn,noun,-%5B%20C%20%5D https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/newborn#...