4 ms·
Worth noting that even setting aside weird black hole physics, in the real world the amount of storage available given some information density and some maximum
by dTal 2y ago
Worth noting that even setting aside weird black hole physics, in the real world the amount of storage available given some information density and some maximum constant access latency is bound in r^3 by the speed of light, and therefore array access is not really constant time but O(∛n). This isn't some abstract ivory tower thing but the way computers actually work - due to cache hierarchies you will find that working with a 100 byte array is much faster than working with a 100 megabyte array, which is much faster than working with a 100 terabyte array. Every time the data gets larger, it gets further away...
- adrianN 2y agoThe TLB also adds some log factors to array access, which dominate for arrays that fit within a few dozen centimeters of your CPU.