4 ms·
> CPU core count does not easily translate to performance gains. In theory, performance scales logistically with the number of parallel processors (Amdahl's la
by duped 3y ago
> CPU core count does not easily translate to performance gains.
In theory, performance scales logistically with the number of parallel processors (Amdahl's law).
In practice, the limit is (and has always been) memory and i/o. That's why Apple silicon kicks everyone's ass.
If we want faster computers, the biggest gains are not to be found in making processors do more work. It's in designing systems (not just CPUs) that don't let the CPU wait around to do work.
- lostmsu 3y ago> That's why Apple silicon kicks everyone's ass. ??? But it doesn't: https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
- eppsilon 3y ago*kicks ass per-watt
- lostmsu 3y agoThe parent was talking about unified memory.
- owenmarshall 3y agoDoesn’t Geekbench overwhelmingly measure raw CPU performance, whereas GP was talking about overall system performance? Isn’t this chalk and cheese?
- lostmsu 3y agoWell, what other benchmark results say otherwise?
- ketralnis 3y ago> In practice, the limit is (and has always been) memory and i/o Absolutely not. In practise the limit is (1) how many cores are actually _used_ by programs and (2) how much work is put into making anything fast at all, ever. We're using web frontends powered by python backends over a network. The vast majority of programs use nowhere near the resoures available to them.
- duped 3y agoThose backends are spending most of their time waiting to do work, which is my point.
- ketralnis 3y agoBut even the amount of time they're doing "work" they're mostly managing refcounts and walking MRO chains and formatting strings and doing hashtable lookups to find local variables at runtime. Python code is 20-40x slower than C code. That other 19/20ths of the time is the bottleneck, not the memory bandwidth of the actual work. Same with your electron frontend.