3 ms·

> When I zoom all the way out, all of consumer computation has existed as sort of an addendum or ancillary organ to the big customers: government, large corpora

> When I zoom all the way out, all of consumer computation has existed as sort of an addendum or ancillary organ to the big customers: government, large corporations, etc. Perfectly stated. I think comments like the one above come from a mentality that the individual consumer should be the center of the computing universe and big purchasers should be forced to live with the leftovers. What's really happening is the big companies are doing R&D at incredible rates and we're getting huge benefits by drafting along as consumers. We wouldn't have incredible GPUs in our gaming systems and even cell phones if the primary market for these things was retail entertainment purchases that people make every 5 years.

codebje 1y ago
The iPhone wasn't designed or marketed to large corporations. 3dfx didn't invent the voodoo for B2B sales. IBM didn't branch out from international business machines to the personal computer for business sales. The compact disc wasn't invented for corporate storage. Computing didn't take off until it shrank from the giant, unreliable beasts of machines owned by a small number of big corporations to the home computers of the 70s. There's a lot more of us than them. There's a gold rush market for GPUs and DRAM. It won't last forever, but while it does high volume sales at high margins will dominate supply. GPUs are still inflated from the crypto rush, too.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > The iPhone wasn't designed or marketed to large corporations. The iPhone isn't exactly a consumer computation device. From that perspective, it does less work at a higher cost.
  - codebje 1y ago
    I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if you're implying you dislike Apple's approach to what the user is allowed to do, or suggesting we should only talk about general purpose computing devices. If it's the latter, sure, the iPhone's not an innovation in that space, discard it from my list of examples. If it's the former, I'll give you that too, but it was still the first of its kind, by a large margin. (I remember the huge window in which phone companies desperately put out feature phones with sub-par touch screens, completely missing the value to consumers. The iPod Touch should've been warning enough... and should've been (one of) my signal(s) to buy Apple stock, I guess :-)
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > 3dfx didn't invent the voodoo for B2B sales. 3Dfx was not the inventor of the GPU. There’s a long history of GPU development for corporate applications. The iPhone wasn’t the first mobile phone. Early mobile phones were very expensive and targeted as businesses who wanted their executives in touch You’re still thinking from a consumer-centric view. Zoom out and those consumer companies were not the first to develop the products. You didn't even think about the actual originators of those types of products because you don’t see them as a consumer.
  - caycep 1y ago
    The consumer centric view is powerful - as was stated above, the originators often were niche/expensive items. The power of the consumer market was what really drove the engineering/science forward and made those companies into market powerhouses. It also arguably killed intel and build TSMC into the most technically advanced company in the world.
bmicraft 1y ago
> We wouldn't have incredible GPUs in our gaming systems and even cell phones if the primary market for these things was retail entertainment purchases that people make every 5 years. Arguably we don't. Most of the improvements these days seem to be on the GPGPU side with very little gains in raster performance this decade.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > with very little gains in raster performance this decade. I have a flagship 7-8 year old GPU in one machine and a mid-level modern GPU in another. It’s flat out wrong to claim “very little gains” during this time. The difference between those two GPUs is huge in games. The modern GPU also does it with far less power and noise. I can’t understand this HN mentality that modern hardware isn’t fast or that we’re not seeing gains.
somenameforme 1y ago
Advances in video cards and graphics tech were overwhelmingly driven by video games. John Carmack, for instance, was directly involved in these processes and 'back in the day' it wasn't uncommon for games, particularly from him, to be developed to run on tech that did not yet exist, in collaboration with the hardware guys. Your desktop was outdated after a year and obsolete after 2, so it was a very different time than modern times where you example is not only completely accurate, but really understating it - a good computer from 10 years ago can still do 99.9% of what people need, even things like high end gaming are perfectly viable with well dated cards.
- AutoDunkGPT 1y ago
  yes. a good reason to upgrade was PCIe 4.0 for I/O. GPU and SSD needs caused PCIe 5.0 to follow soon after.
  - iszomer 1y ago
    I'm still on PCIe 3.0 on my main machine and the RX580 works fine for my needs. Outside of the scope of OP, I recently picked up a (new) 5060 not due to the impending memory production apocalypse but because I wanted to extend my current setup with something I recently read about on LSFG, previously posted here but garnered no interest/comments. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499245
  - caycep 1y ago
    I wonder about this...I had thought I would be on PCIe 5.0 by now but I'm still on my AM4 PCIe 4.0 board since AM5 and PCIe 5.0 seem...glitchy and heat prone. And apparently I'm still not saturating PCIe 4.0...
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > a good computer from 10 years ago can still do 99.9% of what people need, even things like high end gaming are perfectly viable with well dated cards. HN is strange. I have an old gaming build from 7-8 years ago and while it can do high end games on low settings and resolution, it doesn’t hold a candle to even a mid-range modern build. “viable” is doing a lot of work in that claim. You can tolerate it at low res and settings and if you’re okay with a lot of frame rate dips, but nobody is going to mistake it for a modern build. You’re also exaggerating how fast video cards became obsolete in the past. Many of us gamed just fine on systems that weren’t upgraded for 5-6 years at a time.

