4 ms·

You can ask these questions about pretty much every single performance improvement project. At the end there is always a win: - cost (this is more relevant to

You can ask these questions about pretty much every single performance improvement project. At the end there is always a win: - cost (this is more relevant to large scale infra perf opt) - UX (this is what a fast terminal might be achieving) - energy efficiency (because energy is super cheap these are often overlooked, however battery life might be still relevant)

jnsaff2 2y ago
> energy efficiency I care about energy efficiency deeply. But in a terminal? You can't be serious. Each terminal is in the end tied to a single person so there is no runaway scaling of instances possible. Your win in energy consumption is in the single digit watt-hours per person. One could probably compare the energy savings coming from the terminal rendering to the extra energy consumed by the developer trying to improve performance and it might turn out to be a wash. As for the perception of speed by people using the terminal. I too am very puzzled how this is different from audiophile movement where people claim to perceive minuscule differences in THD whatever metric they focus on today. It might be that I've been working over dial-up sessions and intercontinental ssh sessions and the perception of slow starts to creep in when RTT gets to 100ms range. Which is probably orders of magnitude worse and more limiting than the difference between kitty and alacritty.
- datadeft 2y ago
  > But in a terminal? You can't be serious. After reading Mitchell's writings about terminal development I am not sure. > Each terminal is in the end tied to a single person A popular terminal runs on millions of devices. This adds up quickly. https://mitchellh.com/writing https://mitchellh.com/writing
berkes 2y ago
> energy efficiency I highly doubt that offloading the rendering to a GPU is more energy efficient. I'm quite sure it's the exact opposite: GPUs are power hungry energy-eaters; commonly.
- datadeft 2y ago
  Sure? https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/gpu-energy-efficiency-nersc/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/gpu-energy-efficiency-nersc/
- Delk 2y ago
  GPUs (namely discrete ones) often have high maximum power draw, but that's because they're generally used for tasks that require computational heavy lifting. That doesn't mean they're particularly power-hungry in terms of watts vs. amount of work done. If you offload e.g. video decoding to a GPU, that's usually more energy-efficient than decoding on the CPU. (The heavy lifting is probably more energy-efficient on the GPU, too, but that's not directly relevant here.)

jnsaff2 2y ago

> energy efficiency I care about energy efficiency deeply. But in a terminal? You can't be serious. Each terminal is in the end tied to a single person so there is no runaway scaling of instances possible. Your win in energy consumption is in the single digit watt-hours per person. One could probably compare the energy savings coming from the terminal rendering to the extra energy consumed by the developer trying to improve performance and it might turn out to be a wash. As for the perception of speed by people using the terminal. I too am very puzzled how this is different from audiophile movement where people claim to perceive minuscule differences in THD whatever metric they focus on today. It might be that I've been working over dial-up sessions and intercontinental ssh sessions and the perception of slow starts to creep in when RTT gets to 100ms range. Which is probably orders of magnitude worse and more limiting than the difference between kitty and alacritty.

datadeft 2y ago
> But in a terminal? You can't be serious. After reading Mitchell's writings about terminal development I am not sure. > Each terminal is in the end tied to a single person A popular terminal runs on millions of devices. This adds up quickly. https://mitchellh.com/writing https://mitchellh.com/writing

berkes 2y ago

> energy efficiency I highly doubt that offloading the rendering to a GPU is more energy efficient. I'm quite sure it's the exact opposite: GPUs are power hungry energy-eaters; commonly.

datadeft 2y ago
Sure? https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/gpu-energy-efficiency-nersc/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/gpu-energy-efficiency-nersc/
Delk 2y ago
GPUs (namely discrete ones) often have high maximum power draw, but that's because they're generally used for tasks that require computational heavy lifting. That doesn't mean they're particularly power-hungry in terms of watts vs. amount of work done. If you offload e.g. video decoding to a GPU, that's usually more energy-efficient than decoding on the CPU. (The heavy lifting is probably more energy-efficient on the GPU, too, but that's not directly relevant here.)