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Or CPUs really. Die shrinks just aren't giving the advantages they once used to. You can see this in the fact that RISC-V and ARM architectures have caught up
by cogman10 2y ago
Or CPUs really. Die shrinks just aren't giving the advantages they once used to.
You can see this in the fact that RISC-V and ARM architectures have caught up with x86 performance even though x86 has had a decade long head start and billions more invested in development.
We are quickly approaching a weird space. Barring some major innovations, you are likely to see that 10 year old equipment remains competitive with brand new products in terms of performance.
- ozaiworld 2y agoThat might've been a result of Intel having the best leading-edge fabs until 2018 or so. It was hard to judge different ISAs before then.
- IshKebab 2y agoYeah I keep looking into upgrading my 12 year old PC, but for like £1500 I can get one 10x faster (multithreaded) and only about 4x faster single core. I mean, that's a decent boost but it feels very disappointing for 12 years of progress.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> You can see this in the fact that RISC-V and ARM architectures have caught up with x86 performance Concerning RISC-V having caught up with x86 performance: dream on ... :-(
- VMG 2y agothis was pretty impressive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41364549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41364549
- kbolino 2y agoARM has gotten very good, and is definitely competitive with mid-range x86 while offering better performance-per-watt, but it is still not competitive with high-end x86.
- epolanski 2y agoDepends on the task and what you're measuring. My M1 (standard) CPU is definitely faster than my Ryzen 7700x on some tasks, and it blows it away on perf/watt.
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- kbolino 2y agoThose are both mid-range CPUs in standard consumer configurations, and I agree ARM does very well in that segment, and it does even better in the low-power/mobile/embedded segment where x86 is practically non-existent (recent gaming handhelds notwithstanding). However, high-end workstations, compute-focused servers, and supercomputers, which use extremely expensive and power-hungry x86 chips, are a different segment, one to which ARM currently has no direct answer (and some might argue it shouldn't have one because such wasteful things shouldn't exist). This segment once had a number of competitive RISC players, like POWER and SPARC, so I don't think it's unobtainable for ARM.
- epolanski 2y agoWhat are you talking about there are arm supercomputers. There's at least 2 in the top 10, and the fugaku was the fastest in the world for a couple of years between 2020 and 2022.
- kbolino 2y agoYou're absolutely right, I missed that entirely. The vast majority of the TOP500 is still x86 but it's already losing ground to ARM. There's still some POWER systems on the list too.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoWhat do die shrinks have to do with ISA performance? Also, there are no RISC-V CPUs available that match the latest X86 or ARM CPUs. Even then, the ISA chosen doesn't have much to do with the performance of CPUs (at least, when comparing major ISAs like X86, ARM and RISC-V).
- cogman10 2y agoSmaller nodes (generally) translate to lower power consumption, more transistor density, and faster transistor switching speeds. It allows for an architecture to deepen pipelines, add registers, add cache, and pull off tricks like SMT. > the ISA chosen doesn't have much to do with the performance of CPUs That's somewhat my point, the limiting factor for ISA performance is the physics surrounding the transistors.