codebje 1y ago

The iPhone wasn't designed or marketed to large corporations. 3dfx didn't invent the voodoo for B2B sales. IBM didn't branch out from international business machines to the personal computer for business sales. The compact disc wasn't invented for corporate storage. Computing didn't take off until it shrank from the giant, unreliable beasts of machines owned by a small number of big corporations to the home computers of the 70s. There's a lot more of us than them. There's a gold rush market for GPUs and DRAM. It won't last forever, but while it does high volume sales at high margins will dominate supply. GPUs are still inflated from the crypto rush, too.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
> The iPhone wasn't designed or marketed to large corporations. The iPhone isn't exactly a consumer computation device. From that perspective, it does less work at a higher cost.
- codebje 1y ago
  I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if you're implying you dislike Apple's approach to what the user is allowed to do, or suggesting we should only talk about general purpose computing devices. If it's the latter, sure, the iPhone's not an innovation in that space, discard it from my list of examples. If it's the former, I'll give you that too, but it was still the first of its kind, by a large margin. (I remember the huge window in which phone companies desperately put out feature phones with sub-par touch screens, completely missing the value to consumers. The iPod Touch should've been warning enough... and should've been (one of) my signal(s) to buy Apple stock, I guess :-)
Aurornis 1y ago
> 3dfx didn't invent the voodoo for B2B sales. 3Dfx was not the inventor of the GPU. There’s a long history of GPU development for corporate applications. The iPhone wasn’t the first mobile phone. Early mobile phones were very expensive and targeted as businesses who wanted their executives in touch You’re still thinking from a consumer-centric view. Zoom out and those consumer companies were not the first to develop the products. You didn't even think about the actual originators of those types of products because you don’t see them as a consumer.
- caycep 1y ago
  The consumer centric view is powerful - as was stated above, the originators often were niche/expensive items. The power of the consumer market was what really drove the engineering/science forward and made those companies into market powerhouses. It also arguably killed intel and build TSMC into the most technically advanced company in the world.

bmicraft 1y ago

> We wouldn't have incredible GPUs in our gaming systems and even cell phones if the primary market for these things was retail entertainment purchases that people make every 5 years. Arguably we don't. Most of the improvements these days seem to be on the GPGPU side with very little gains in raster performance this decade.

Aurornis 1y ago
> with very little gains in raster performance this decade. I have a flagship 7-8 year old GPU in one machine and a mid-level modern GPU in another. It’s flat out wrong to claim “very little gains” during this time. The difference between those two GPUs is huge in games. The modern GPU also does it with far less power and noise. I can’t understand this HN mentality that modern hardware isn’t fast or that we’re not seeing gains.

somenameforme 1y ago

Advances in video cards and graphics tech were overwhelmingly driven by video games. John Carmack, for instance, was directly involved in these processes and 'back in the day' it wasn't uncommon for games, particularly from him, to be developed to run on tech that did not yet exist, in collaboration with the hardware guys. Your desktop was outdated after a year and obsolete after 2, so it was a very different time than modern times where you example is not only completely accurate, but really understating it - a good computer from 10 years ago can still do 99.9% of what people need, even things like high end gaming are perfectly viable with well dated cards.

AutoDunkGPT 1y ago
yes. a good reason to upgrade was PCIe 4.0 for I/O. GPU and SSD needs caused PCIe 5.0 to follow soon after.
- iszomer 1y ago
  I'm still on PCIe 3.0 on my main machine and the RX580 works fine for my needs. Outside of the scope of OP, I recently picked up a (new) 5060 not due to the impending memory production apocalypse but because I wanted to extend my current setup with something I recently read about on LSFG, previously posted here but garnered no interest/comments. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499245
- caycep 1y ago
  I wonder about this...I had thought I would be on PCIe 5.0 by now but I'm still on my AM4 PCIe 4.0 board since AM5 and PCIe 5.0 seem...glitchy and heat prone. And apparently I'm still not saturating PCIe 4.0...
Aurornis 1y ago
> a good computer from 10 years ago can still do 99.9% of what people need, even things like high end gaming are perfectly viable with well dated cards. HN is strange. I have an old gaming build from 7-8 years ago and while it can do high end games on low settings and resolution, it doesn’t hold a candle to even a mid-range modern build. “viable” is doing a lot of work in that claim. You can tolerate it at low res and settings and if you’re okay with a lot of frame rate dips, but nobody is going to mistake it for a modern build. You’re also exaggerating how fast video cards became obsolete in the past. Many of us gamed just fine on systems that weren’t upgraded for 5-6 years at a time.